Frank Bullen

Design and Construction of Low-Cost, Low-Volume Roads in Australia

Inexpensive roads constructed by using local knowledge of material behavior have been shown to be capable of meeting rural traffic requirements without the need for importation of hard and expensive quarried crushed rock or gravel. In Australia, low-cost, low-volume roads are typically rural roads constructed in a broad range of operating environments, varying from arid to tropical. The areas that contain the longest length of rural roads, however, are arid or semiarid and are often subjected to periods with low levels of precipitation and high levels of evaporation, frequently followed by periods of intense rainfall. Locally available materials for road making may not meet the usual standard road authority requirements for high-quality aggregate and are thus termed “marginal,” “nonstandard,” or even “inferior.” Because these materials are a resource that cannot be ignored, locally derived specifications are formulated for specific materials to allow more efficient expansion and maintenance of road networks in remote rural areas. Many of the subgrades within arid and semiarid areas are sensitive to water ingress and are termed “cracking” or “expansive” clays. The combination of hostile environment, poor subgrade, and marginal construction aggregates means that the engineer must take an entrepreneurial approach when developing the rural road infrastructure. Some of the methods used to develop and maintain a highway infrastructure for remote rural areas in Australia are outlined, with the Western Queensland region used for illustrative purposes.

Effective evaluation strategies to meet global accreditation requirements

With the ongoing internationalisation of the engineering profession there is an ever increasing need for universities to provide robust evaluation of the quality of their undergraduate degree programs and to benchmark that quality internationally. It is important that the claims made of course evaluation and renewal, during the evaluation-accreditation process, can be substantiated and the tenuous connection between course evaluation and international acceptance as a professional engineer, be strengthened. There are a variety of methods used to evaluate courses and programs including student questionnaires, final grades, progression-retention data, and graduate attribute and competency mapping. The authors compared typical examples of such approaches to study the robustness of the link between the data collected and the evaluative judgments. It was found that there is a great deal of inference involved in the process and that the causative link between curriculum design and pedagogy, and skills and attributes, is often tenuous. Some of these approaches should not be taken as final evaluation outcomes, but rather inputs to a larger overarching evaluation strategy. It was concluded that a “program logic” approach such as that used by the University of Wisconsin, Extension, Program Development and Evaluation Model offers a superior approach for capturing and assessing the causal connections between local evaluation and international accreditation.

Engineering management education post GFC and copenhagen: Are we on the right track?

As world leaders around the globe navigate around the global financial crisis (GFC) and climate change agendas, aspiring engineering and engineering educators must rethink the enabling pathways for the personal, professional and educational development of professional engineering managers. A call for reform has exhibited in the early 21st century in form of numerous reports and literature around the globe. However, a revisit may now be required to ensure that the recommendations remain valid in the education of the next generation of engineering managers. The paper looks to the latest literature to review the findings of those pre GFC reports and highlights some of the existing engineering management and leadership programs around the world. It comments on the adequacy of those programs post GFC and provides a clearer picture of the key components and pathways of an aspiring engineering managers learning journey. The issues that educators need address within course and program design are identified and discussed.

USE OF CORAL-DERIVED AGGREGATES FOR CONSTRUCTION OF LOW-VOLUME ROADS

Many tropical island and coastal regions suffer from a paucity of recognized engineering aggregates. In these regions river gravel and old uplifted coral reef formations are often the only economically viable materials. Typically, the coral-derived material most widely available for use is termed coronous material, a land-based uplifted coral reef that may contain an abundance of plastic fines and that is usually easily excavated without the use of explosives. The shortage of traditional aggregates and the availability of the upraised reefs have promoted the study of the use of coral-derived aggregate as an alternative aggregate in pavement engineering works. Although coral-derived materials have been successfully used for pavement construction in the past, traditional engineering tests have generally indicated that it is a substandard product, and material from most pits does not pass typical specification tests. The material properties and the historical use of coronous materials in road construction are summarized, and a draft guide for the use of coronous materials in the road base and subbase for both sealed and unsealed road pavements is provided.

Developing an engineering education research culture

Engineering education now demands that we quip our students with key transferable skills that will enable them to meet the demands of rapidly changing technology and societal expectations of engineers. This paper investigates the role of improved leadership in learning and teaching, through the position of the Associate Dean Learning and Teaching (AD-LT), and faculty supported research in engineering education to ensure graduates are equipped with appropriate technical knowledge and key graduate attributes such as lifelong learning. The paper describes the management structure in place in most Australian Universities and general role that the AD-LT plays in improving teaching and educational outcomes and curriculum development. In addition it investigates the role of an Engineering Education Research Group and how the activities of such a group can support the Associate Dean Learning and Teaching. Establishing and supporting a research group and how such a group can improve learning and teaching outcomes in the faculty at a practical level are described. It is argued that supporting educational research and having a management structure within the faculty, which is directly responsible for learning and teaching issues, not only improves the educational outcomes for students but also the key research performance indicators for the faculty and staff.

