Annual Report Year 2004 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

More documents

Recommendations

Info

PROGRAM AREAS: GEOTECHNICALinterfaces. With Panos Diplas, a project funded by the Officeof Naval Research on channeling in young marine sedimentswas completed.Gutierrez was invited to give lectures at the first U.S.-Japan Workshop on Testing, Modeling, and Simulation inGeomechanics, in Boston, Mass., the Chalk GeomechanicsWorkshop in Stavanger, Norway, and the 2003 GeopierConference, in Alexandria, Va. He was also invited to give alecture to the Chilean Geotechnical Society (at the Universityof Chile). Gutierrez continues to serve as editorial boardmember of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical andGeoenvironmental Engineering and as a member of ASCEand ASME committees. He was awarded an OutstandingAlumnus award by Saint Mary’s University (Philippines).A significant portion of Jimmy Martin’s year involvedworking with colleagues to establish the Center for ExtremeLoad Effects on Structures (CELES), which is described onpage 6. In addition to co-directing CELES, Martin continuedhis earthquake engineering research, with funding from theNSF and other agencies. His NSF work involved soil and siteimprovement for mitigation of earthquake-related damages,and he traveled to Taiwan to participate in an NSF-sponsoredworkshop there.He developed new proposals to NSF and the Washington,D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT). He served as coauthorof a $10 million NSF proposal submitted to NSF’sAlliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate(AGEP) Grant. The AGEP program is designed to increase thenumbers of underrepresented doctoral students pursuing academiccareers in science and engineering. Martin served asprincipal investigator for a proposal to DDOT to perform adetailed earthquake hazard and terrorist-attack vulnerabilitystudy of the D.C. bridge system, and to develop an automatedGIS database that can be used in emergency responseoperations. The GIS database will allow rapid assessment andgraphical display of the impact of different earthquake andterrorist event scenarios.Martin completed Earthquake Hazard Management, a university-levelhigher education course for FEMA’s HigherEducation Project/Dept. of Homeland Security and sponsoredby ASCE. The course is for worldwide distribution and is currentlybeing published. The document was rigorouslyreviewed as a textbook, taking three years to complete andconsisting of more than 1000 pages of text. He also participatedin professional engineering shortcourses and seminarsandconsulted on projects including the Surry Nuclear PowerStation and the Charleston, S.C. tunnel project.Matthew Mauldon participated in the newly-fundedAMADEUS project and in the multi-disciplinary Virginia TechDUSEL initiative. These projects involved collaborations withGutierrez, Dove and other faculty, as well as with JasonShelton, Via Scholar Jeramy Decker, Mike Hasek, and severalother graduate students. With Tom Brandon and MarkOsowski, Mauldon began work on a laboratory study todetermine swell pressures arising from oxidation of pyriticshale. Along with Brett Rose, Sam Cain and Aaron Antell,Mauldon continues work on development of a turn-key GISbased,web-enabled management system for rockfall hazardon roads throughout the state of Tennessee (funded byTennessee DOT). With Xiaohai Wang, he is investigating theutilization of fracture trace data from cylindrical samples (i.e.,borehole or tunnel walls) for characterizing fractured rockmasses. Wang’s presentation of this work tied for best posterat the North American Rock Mechanics Symposium in24Houston. Mauldon and Wang also made three presentationsto ExxonMobil on aspects of this work.Mauldon completed a stint on the editorial board ofEnvironmental and Engineering Geoscience and continueson the editorial board of Rock Mechanics and RockEngineering. He chairs the ASCE Rock Mechanics committee,and serves on ASCE’s committee on engineering geology andsite characterization. He coordinated the CEE Department’sCEUT teaching group (CCTeg) this year, which culminated ina focus group meeting held with Virginia Tech’s ASCE studentchapter and targeted towards student perceptions of teaching.Mauldon serves as coordinator of the geotechnical engineeringprogram area.Jim Mitchell, although officially retired, continues to contributeto the program. In addition to presenting seminars, heremains active in research, including the project on rapid stabilizationof cohesive soils using admixtures described above,a study of better definition of the range of applicability andenhancement of deep dynamic compaction (DDC) in finergrained soils, and, with Ph.D. student Ning Liu, the limitationsof shear wave velocity as an indicator of the liquefactionpotential of silty soils, shear wave velocity–cone penetrationresistance correlations, and the usefulness of soil specific surfacearea as a reliable measure soil engineering properties.With co-author Kenichi Soga, a reader at CambridgeUniversity, Mitchell is working to complete the third editionof Fundamentals of Soil Behavior, for publication for the2005-2006 academic year. With Rick Mitchell. he prepared astate-of-the-art-and-practice paper, “Environmental Geotechnics;Two Case Histories” for the Fifth InternationalConference on Case Histories in New York City in April. Heis to present the Nabor Carrillo Lecture of the MexicanGeotechnical Society in Guadalajara in November. The titlechosen for this presentation is “Time, the Fourth Dimensionof the Engineering Behavior of Soils.”Mitchell’s consulting activities included studies ofground improvement for seismic risk mitigation at dams inBritish Columbia, California, and North Carolina; stabilityreview of large mine waste rock piles in New Mexico; andanalysis of the probable performance of large LNG tanks supportedby stone columns in soft estuarine deposits at the Portof Long Beach, Calif. He serves as chair of the civil engineeringsection of the National Academy of Engineering.
