Implementing Epoxy Injection in Concrete Overlaid Bridge Decks

Concrete overlays have proven to be an effective maintenance treatment as they slow de-icing chemical and water penetration into the original deck surface. Typically, due to vibration, structural flexibility, and weak bond between the concrete overlay and deck concrete potentially due to poor construction, de-bonding develops at the boundary between the original deck and overlay. This de-bonding creates voids, providing reservoir for chloride laden water to fill after it penetrates cracks in the surface. Displacing this liquid solution and filling these cracks with epoxy helps reduce freeze/thaw cycling and reduces spalling. The epoxy material protects the bridge deck from moisture and helps support the overlay and prevent it from failing under traffic loads. This leads to an extension of the asset life span and life cycle cost benefit increase. Overall, the bridge infrastructure performance improves significantly with greater mobility and less traffic interruptions due to repairs to bridges on our roadway infrastructures. Epoxy injection helps extends the service life of bridge decks and reduces the need for emergency bridge deck patching and as a result improves safety of road users. Epoxy injection has been added to INDOT’s Maintenance Work Performance Standards during the course of this study

Essays on Crowdfunding Adoption and Behavior

The aim of this dissertation is to examine aspects of crowdfunding adoption and behavior. Accordingly, the overarching research question answered by this dissertation is: what influences crowdfunding backers’ contribution intentions and behaviors? The dissertation answers this question while focusing on dimensions of trust, community, and technological acceptance. The dissertation is made up of three studies with one conceptual article (study 1), and two empirical studies (study 2 and 3). The conceptual study marries marketing and trust literatures and contextualizes their implications for the crowdfunding context. The result is the development of a framework of trust-based marketing strategies for crowdfunding campaigns, building on the understanding of the critical role played by trust in crowdfunding adoption by prospective backers. The empirical studies (i.e., study 2 and 3), are based on the analyses of empirical data collected from actual platform users, while using Structural Equation Model techniques. These studies examine the antecedents of backers’ contribution intentions and behavior, specifically in the context of reward crowdfunding in Finland. Study 2 explains backers’ intention and behavior by testing the extensive version of the technology acceptance model (TAM). It confirms the relevance of the TAM model for properly capturing influential antecedents of backers’ financial contribution intentions and behavior and further elaborates on the specific influences of backers’ experiences and voluntariness, which challenge existing conceptualizations from other information and communication technology -related contexts. Study 3 builds on the view of crowdfunding as an embedded phenomenon in online communities, to develop a community-based crowdfunding framework for explaining backers’ contribution intentions and behaviors, while highlighting the roles of community identification and community trust.publishedVersio

A Trust-Based Crowdfunding Campaign Marketing Framework: Theoretical Underpinnings and Big-Data Analytics Practice

publishedVersio

Explaining Reward Crowdfunding Backers’ Intentions and Behavior

Earlier research seeking to understand crowdfunding adoption has drawn on social psychology, trust, signaling, and well-being theories. Despite its wide appeal and use, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has received little attention in explaining the adoption of crowdfunding platforms. Accordingly, in the current study we examine the applicability of two versions of this framework, including the original TAM1, and the extended TAM2 frameworks. Data was collected through a survey distributed to the users of Finland’s leading reward crowdfunding website – Mesenaatti. Analyses of 556 observations exhibit support for all hypotheses underlying both TAM frameworks, with two exceptions. Counter to expectations, voluntariness does not moderate the effect of subjective norms on contribution intentions, and the effect of perceived ease-of-use is primarily mediated by perceived usefulness, rather than directly affecting intentions

