S&T Researchers Presiding and Presenting at TRB

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) 99th Annual Meeting was held on January 12-16, 2020, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, in Washington, D.C.

S&T team gave over 10 presentations covering a wide range of topics on transportation infrastructure at TRB. Drs. Jenny Liu, Xiong Zhang and their research groups’ presentations showcased their substantial effort on advancing innovative sustainable materials for transportation infrastructure use in cold regions. Some of examples included “Evaluation of Cracking Susceptibility of Alaskan Polymer Modified Asphalt Binders Using Chemical and Rheological Indices”, and “Characterizing Influence of Water Access Condition during Freezing on Resilient Behavior of Base Course Materials”.

Other presentations focused on advanced testing techniques for geo-material characterization, soil structure interaction, advanced application of geo-textile and unsaturated soil behavior. These included “A Photogrammetry-Based Method to Determine the Absolute Volume of Soil Specimen during Triaxial Testing”, “Deep Learning Aided Target Recognition for Volume-Change Measurement of Unsaturated Soils”, “Pumping Mitigation in Pavement Shoulder Using Wicking Geotextile: An Experimental Study” and “A Modified State Surface Approach to Study the Unsaturated Soil Hysteresis Behavior”.

Dr. Xianbiao Hu and his student Qing Tang, Yanqiu Cheng had a total of four presentations at TRB, titled: “Field Testing and Evaluation of Leader–Follower Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator Vehicle System for Work Zone Maintenance”, “Quantification of Traffic Impact by Leader-Follower Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator Vehicle System for Work Zone Maintenance”, “A Model-Free Approach for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Trajectory Scheduling: Monte Carlo Tree Search-Based Mixed Traffic Flow Control Algorithm”, “Route Choice Behavior Analysis Considering Heterogenous Travel Distances Using Occupied Taxi Trajectory Data”, which showcased the advanced traffic performance evaluation and traffic operation, the incentive-based travel behavior and traffic flow control.

S&T researchers also demonstrated their expertise and leadership in other professional venues in conjunction with the TRB annual meeting. Dr. Jenny Liu presided the ASCE Bituminous Material Committee annual meeting. She also chaired the 10th International Association of Chinese Infrastructure Professionals (IACIP) workshop along with S&T researchers and students in organizing committee. Drs. Xianbiao Hu and Hongyan Ma served as the session chairs and poster reviewers for IACIP workshop. Dr. Genda Chen gave a keynote speech at IACIP workshop entitled “Empowering and Rejuvenating Civil Engineering Profession with Informatics, Automation and Actuation”. S&T students Hanli Wu, Jun Liu, Sara Fayek, and Xingxing Zou received poster awards at IACIP student poster competition.