Management education for the 21 st Century Engineering Manager: An Australian perspective

Engineering Managers in the 21st Century will be operating in a very different environment compared to 2008. The major change is that it will be a more globalized world. The professional and educational requirements of senior engineering managers will need to noticeably evolve to meet these changes. Thus, there are implications for relevant education providers such as engineering faculties. This paper provides results of a 2007 investigation into the perspectives of CEOs on career progression of engineers from new graduates to CEOs in Australia, and determining the skills and qualities engineers need as CEOs of large companies. The paper also investigates the implication of predicted changes in operating environments in the year 2020 via an environmental scan, and recommends strategies for career development for the potential senior engineering managers of the 21st century. This paper also proposes potential implications for educators. Some unique findings are that it will be desirable to have an ability to deal with the increasingly globalized nature of engineering projects and an ability to lead multi-disciplinary multi-cultural teams but to also possess deep technical knowledge, as opposed to a generalist background.

An assessment of stress factors on engineering academics in a regional context

The Australian higher education sector has accepted that increasing work-related stresses can have a negative impact on the quality and productivity of academic life. Workplace stresses can have significant financial impact both on university budgets and the overall economy due to poor decision-making, health issues and accidents resulting from illness. Engineering academics that teach and/or research within higher education institutions have been reported anecdotally to have a high prevalence of stress. The actual (self-perceived) level however has been largely unquantified. The research reported in this paper was conducted to assess self-perceived stress levels and identify the stress factors within a cohort of engineering academics at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), a small regionally based Australian university renowned for its distance education. The questionnaire was applied using a mix of validated and non-validated survey instruments and incorporated a set of questions previously applied at the University of Adelaide (UoA). Findings from USQ are broadly in line with those independently reported elsewhere for Australia and the UK, with some minor exceptions. In summary the USQ project indicates that engineering academics have higher perceived stress levels than the validated health threshold, with significant variation based on age, academic type (teaching-research), and for staff with English as a second language. The results from both universities also indicated that there are significant stress contributors related to the pressure to obtain grants and to publish and to the (low) resultant levels of recognition from employers for any success. More specific to distance education providers (such as USQ), there are stress contributors related to servicing and dealing with the external mode of course design, delivery and lecture preparation.

Investigation of some fundamental properties of permeable concrete

This paper presents the outcomes from a laboratory based research study undertaken to evaluate the fundamental properties of permeable concrete, including compressive strength, global and local strain, elastic modulus (stiffness), porosity and permeability. Six permeable concrete mixtures were made with constant water - cement ratio of 0.34, using different aggregate sizes and sand percentages. The compressive strength range was 15-35 MPa, while the permeability varied between 1.5 to 5.5mm/s and the porosity varied between 25 to 35 %. Two testing methods were used to measure the strain and modulus of elasticity (MOE) of the permeable concrete namely, platen-to-platen method and strain gauge method. Considerable difference was found between the MOEs obtained by the two methods. The MOE determined using the platen-to-platen method consistently were lower in value, which has been attributed to the softness of the capping components, the interface between the specimens and the platen and overall machine compliance. The pore characteristics and their distribution were seen to have an influence on the material responses such as material stiffness and strain. A comparison drawn between the axial strain obtained by the strain gauge measurement and that deduced from the platen-to-platen measurement was undertaken to evaluate the strain homogeneity along with possible detection of the localization phenomena.

Flexural strength of sandwich panel with lignocellulosic composites intermediate layer: a statistic approach

In this study, three different types of lignocellulosic composite materials have been incorporated in sandwich panel structure as an intermediate layer. The experiment was statistically designed based on single factor analysis scheme. The results of experiments have been analyzed using analysis of variance (Anova) followed by Tukeys, Fishers and Dunnets tests to obtain the information of how significant those materials contribute to the flexural strength of sandwich panel structure. The total number of samples tested was 48 beams. The results show that the introduction of lignocellulosic composites materials, that are hardboard, medium density fibre (MDF) and plywood, has significantly improved the flexural strength of sandwich panel. The range of improvement contributed by the presence of lignocellulosic composites intermediate layer was around 100–150% for samples with balsa core and 130–150% for samples with polystyrene core. The result of this study shows the potential of lignocellulosic composite material to be developed further for producing more sustainable sandwich panel.

The Implementation of Statistical Inference to Study the Bending Strength of Sustainable Hybrid Sandwich Panel Composite

The study reported here involves the evaluation of the ultimate bending stress (bending strength) of hybrid sandwich panels using a simple comparative statistical analysis. Four sets of beam were tested with each set consisting of modified beams (MB) and unmodified beam (UB) samples. A total of 42 beam samples were tested using 3 point bending followed by statistical inference analysis using a t-test. The results show that the introduction of an intermediate layer has a significant effect on increasing the bending strength of the new hybrid sandwich panel composite.