The impact of private equity on firms in emerging markets : evidence from Ghana

Master's thesis Business Administration BE501 - University of Agder 2017In the last decade, most emerging markets have been associated with new investment opportunities and some growth prospects that attract private equity (hereafter, PE) investors. Regions with growing interest of PE investments include Africa and Asia. Research on PE impact on recipient firms in developed economies are voluminous and has proven that PE plays a remarkable role in firms’ success. Until now, such performance implications on firms in emerging markets are limited in study. Our study focuses on the impact of PE funding on financial performance of firms in emerging markets using Ghana as a case. Using data from both the investors and fund recipients of PE, we empirically assess how the presence and ownership stake of PE investors affect financial performance of recipient firms. We also investigate the influence of post-investment corporate governance mechanisms on the overall financial performance of the recipient firms. We find that, PE backed firms have relatively higher returns on equity (ROE) and growth rate than listed firms though the differences are not statically significant. Also, we find that recipient firms with higher PE ownership stake have high ROE and growth rate than recipient firms with lower PE ownership stake. These findings recapitulate that, though PE investment significantly affects the performance of recipient firms positively, the PE industry is still at a growing stage and young in most emerging markets hence long-term benefits of PE investments would take time to be realized. We also find that PE recipient firms that involve the founders in management irrespective of the stake acquired by the PE investors outperform listed firms in terms of ROE. Finding on the board size of the recipient firms proves that, large board size affects ROE negatively. We therefore conclude that infusion of PE funds, through minority or majority stake, invariably, has a positive influence on recipient firms’ financial performance but higher stake enhances such stimuli. Also, corporate governance mechanisms play a major role in enhancing the positive relationship between PE and financial performance of recipient firms. Our findings are robust and they are empirically and theoretically supported. The findings should however be generalized with caution. This is because, as literature suggests, performance improvements that result from PE may take time to be realized and institutional context may also limit the generalisability of the finding among emerging markets that have vast institutional differences from Ghana. Keywords: Private equity, corporate governance, emerging markets, financial performanc

Implementing Epoxy Injection in Concrete Overlaid Bridge Decks

SPR-4320Concrete overlays have proven to be an effective maintenance treatment as they slow de-icing chemical and water penetration into the original deck surface. Typically, due to vibration, structural flexibility, and a weak bond between the concrete overlay and deck concrete (potentially because of poor construction), de-bonding develops at the boundary between the original deck and the overlay. This de-bonding creates voids, providing a reservoir for chloride-laden water to fill after it penetrates cracks in the surface. Displacing this liquid solution and filling these cracks with epoxy helps reduce freeze/thaw cycling and reduces spalling. The epoxy material protects the bridge deck from moisture and helps support the overlay and prevent it from failing under traffic loads. This leads to an extension of the asset life span and life cycle cost benefit increase. Overall, the bridge infrastructure performance improves significantly with greater mobility and less traffic interruptions due to bridge repairs on roadway infrastructures. Epoxy injections helps extend the service life of bridge decks and reduces the need for emergency bridge deck patching and thus improves the safety of road users. Epoxy injection has been added to INDOT\u2019s Maintenance Work Performance Standards during the course of this study

Polarization-dependent wideband metamaterial absorber for ultraviolet to near-infrared spectral range applications

The need for wideband metamaterial absorbers (WBMA) for applications other than sensing and filtering has demanded modifications to the conventional three-layer metal-insulator-metal (MIM) absorber configuration. This modification often results in complex geometries and an increased number of layers requiring complex lithographic processes for fabrication. Here, we show that a metamaterial absorber with rectangular geometry in the simple MIM configuration can provide wideband absorption covering the ultraviolet and near-infrared spectral range. Due to its asymmetric nature, the WBMA is sensitive to the polarization of the incident light and independent of the angle of incidence up to about 45° depending on the polarization of the incident light. The characteristics of the WBMA presented here may be useful for applications such as detectors for wide spectral band applications.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Long-Term Project and Network-Level NDT Implementation Plan for Indiana

SPR-4445Bridge deck condition assessments in Indiana are primarily reliant on visual inspection. The condition of bridge decks, however, is highly dependent on deterioration under the surface, which includes the corrosion of steel reinforcement and concrete delamination. The implementation of reliable nondestructive testing (NDT) methods can provide information about such internal deterioration, but considering the multiple NDT methods currently available, guidance is needed to find the best approach for assessing bridge decks in the state\u2019s bridge inventory. A research program was conducted to examine various NDT methods with the objective of recommending an effective NDT strategy for network-level and project-level bridge inspections in Indiana that will complement information from traditional bridge inspections and provide asset engineers with improved information for long-term programming decisions. For the study, several consultants used various NDT methods to inspect a set of bridge decks that represented a range of desired test variables. Based on the test results, it was determined that aerial infrared thermography (IRT) is a good network-level method that is capable of scanning a large number of bridges and providing an initial assessment of bridge deck conditions. If significant delamination activity is detected, then follow-up network-level scanning limited to the problematic bridge decks should be performed using vehicle-mounted IRT. For project-level scanning of individual bridge decks, impact echo was found to be reliable and repeatable. For bridges with high-traffic volume for which project-level scanning is needed, a pole-mounted IRT system was found to be effective for evaluating the deck condition