Award Data

Wrong-way crashes are considered among the most lethal types of traffic incidents because of their head on characteristics and because they usually involve high rates of speed. To reduce the frequency of high-speed incidents, it is necessary to stop a wrong-way driver as soon as possible. The sooner a wrong-way driver is stopped, the less likely they are to cause a high-speed event. TAPCO believes ...

Most research on scour assessment has traditionally focused on developing best-fit or envelope equations to estimate the maximum scour depths from physical experiments in a laboratory environment. However, obtaining an accurate estimate is always a challenge due to numerous uncertainties in the actual riverine or coastal environment. With advances in new surveying technologies and growing computat ...

A newly proposed combination of high-strength weathering steel sheet with Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) to leverage the benefits of both emerging technologies. The combined system offers benefits over traditional orthotropic steel decks and existing concrete or UHPC deck solutions, both of which offer high up-front costs in fabrication or forming. The resulting composite structure provide ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the value of a quantitative risk assessment tool for management of geohazard threats to pipelines.Phase I will determine data sources for quantitative risk assessment to support management and decision-making needs of pipeline industry stakeholders; identify the potential market for such a tool; identify a study locati ...

Crushed aggregates play an important role in the safe and reliable operation of our nation’s railroad infrastructure.Over time, aggregates become fouled by finer particles, and if not monitored and remedied, this fouling can lead to catastrophic accidents such as train derailments.A handheld inspection system that can accurately perform a quantitative measure of aggregate gradation and degree of ...

The means to communicate real-time safety information to vehicles on a roadway are currently under development.Early indications show this advanced warning system along roadways would significantly enhance driver safety. However, incorporating such a system on rural highways is a particularly challenging element for the universal deployment of the system due to the vast mileage without the necessa ...

The objective of the proposed Phase I Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration SBIR program is to develop a sprayable highway paint to communicate vehicle-to-everything (V2X) safety messages between infrastructure, vehicles and pedestrians. During Phase I, NanoSonic will work with Virginia Tech antenna designers and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to design and ...

The means to communicate real-time safety information to vehicles on a roadway are currently under development. Early indications show this advanced warning system along roadways would significantly enhance driver safety. However, incorporating such a system on rural highways is a particularly challenging element for the universal deployment of the system due to the vast mileage without the necess ...

Additional passenger fatalities/injuries can occur during derailments involving interaction with wayside structures. Analogously, automobile fatalities often result from interaction of vehicles with roadside structures; personnel hazard reduction is a key design criterion for roadside structures. A similar approach for railroad wayside structures can be followed by incorporating damage mitigating ...

The objective of this SBIR program is to demonstrate the use of patterned radar‐reflective roadway paint and marking tape to communicate safety messages from roadway infrastructure to vehicles and drivers. NanoSonic will work with transportation engineers in the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and radar design and system engineers in the Virginia Tech Hume Center. Radar‐reflectiv ...