Structural Engineering, University of California San Diego

Research Highlights

Collaborations with U.S. Department of Energy and U.K. - Dr. Bimal Kad

Dr. Bimal Kad (P.I.)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced numerous accomplishments coming out of a multi-year collaboration in the area of advanced materials research between the United States and the United Kingdom. Dr. Bimal Kad (SE Researcher), along with researchers from the DOE Office of Fossil Energy, the United Kingdom's Department of Energy and Climate Change, and other representatives from academia and industry. This group has been collaborating over the past five years in an attempt to develop a better understanding of advanced materials, a key prerequisite to achieving the targets of any future energy policy.

Virtual Vecchio: Creating a Digital Clinical Chart for a Landmark Building of the Renaissance

Professors Maurizio Seracini (P.I.) and Falko Kuester (Co-P.I.)

Professors Seracini and Kuester are developing a "digital clinical chart" for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, part of Calit2's cultural heritage preservation initiative. Their team spent two months in 2007 and 2008 laser-scanning and imaging the interior of the Palazzo's main hall. The goal: to understand the structure's performance and changes over time, and hopefully, to help find Leonardo da Vinci's long-lost masterpiece mural, "The Battle of Anghiari."

Load Testing on Boeing's 787 Landing Gear Components

Professor Hyonny Kim (P.I.) and Dr. Gianmario Benzoni (Co-P.I.)

Professor Kim and Dr. Benzoni recently conducted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification testing of landing gear components for the new Boeing 787 aircraft. These components were made by Messier-Dowty using advanced composite materials. The parts were subjected to loads exceeding 1 million pounds using the Powell Lab's unique Seismic Response Modification Device (SRMD) test facility, of which Dr. Benzoni is the Project Manager.

The NEES Data Model and NEEScentral Data Repository: A Framework for Data Collaboration in Support of Earthquake Engineering Research

Professor Lelli Van Den Einde (P.I.)

The George E Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) is a shared national network of 15 experimental facilities, collaborative tools, a centralized data repository, and earthquake simulation software, all linked together to enable engineers to develop better and more cost-effective ways of mitigating earthquake damage. To support data organization, archiving and dissemination resulting from NEES related research, the NEES Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit) has developed a central data repository (NEEScentral) to capture important reservoirs of data and expose them to the community where their useful lifetime can be extended.

System and Damage Identification of a Seven-story Reinforced Concrete Building Slice Tested on the UCSD-NEES Shake Table

Professor Joel P. Conte (P.I.)

A full-scale, seven-story reinforced concrete building slice was tested on the UCSD-NEES shake table. Six different state-of-the-art system identification algorithms including three input-output and three output-only methods were used to estimate the modal parameters (natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes) based on the measured response of the building subject to ambient as well as white noise base excitations at different damage states.

Health Monitoring of Post-Tensioned Concrete Bridges

Professor Francesco Lanza di Scalea (P.I.)

Ninety-percent of California's bridges are post-tensioned concrete structures. There is a need to develop technologies able to monitor the state of health of the prestressing tendons which carry most of the loads. Recent bridge collapses have further highlighted the problem of the deteriorating conditions of the transportation infrastructure which require information on weak components.

Rail Monitoring Systems

Professors Francesco Lanza di Scalea (P.I.) and Chia-Ming Uang (Co-P.I.)

Railroad infrastructure is in need of technologies able to prevent derailments and perform repairs/replacements in a timely manner. Due to heavy tonnage and aging conditions, several structural problems affect railroads today, including the growth of cracks hidden from the surface of the rail. Professor Lanza di Scalea and his post-doctorals, Stefano Coccia and Ivan Bartoli, are working with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to develop a system which can detect cracks in rails while in motion, using ultrasonic waves and non-contact (laser) probing to detect the flaws.

Advanced Sensor Networking Paradigms and Data Processing for Autonomous Structural Assessment

Professor Michael Todd (P.I.)

Damage assessment of large-scale structures (e.g., bridges, buildings, or dams) after an extreme event such as an earthquake or a blast load is a challenging task. In many cases, critical damage is not visible or obvious, human inspection poses serious life-safety concerns, and downtime for the structure results in large economic losses.

Improving Seismic Performance of Concrete and Masonry Structures

Professor P. Benson Shing (P.I.)

Assessing the seismic performance of older reinforced concrete (RC) frames that have masonry infill walls presents a most difficult problem for structural engineers. Currently, there are no reliable engineering guidelines. In a collaborative project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program,

Concrete Damage-Transport Properties Correlations

Professor Tara Hutchinson (P.I.)

Concrete is by far the most widely-used building material in the United States, with extensive use in the construction of our nation's buildings, highways, tunnels, water supply and sewage systems and other infrastructure. The strong dependency of the service life of concrete on its transport properties means that investigations of the performance of concrete components need to link these transport properties to observed damage states.

San Francisco-Oakland East Bay Bridge Replacement Project: Precast Prestressed Concrete Skyway

Professor Frieder Seible (P.I.)

