CURRENT PROJECTS

Project Summary: The Lower Mississippi River Delta (aka Birdsfoot Delta) is an iconic promontory that provides navigation access to North America and is home to numerous communities, extensive energy & transport infrastructure, federal wildlife preserves, and broad fluvial, wetland, estuarine & marine ecosystems that provide vast ecosystem services linked to the surrounding coastal areas of the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Shipborne commerce via Southwest Pass, the major river entrance, is valued at ~$300M per day and includes 60% of US global grain exports. The promontory wetlands and landmass also provide protection from hurricane surges to adjacent communities and coastlines.

Project Summary: This project will address the challenges of ensuring quality and quantity of freshwater systems using a novel

integration of next-generation sensors, integrated flood and community modeling, and co-generated

knowledge to guide policy decisions for increasing community resiliency. Specifically, the proposal aims to provide reliable spatial and temporal projections of water quality and quantity, establish a social-technical fragility framework for a community’s critical infrastructure, and promote equitable and sustainable water resource management practices. The project’s next-generation sensors consist of a modular sensing system for the assessment of the dispersion of contaminants in watersheds, streams, and municipal water sources. The system will integrate Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted deployment of affordable sensing nodes; including low-cost and open-source Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometers. These novel sensors will be coupled with a data-driven and physics-based system-of-systems modeling approach that will assist decision-makers and stakeholders in monitoring their freshwater system and planning for water emergencies. The project’s testbed locations of the Pearl River Watershed around Jackson, Mississippi, and Santee River Basin in South Carolina, offer strong potential for convergence research on storm-induced contaminants. Together, these locales not only encompass historically underrepresented groups but also confront diverse challenges arising from compound flooding, rapid urbanization, and equity concerns.

The project coalesces advances and expertise in social sciences, public policy, and environmental jus-

tice, with hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, distributed sensing, and embedded systems to create a team focused on the overarching goal of enabling the real-time prediction and assessment of storm-induced contamination of freshwater systems to empower communities to generate and carry-out equitable solutions.

To encourage the translation of research into sustained social good, the team has developed an entrepreneurial plan that leverages the team’s demonstrated success in university-to-industry technology transfer.

Project Summary: This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will develop a climate-resilient design protocol for slope repair using vetiver grass. In many cases, many agencies cannot perform maintenance operations of shallow slope failure due to a limited budget, which leads to expensive deep-seated failure. On the other hand, the given slope showing early failure trends, such as crack development, can be repaired using low-cost, environment-friendly deep-rooted Vetiver that will tackle the problem from every perspective.  This study will develop the slope repair protocol using vetiver grass, which will transform the slope repair paradigm from reactive to proactive basis to enhance safety and resiliency of the crumbling infrastructure and ensure the quality of life, and have significant benefits to the society. Moreover, doing this study at Jackson State University (JSU), one of the nation's leading HBCUs, will create numerous opportunities for African American students to participate in real-life research. High school teachers and students will be involved in the project through the summer research and workshops. Besides, online resources and education through live events in social media will allow the involvement of greater audiences around the country.

The specific goal of the research is to understand the Vetiver grass root-soil interaction as a bio-inspired and climate-resilient solution to stabilize shallow slope failure in Expansive Soil. The research will investigate (i) how deep-rooted grass interacts with the highly plastic clay at the micro and macro level to resist cracking behavior? (ii) How the deep-rooted grass affects the soil-water balance during infiltration and evapotranspiration to enhance matric suction? And (iii) how individual grass root-soil interact to increase the shear strength of soil? The interaction of the grass root and highly plastic clay at the micro and macro levels will be investigated. Several model tests and field studies will be performed under different rainfall conditions to investigate the water balance with deep-rooted vetiver grass within the slope. The understanding from the model test and field study will be extended in numerical analysis to evaluate the coupled action of Vetiver grass as reinforcement as well as a vertical drain through evapotranspiration under different rainfall and weather condition. All the collected data will be analyzed in the Artificial Intelligence-based Deep Learning Platform to develop the next-generation climate-adaptive slope repair model, which will connect weather stressors, soil data, field monitoring data, and strength properties of vetiver grass. Finally, a climate-adaptive design protocol for repairing slope using vetiver grass will be developed.

