UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

The University of Texas at Tyler Paving Way with USDOT Program

Follow @UTTylerTweet

June 27, 2017

Media Contact:  Hannah Buchanan
Editor/Writer–Strategic Communications & Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.539.7196 (cell)

The University of Texas at Tyler has partnered with the U.S. Department of Transportation to help develop a better way to maintain highways across the country.

Assistant professor of civil engineering Dr. Mena Souliman serves as a principal investigator on the project, which also involves the Transportation Consortium of South Central States and other academic institutions within UT System. The grant for the project totals nearly $184,000.

"This is the first pavement engineering USDOT project at UT Tyler," said Souliman. "The project will help Department of Transportation officials to have a clearer view of the state of the network, therefore, they can have more accurate estimation of the required funds to maintain the highway network at a certain level.

"With this approach, more informed decisions about the most suitable maintenance and rehabilitation strategies can be made," he added.

In addition, the study aims to run an advanced 3-D simulation analyses to reduce the need to run extensive Falling Weight Deflectometer testing on the network level. The current methods are either too complex to be applied at the network level or require detailed parameters that are not usually available or commonly collected by transportation agencies, according to Souliman.

The University of Texas at Tyler graduate students Karthikeyan Loganathan of India and Mayzan Isied of Jordan will assist Souliman, whose expertise is in pavements and transportation materials. He also leads the university's traffic engineering research team that is assisting the City of Tyler in developing a "hub-and-spoke" bike lane map for the city to be implemented in Texas.

One of the 14 campuses of the UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler features excellence in teaching, research, artistic performance and community service. More than 80 undergraduate and graduate degrees are available at The University of Texas at Tyler, which has an enrollment of almost 10,000 high-ability students. The University of Texas at Tyler offers courses at its campuses in Tyler, Longview and Palestine as well as a location in Houston.