Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

PROGRAM AREAS
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS
Continued from page 33
IIT Bombay and IIT Kanpur. Over the next
year Charney will seek to establish memorandums
of understanding with these universities,
allowing for a variety of cooperative
research and teaching activities.
Charney has developed a new twoday
continuing education seminar titled
A Guide to the ASCE 7-05 Seismic Load
Provisions for Buildings and other Structures.
This seminar is based on his new
book, with a similar title, published in
2009 by ASCE Press. The seminar is presented
several times a year in major cities
throughout the United States.
Tommy Cousins continues to offer
prestressed concrete and bridge design
courses and to focus his research efforts
on challenges associated with bridge performance
and longevity.
He has concentrated his research efforts
on the projects described below
which are all related to the development
and use of high performance materials in
bridges.
Cousins is co-principal investigator (PI)
with Roberts-Wollmann on a National
Cooperative Highway Research Program
(NCHRP) project that involves a comprehensive
investigation of lightweight, high
performance concrete for bridges. This
project is approximately 50 percent complete
(total contract length is 36 months),
involves extensive material and structural
testing, and will develop changes to the
AASHTO LRFD bridge design specification
that take advantage of the material
properties of lightweight, high performance
concrete.
The Virginia Transportation Research
Council (VTRC) is a sub-contractor on the
project and as such will aid in development
of mix designs, material property
testing, and code development.
Of special importance to the bridge
engineering community is the casting
and testing of six full sized prestressed
concrete bridge girders. These girders
will be cast at a local prestressing plant
and tested in the structures and materials
laboratory.
In a $25 million project, The Federal
Highway Administration (FHA) has con-
34 | VIA REPORT | 2009
tracted with researchers at the Center for
Advanced Infrastructure & Transportation
(at Rutgers University) to undertake a
five-year project to investigate the longterm
performance of bridges. The LTBP
program will be the basis for future bridge
condition assessment and asset management
programs that will be used to assist
managers of the nation’s highway infrastructure
in making better decisions in the
stewardship of highway assets.
Researchers from VTRC and Virginia
Tech are subcontractors to Rutgers for
this project. The Virginia Tech research
team is being lead by Roberts-Wollmann
with Cousins and Sotelino serving as coinvestigators.
The first year of the project has been
completed. To date, the main accomplishment
was developing a list of national
needs for bridge condition assessment by
polling a representative sample of state
transportation agencies.
Virginia Tech along with partner researchers
from VTRC and Utah State University
are presently planning the periodic
and long-term monitoring of several pilot
bridges. Instrumentation and testing of the
first of two of these pilot bridges should
begin during the summer of 2009.
Cris Moen has split time in his first year
at Virginia Tech between developing his
“teaching style” and building a strong research
group. He is very active in structural
stability research, especially the design
and behavior of cold-formed steel (CFS)
structural components.
M.S. graduate Ryan Bowen, the first
alumnus of Moen’s research group, produced
compelling experimental results
that directly quantified manufacturing residual
stresses in cold-formed steel.
Moen and his M.S. student Karthik Ganesan
are conducting a research study
for the American Iron and Steel Institute
(AISI) to improve the LRFD design method
for CFS compression members, which
will make CFS more competitive with low
and midrise hot-rolled steel structural systems.
Moen and M.S. student Rakesh Naik
are working on a new design approach for
CFS joists subjected to high shear loads.
M.S. student Behrooz Soroori Rad is
completing experimental work on coldformed
steel joists with web holes (the
holes are needed to accommodate utilities
in the ceilings of buildings). This research
will support a new design method for CFS
members with holes (developed by Moen
and his Ph.D. advisor) currently being incorporated
into the AISI CFS North American
Specification.
Moen’s research on steel thin-walled
components is expanding to ultra-high
performance concrete (UHPC) with a recent
grant from Virginia Tech’s Institute for
Critical Technology and Applied Science
(ICTAS).
Ph.D. student and former Fulbright
Scholar Vathana Poev will start work in
the fall to develop new design tools and
methods encouraging UHPC use in buildings
and transportation structures.
M.S. student Gokul Kamath presented
his work on automated strut-and-tie models
for reinforced concrete with topology
optimization at the 2009 ASCE Conference
on Mechanics and Materials. (This
research is a collaboration with Jamie
Guest at Johns Hopkins University.)
Moen is also working on several research
studies with industry, including a
collaborative effort with Charney to improve
lateral drift design procedures for
metal buildings. This project entails pulling
on an existing building (yes, that’s correct,
pulling on a building!) in Christiansburg to
evaluate the influence of cladding on lateral
frame stiffness.
Moen and Ph.D. student Tian Gao are
helping to improve the design of industrial
roll up garage doors subjected to hurricane-force
winds.
M.S. student Kalyani Tipnis recently
completed a test on an innovative glassfiber
reinforced concrete panel for a
start-up company in Northern Virginia, the
Diamond Panel Corporation, looking to
compete worldwide with precast concrete
planks used for sounds walls and building
facades.
Stop by Moen’s website to read the latest
news from his research group, www.
moen.cee.vt.edu.
Continued on page 35