Project Summary: Levees are critical infrastructural elements for flood protection that are built with earth materials. They run parallel to rivers and coastlines and are designed to keep water out of the low-lying communities and agricultural lands behind the levee. America’s over 100,000 miles of levees were built with varying levels of quality using a wide variety of materials that are often dictated by availability rather than engineering specifications and these aging levees are being exposed to increasing stress due to climate change. Moreover, the construction of levees presents the so-called levee paradox, in which the presence of the levee system lowers public perception of risk in protected areas, thereby reducing incentives to take auxiliary precautions and leading to reduced preparedness. This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) research will enable riverside communities to better analyze their options and resources for flood defense and plan for a projected increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. The project will expand our understanding of how infrastructure responds and fails during natural hazards. It will include collaborations between universities (including a Historically Black University), government agencies, and society. Finally, the project will contribute to U.S. workforce development through training a diverse group of students on the development and deployment of cutting-edge technology for the assessment of flood and environmental hazards.

This project will address uncertainties in levee performance and levee breach flooding through a convergent approach that integrates smart sensing of geotechnical and hydraulic parameters with probabilistic and deterministic modeling of levee failure and inundation of levee-protected floodplains. The project will investigate an integrated levee monitoring and flood risk assessment system consisting of unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted deployment of novel sensors, automated data collection, and coupled data-driven, probabilistic, and physics-based models. These high fidelity spatial and temporal measurement and modeling capabilities will be leveraged by domain expertise in the fields of hydrology and hydraulics, structural reliability, and geotechnical engineering to create fragility metrics for levee reliability that will be integrated into a system of models for the flood disaster chain. The system will allow decision-makers and stakeholders to monitor and repair vulnerable levees, develop countermeasures, and support a risk-based decision-making process aimed at developing effective risk communication and flood management policy. This project will expand the understanding of floodplain hydrology as well as the dynamic interactions of soil parameters and hydraulic loading. Given the potential for the project’s data, sensor designs, and modeling tools to benefit the public good, the project’s artifacts will be open-sourced and made freely available to enable other researchers and practitioners to leverage the project’s advancements.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. 

Project Summary: The landslide on highway embankments in Mississippi is very common and cause significant maintenance problems. Each DOT needs to spend millions of dollars to fix the landslides. Using Vetiver grass for landslide repair in highway embankment will save 50% to 80% cost of the slope repair. 

The project is evaluating the performance of vetiver stabilized slopes in different locations of Mississippi and develop a proactive landslide repair protocol using vetiver grass. The project will develop the direct implementation technique for MDOT districts and develop specification for field implementation of vetiver. 

JSU repaired 2 full scale sections of landslides in Mississippi using vetiver grass. Another section is repaired in spring 2024. MDOT will have the necessary technical manual to utilize the vetiver grass for the slope repair, which will transform the slope maintenance process in Mississippi. CREATE Team has partnered with MDOT material division for the full scale testing of the vetiver. 

Project Summary: Poor drainage and a soft subgrade cause track instability, settlement, increased maintenance cost, and derailment. Subsurface evaluation and monitoring are essentialfor targeted track maintenance. Current technique using soil boring is labor intensive and time consuming method. Modern subsoil evaluation using electrical resistivity imaging will transform the railroad investigation and monitoring.

To develop model to determine the soil moisture content, pore water pressure and matric suction of the soil based on Electrical Resistivity Imaging (ERI). This study will develop SOP and application to use ERI to non-invasively explore & investigate water behavior in track for railroad track maintenance personnel.

CREATE Team has partnered with USACE ERDC railroad group.

The project will improve the site investigation technique for identifying large scale moisture variability and pore water pressure within the subgrade soil. The findings will help investigating a large area of the railroad to identify the potential hotspots for future washout or slope failure. This will increase the safety of the track, improve drainage, reduce settlement and derailment. 

Project Summary: Slope failures are frequent in highway embankments on expansive Yazoo clay in Mississippi due to the rainfall and climatic variation and cause maintenance problems to the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT). The objective of the current study is to evaluate long term performance of highway slopes on Yazoo clay in field condition and connecting the gap between electrical resistivity imaging (ERI), ground penetration radar (GPR) for slope failure investigation such as an identifying failed area and failure depth, and evaluating soil parameters such as moisture content. 