StructuralEngineering & MaterialsThe quest for better bridges: CEE researchers areinvolved throughout the region in prototype bridge projectsthat use designs and technology developed at VirginiaTech. Some of the concepts being tested include pre-castbridge deck panels, glass fiber reinforced polymer reinforcementbars (GFRP), bulb-T girders, and ultra-high performanceconcrete. Pictured at top is live-load testing byCarin Roberts-Wollman’s team of the Sugar Grove, Va.Route 601 bridge, which uses GFRP for low maintenanceand longer life. Shown above is a historically significantCovington, Va. through truss bridge, which will be rehabilitatednext summer. The bridge will use lightweight fiberreinforcedpolymer (FRP) decking, which is one-third theweight of a reinforced concrete deck, so that emergencyvehicles can use the bridge.Faculty members in Structural Engineering andMaterials continued to excel in a number of educationand research areas as listed below. Many ofthese accomplishments would not be possible withoutthe dedicated support of the students and staff.Virtual work as structural behavior toolFinley Charney has continued his efforts in research relatedto earthquake engineering, structural dynamics, and structuralsoftware development. Within the field of earthquakeengineering, he is focusing on the development of analyticaltools to identify and control sources of systemic dispersion instructures. He is also continuing his research activities in theapplication of virtual work as a tool for structural behavioridentification and optimization.Together with James Martin and other faculty, Charney hascreated a new center called the Center for Extreme LoadEffects on Structures (CELES). The main purpose of the centeris to reduce economic loss and human suffering from extremeloading and operates under the umbrella of the Institute forCritical Technology and Applied Science (See article, page 6.).With funding from an industrial sponsor, Charney managedthe development of a new finite element analysis“engine,” programmed in object-oriented C++. This programwill be used as the platform for incorporating more advancedanalysis capabilities including nonlinear dynamic analysis,incremental dynamic analysis, probabilistic analysis, andgraphical visualization. Porting of the software to VirginiaTech’s new supercomputer is under consideration.The educational computer programs NONLIN andEQTools were recently upgraded through funding from theNational Institute for Building Science. These programs wereused in a new graduate-level course in earthquake engineeringthat was co-taught by Charney, Sam Easterling, and CarinRoberts-Wollmann.Charney continues to be active in technical committees,chairing both the ASCE committee on Methods of Analysis,and the ASCE Structural Congress Committee.Blast loads on tentsRay Plaut and Rakesh Kapania of aerospace and oceanengineering finished a one-year grant from the Air ForceResearch Laboratory involving a finite element analysis of thedynamic response of tents to blast loads. Also, tests were conductedon the material of the outer canvas and on the innerliner, which is supposed to prevent personnel from externalchemical and biological agents.Plaut continued to investigate the potential application ofslack ropes for mitigation of the seismic response of structures.A portal frame has been designed and will be testedunder periodic loading in the structures laboratory. Later, a25
Page 5 and 6: Below: Late night driving in the ra
Page 7: knowing how different water sources
Page 10 and 11: Model tethers“highway in the sky
Page 12 and 13: Making smarter decisionswith geospa
Page 14 and 15: Vikesland winsCAREER awardStudy of
Page 16 and 17: Vecellio Construction Engineeringan
Page 18 and 19: Environmental& Water Resources Engi
Page 20 and 21: drinking water and Chen her work on
Page 22 and 23: Via Scholar Claire Booth won a scho
Page 24 and 25: Underground national labproposed fo
Page 28 and 29: The steel sandwich panel bridge dec
Page 30 and 31: PROGRAM AREAS: TISEThis past year p
Page 32 and 33: PROGRAM AREAS: TISEworked on new pr
Page 34 and 35: 2004-2005 undergraduatescholarship
Page 36 and 37: Meetthe ViaScholarsThe following pa
Page 38 and 39: Via Scholars — Master’s Student
Page 40 and 41: Via Scholars — Master’s Student
Page 42 and 43: Via Scholars — Doctoral StudentsD
Page 44 and 45: Via Scholars — Doctoral Students
Page 46 and 47: VIA ALUMNIVIA AlumniWhere Are They
Page 48 and 49: VIA ALUMNIGeorge FilzDegree/Year: P
Page 50 and 51: The Academyof DistinguishedAlumniTh
Page 52 and 53: CEE alumniwho contributedto CEE dur
Page 54 and 55: CEE alumni who contributedto CEE du
Page 56: The Charles E. Via, Jr.Department o

Annual Report Year 2004 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?