Upcoming Webinar
Upcoming Webinar
The Transportation Infrastructure Precast Innovation Center (TRANS-IPIC) is proud to host Research Highlights Webinars each month to showcase the exciting research conducted by teams from five universities as we seek to address the U.S.'s transportation infrastructure durability challenges by focusing on Precast Concrete (PC)-related technologies.
Register for TRANS-IPIC next Research Highlights Webinar below!
Friday, 08/28/2026
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Central
Topic 1:
A New Simplified and Adaptive Method For Quality Control of Precast Elements Through Advanced NDT Evaluation: Progress, Next Steps, and Future Plans.
Abstract
Precast production requires precise strength monitoring to safely time formwork removal and load transfer. Current maturity methods use non-recoverable, single-point internal temperature sensors that cannot capture strength throughout an element. This study presents a real-time strength estimation method converting 2D surface thermal images into 3D temperature fields to improve precast production.
Principal Investigator
Professor Mirian Velay-Lizancos
Graduate Student
Husam H. Elgaali
Topic 2:
Optimizing Ramp Metering to Reduce Freeway Delay: From Traffic Simulation to Direct Optimization
Abstract
Lane-closure management in work zones requires control decisions beyond the scope of forward simulation alone. This study formulates a provably conservative, globally differentiable macroscopic traffic-flow model with a verified adjoint gradient, enabling direct strategy optimization. On corridor ramp metering it outperforms a tuned ALINEA benchmark, saves pure delay rather than throughput, and saturates with ramp storage.
Principal Investigator
Professor Bhaba Sarker
Graduate Student
Anik Mazumder