Six repaired highway slopes will be monitored to collect data on in-situ moisture content, matric suction, and temperature variation, and deformation to evaluate long term performance. Besides field monitoring, advanced numerical modeling using the Finite Element Method (FEM) will be conducted to evaluate the field performance data. Besides, Geophysical testing such as ERI and GPR will be conducted in the landslide sites around Mississippi to evaluate the slope movement and advance the site investigation technique. LiDAR imaging using a handheld device and Aerial survey using a drone (photogrammetry) will be conducted on each slope to monitor the surficial deformation. The field monitoring data and FEM analysis results will be combined to evaluate the performance of the repaired slope.

ERI and GPR test results will be compared with slope movement from inclinometer data and surface movement data from LiDAR/Aerial Survey imaging and field instrumentation results. This dataset will be analyzed in the multivariate statistical environment to connect electrical resistivity with the geotechnical parameters of soil. Finally, an advanced landslide investigation protocol for MDOT will be developed, and a slope rating mechanism will be introduced. This protocol will use to increase reliability and confidence level as well as reducing the cost of landslide repair for MDOT.

Project Summary: Recycled Plastic Pin (RPP) is made from recycled plastics and can be a sustainable, cost-effective and extremely useful choice to stabilize the base and subgrade layers under the pavement over soft soil due to excellent benefits. RPP works as a pile member that transfers the load from the pavement to a deeper layer. RPP under the airfield mat will significantly cut down the construction and repair time. 

To investigate the effectiveness of RPP as a reinforcing element to strengthening the airfield pavements against the deformation and rutting. RPP's with different sizes and lengths will be investigated under the static and dynamic load using the Finite Element Method (FEM). 

CREATE Lab investigated the use of the RPP under the AM2 matting system for airfield pavement applications. The numerical analysis presented promising results where RPP can be utilized under the AM2 mat in very soft subgrade. 

CREATE Team has partnered with ERDC airfield pavement group.

Project Summary: The existence of Yazoo clay in Mississippi frequently causes distress in Levee and highway embankment slopes, which are an integral component of maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure. The Vetiver grass provides root depth up to 10 ft., has been utilized to repair slope failures in many Asian countries and can be an excellent and cost-effective bio-engineered solution to repair shallow slides on the expansive soil in the US. The current proposal is focused to investigate the effect of the vetiver grassroots to stabilize levee slopes at the maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructures at Mississippi. The study will help to improve the bio-inspired slope repair technique which will help to mitigate the recurring shallow slopes failures in expansive soil which is common in many miles of maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure such as levees and highway embankment in Mississippi.

Project Summary: Slope failures are frequent in highway embankments on expansive Yazoo clay in Mississippi due to frequent seasonal rainfall events associated with temperature and humidity variation causing expensive maintenance problems for the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT). This State Study 286 was conducted to understand the performance of highway slopes containing Yazoo clay. Six repaired highway slopes were instrumented comprehensively to monitor the moisture, matric suction, and temperature variation, as well as monitoring the slope deformation using vertical inclinometers. Besides field monitoring, numerical modeling using the Finite Element Method (FEM) was conducted to evaluate the effect of rainfall frequency and duration (based on historical rainfall data of Mississippi) on the water infiltration and corresponding change in the factor of safety of the highway slope. Based on the field monitoring results, the data of volumetric moisture content and matric suction readings were observed constant throughout all six slopes. Certain peaks and drops in the moisture content were also observed during the summer months. The numerical modeling analyses indicates the rainfall during late summer to early fall is the most critical time in which a perched water condition will develop. As the wet-dry cycle soften the shear strength of high plastic clay to fully softened state the presence of perched water creates a slope condition vulnerable to a creeping slide failure. Based on this research, it is observed that slope failures of Highway embankments containing highly plastic clays such as Yazoo clay takes place due to the development of perched water conditions after five to seven years of construction. It is highly recommended to consider including a perched water zone up to the depth of the active zone along with the development of fully soften shear strength condition in the slope stability analysis of any slope containing high volume change clays, such as Yazoo clay.