Dr. Seible led the proof-testing of the new San Francisco-Oakland East Bay Bridge, including the 2.5 km long precast-prestressed concrete skyway. Joints between superstructure segments and the skyway piers were tested at 1/4 scale under simulated seismic loads to establish performance limit states.

How to Shake 1 Million Pounds of Concrete

Professor Jose Restrepo (P.I.)

SE researchers spent three months rigorously conducting earthquake simulation tests on a half-scale, three-story structure, and are analyzing the results to be used in the future designs of buildings (parking garages, college dormitories, hotels, stadiums, prisons, and increasingly, office buildings) across the nation. Precast concrete, which is built in pieces and then put together to construct buildings, has been a breakthrough in the industry in terms of saving both time and money and increasing durability.

Fluid-Structure Interaction of Wind Turbines

Professor Yuri Bazilevs (P.I.)

The rising costs and highly fluctuating prices of oil and natural gas, as well as their constantly diminishing supplies worldwide create the need for cheaper, sustainable alternative energy sources. Wind turbines that harvest wind energy and convert it to electrical power are such an energy source, playing an increasingly important role and receiving much attention from governments and industry around the world.

Bio-inspired Engineering about Fish Fins

Professor Qiang Zhu (P.I.)

The fins of a fish are often strengthened by embedded rays, and therefore possess anisotropic flexibility. Tendons and muscles attached to these rays also allow the fish to actively control the motion and deformation of its fins. This design greatly enhances the efficiency of fish locomotion. Dr. Zhu is concentrating on numerical characterization of the structure versus function of these bio-structures. The eventual application will be bio-inspired propulsion systems.

Acoustic Pathways Revealed: Simulating Sound Reception in Cuvier’s Beaked Whale

Professor Petr Krysl (P.I.)

In this collaborative research with San Diego State University’s Department of Biology and with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a finite element vibroacoustic toolkit was applied to the sound transmission in the head of a beaked whale. The model is based on CT data sets as well as physical measurements of sound-propagation characteristics of actual tissue samples. FEM results concern pathways by which sounds reach the ears.

Micromechanical Analysis of Fragmentation using ALE-AMR

Professor David J. Benson (P.I.)

Fragmentation is a fundamental process that naturally spans micro to macroscopic scales. Recent advances in algorithms, computer simulations, and hardware enable us to connect the continuum to microstructural regimes in a real simulation through a heterogeneous multiscale mathematical model.

Testing Biomineralized Composites for Greater Toughness

Professor Robert Asaro (P.I.)

Are biomineralized composites tougher due to their nano-scale size? Atomistic studies of the resistance to crack propagation in nano-sized ceramic platelets that exist in teeth, bone, or the shells of mollusks, reveal that they are far more ductile than their bulk counterparts. The principal reasons are concerned with the increased ease of crack tip blunting and the inability for cracks to sustain the stress concentration required for brittle fracture.

Simulating Bomb Blasts

Professor Gilbert Hegemier (P.I.)

The Explosive Loading Laboratory and Testing Program, funded by the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), is the first program in the world to develop a hydraulic-based blast simulator to simulate full scale, live explosive events up to 3000 psi-msec without the use of explosive materials or a fireball. Energy deposition, which takes place in time intervals of 2 to 4 ms, is accomplished via an array of ultra-fast, computer controlled hydraulic actuators with a combined hydraulic/high -pressure nitrogen energy source based on blast physics models and codes.

Lightweight Composite Portable Bridges for Military and Emergency Applications

Professor John Kosmatka (P.I.)

Lightweight Composite Portable Bridges for Military and Emergency Applications - Professor John Kosmatka The need for immediate mobility in the aftermath of natural disasters, or on the battlefield, has lead to the development of light-weight bridging composed of aerospace composite materials. At UC San Diego, a broad multi-disciplinary research program is underway on the design, analysis, fabrication, and testing of these large (20-40 m) structures capable of supporting 100-ton vehicles. Improved composite manufacturing methods are leading to innovative structural solutions.

Blast Resistant FRP Composite Designs & Verification

Professor Robert Asaro (P.I.)

Professors Asaro, Hegemier and Kim are working with the Office of Navy Research on concept designs of the new DDX deckhouse-steel connections, related to the U.S. Navy's newest class of destroyers, the DDG 1000. Hybrid joints are subject to complex internal stress states and are critical in terms of how they transfer loads between the massive steel hull structures and the lower density fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite deckhouse structure - - these researchers have impressive experience in this area. In addition to the study of joints, another team is evaluating blast damage vulnerability of the deckhouse structure. The Navy has plans for the production of three DDG 1000's.

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Faculty Recruitment

The Department of Structural Engineering is seeking outstanding candidates in the area of Aviation Safety of Composite Structures. Particular emphasis should be on the full-scale behavior and failure of composite structures, structure design, composites processing, crashworthiness and survivability, static and dynamic large-scale testing, bonded and bolted connections, buckling and stability, and damage tolerance. View Posting

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