Project Summary: The existence of Yazoo clay soil in Mississippi frequently causes distress to the pavement and cause deformation at the slopes in highways and levees, which are a critical component in maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure. Also, the infiltration of the rainwater in the highway and levee slopes leads to landslides, which requires millions of dollars of maintenance each year. Permeability of soil is an important parameter to calculate the water intrusion in geo-infrastructure. A limited study is available on the change in permeability of Yazoo clay soil.

To investigate the change in unsaturated vertical and horizontal permebility and its effect on the maritime and multimodel infrastructures. Especially on the pavement and slopes of highway embankment and levees. 

The project helped to determine the crucial design parameters such as time dependent permeability that was missing for Yazoo clay. 

Project Summary: The maritime and multimodal system is an integral part of the efficient movement of the nation’s freight, which includes around 25,000 miles of commercially navigable harbors, channels, and waterways, 4 million miles of public highways and roads, and over 140,000 miles of national, regional, and local railroad networks. Slopes and embankments are one of the major components of the maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure, which often subjected to shallow landslides due to the existence of expansive clay soil. In Mississippi, the shallow slope failure is induced by the climatic (temperature and rainfall) variation that causes the shrink-swell behavior of expansive Yazoo clay soil and require the significant budget to repair. As a cost-effective alternative, Recycled Plastic Pins (RPP) can be utilized to stabilize shallow slope failures, to offer a sustainable option and increase the economic competitiveness to maintain multimodal transportation infrastructure. The current study investigates the effectiveness of RPP to stabilize shallow slope failure on Yazoo clay in Mississippi, and develops a design protocol, to maintain an efficient, resilient, and sustainable multimodal transportation system. Highly plastic Yazoo clay soil samples are investigated in the laboratory to determine the physical and mechanical soil properties. The laboratory test result is utilized to conduct a safety analysis of unreinforced and RPP reinforced slope using Finite Element Method (FEM) in Plaxis, to evaluate the effectiveness of RPP in Mississippi. The historical rainfall data is assessed in Finite Element Analysis technique over the RPP reinforced slope in coupled flow mode, and associated deformation and safety analysis is conducted to evaluate slope performance under different rainfall condition. Based on the extended FEM analysis results, 3 m long RPPs with the 0.9 m to 1.5 m spacing provide adequate support to stabilize the shallow slope failure in Mississippi.

Project Summary: Most areas in Central Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are covered by expansive clay which is well known for its swelling and shrinking caused by changes in water content due to seasonal variation. Helical Pile can be a popular choice to use for the new construction in Expansive Soil. The current study is monitoring the performance of helical piles installed in expansive clay. To evaluate the performance of Helical Piles in Expansive Soil, 30 piles with single and multiple helices with different diameters in installed at different depths to monitor the movement of the piles with seasonal moisture variation in expansive soil. After installation, the performance of the helical pile is monitored with the topographic survey. Based on the performance a design guideline of Helical Pile for new construction on Expansive Soil will be developed.

Project Summary: RPP can be a sustainable, cost-effective, and extremely useful choice to stabilize the base and subgrade layers under the pavement over soft soil. RPP works as a pile member that transfers the load from the pavement to a deeper layer. Moreover, RPP increases shear strength capacity and enhances the bearing capacity of the soil. The ongoing study is investigating the effectiveness of RPP as a reinforcing element to strengthening the Airfield pavements. The current study is primarily investigating the effectiveness of the recycled plastic pin to be used under the Airfield Matting system and PCC slab to increase the subgrade capacity and reduce the deformation of the pavement. RPPs with different sizes and lengths are under investigation under the static and dynamic load using the Finite Element Method (FEM).

Project Summary: The existence of Yazoo clay soil in Mississippi frequently causes distress to the pavement and cause deformation at the slopes in highways and levees, which are a critical component in Maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure. Each year, fixing the pavement requires a significant maintenance budget of MDOT. Also, the infiltration of the rainwater in the highway and levee slopes leads to landslides, which require millions of maintenance dollars each year. Due to the shrinkage and swelling behavior of the Yazoo clay, the hydraulic conductivity varies over the different seasons and has higher vertical permeability during the dry season. With high vertical permeability, the rainwater can easily percolate in the pavement subgrade and slopes, which accelerates the failure. However, a limited study is available on the change in hydraulic permeability of Yazoo clay soil. The current study investigates the change in unsaturated vertical and horizontal permeability and its effect on the maritime and multimodal infrastructures, especially on the pavement and slopes of highway embankment and levees. Highly plastic Yazoo clay soil samples were collected from highway slope sites and then tested in the laboratory to investigate the changes in the hydraulic conductivity with different wet-dry cycles. Mini Disk Infiltrometer and instant profile method were utilized to determine the hydraulic conductivity of Yazoo clay with 1, 2, and 3 numbers of wet-dry cycles. The laboratory test results indicated that the hydraulic conductivity of Yazoo clay is very low at a fully compacted phase (~10-6 cm/s). However, with an increment in the wet-dry cycles, the hydraulic conductivity of Yazoo clay increases (~10-4 cm/s) after the sample is exposed to 3 numbers of wet-dry cycles. Flow analysis was performed on a highway and a levee embankment, to investigate the effect of the changes of the hydraulic conductivity on the infiltration behavior with the presence of different rainfall volume. The flow analysis was performed using the finite element method, using Plaxis 2D. The flow analysis results indicated that with an increase in the hydraulic conductivity, the rate of infiltration increases along the slopes, and it only influences the highway pavement near the shoulder. However, the increase in hydraulic conductivity severely affects the infiltration behavior of the levee. At high hydraulic conductivity, the low intensity and long duration rainwater infiltrated through the levee and saturated the levee section. Due to the rapid infiltration of the rainwater in the levee, the matric suction value almost disappears, which leads to saturated conditions of the levee. Even though the changes in the hydraulic conductivity affect the saturation behavior which influences the stability of the highway embankment and levee slopes, it is mostly ignored in the design. It is highly recommended to include the variation of hydraulic conductivity in the design of the Maritime and Multimodal Transportation Infrastructures on Yazoo clay.

Project Summary: Slope failures are frequent in highway embankments as well as in waterway infrastructures (levees) on expansive Yazoo clay in Mississippi which cause significant maintenance problems and require millions of state and federal dollars to fix it. After construction, the strength of the high plastic clay degrades with time due to the seasonal temperature and moisture variation, which is one of the significant factors of slope failure. However, no study is available on the strength reduction of Yazoo clay soil. The current study intends to investigate the repeated drop in the shear strength of the Yazoo clay soil with wet-dry cycles which cause slope failure. Representative Highly plastic Yazoo clay soil samples were collected from slope sites to investigate the soil mechanical properties. The high plastic Yazoo clay samples were tested at the laboratory to investigate the effect of wetting and drying cycles on the degradation of the shear strength. The study begins with the laboratory testing to quantify the progressive changes in the shear strength of the Yazoo clay soil. The test results also indicated that the highest shear strength (c = 18.4 kPa and φ = 20.2o) was determined with the peak shear strength test, whereas the residual test generated the lowest strength (c = 5.26 kPa and φ = 12.8o). Further laboratory testing was conducted to investigate the change in the void ratio of Yazoo clay soil under series of a wet and dry cycle, which eventually cause the changes in the shear strength. Reconstituted expansive clay soil samples were used for the experiment. The samples were subjected to 3, 5, and 7 numbers of wetting and drying cycles in an enclosed chamber. During the drying process, the temperature ranged from 120-125 deg. F to simulate the typical high summer temperature in Mississippi. The test results indicated that the void ratio increases with the progressive number of wet and dry cycles. With the continuous increments in void ratios, the soil has more void spaces which reduce the shear strength of the Yazoo clay. Further study was conducted using 2D Finite Element Methods in Plaxis 2D to investigate the progressive changes in the factor of safety of the slope constructed over the Yazoo clay soil. A highway slope over I220 near US 80 in Jackson, MS was considered as a reference slope. It was 3H: 1V slope with 9.2 m height.  The factor of safety of the slope was determined based on the existing soil test data, with a peak shear strength. Later the topsoil layer which gets weathered due to the repeated wet-dry cycle was changed to fully soften, and residual shear strength and the effect of each shear strength (peak, fully soften and residual) on slope stability was evaluated. The slope stability analysis results indicated that the slope is stable at the dry condition, even with the residual shear strength. However, considering a perched water condition at the topsoil due to the effect of rainfall, soil slope failed at fully soften shear strength.  Thus, the fully softened shear strength with the perched water condition due to rainfall triggers the slope failures in Yazoo clay.