Structural Engineering

Rebecca S. McDaniel, P.E., Ph.D., technical director at the North Central Superpave Center at Purdue University, has been elected to the board of directors of ASTM International, an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services.

The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) at Penn State University has announced that Caitlin Grady (PhD 2015), assistant professor of civil engineering, has been selected as the center's inaugural Faculty Fellow. The fellowship will provide funding beginning in January 2019 for Grady’s security-related research.

Purdue civil engineering students took first place in the 2018 International Bridge Competition, tied with Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. The team consisted of undergraduate students Hassan Bin Ammar, Eshana Kolli, Ziyan Lu, Darryl Sexton, Tianlong Sun, Ertica Susanto, Charley Yang, and PhD student Kinsey Skillen. Support for the team was provided by Prof. Santiago Pujol, Associate Professor Ayhan Irfanoglu, and Visiting Professor Luis Fargier.

Debra "Deb" Burrow, David M. Rater, and Nadezhda "Nadya" Zyaykina were recognized as finalists for the 2018 College of Engineering Staff Awards of Excellence at the annual staff awards banquet held on December 7th. Nadya Zyaykina was named the recipient of the Professional Achievement Award.

One hundred thousand residents of Flint, Michigan, could use water only from bottles or filters during a years-long lead contamination crisis, which started when the city switched to a new drinking water source in 2014. As part of a class assignment that grew into a case study, Purdue University researchers found that during the first three weeks of the disaster alone, anywhere from 31 to 100 million bottles were generated as waste. This means that Flint should have been buried in plastic by the time the crisis ended in 2017.

On Dec. 11, Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering Chad Jafvert was inducted into the University's Book of Great Teachers - honoring outstanding teaching faculty who have demonstrated sustained excellence in the classroom. Held every five years, the induction ceremony will take place at 3:30 p.m. in Purdue Memorial Union's South Ballroom President Mitch Daniels and Provost Jay Akridge will speak at the event.

As we approach the holiday season, Purdue Civil Engineering Professor and Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program Director John Haddock offers some advice for travelers.

Professor Panagiota Karava has been appointed as the Jack and Kay Hockema Associate Professor in Civil Engineering. This is the first "Rising Star" professorship designed to recognize faculty members in the early stages of their career.

The spring 2018 issue of the Lyles School's Civil Engineering IMPACT magazine has been recognized by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) with a gold MarCom award. The international contest recognizes outstanding achievement by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design and production of marketing and communication materials and programs.

A paper published by a PhD student and faculty in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering has garnered the Editors' Choice Award from Water Resources Research. The award is given to about 1% of published articles in any calendar year.

A paper published by faculty and grad students in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering has garnered the Editors' Choice Award from Water Resources Research. The award is given to about 1% of published articles in any calendar year.

Ron Klemencic (BSCE '85) has been selected to receive the 2019 OPAL award — presented by ASCE — for his innovation and excellence in civil engineering design. This year's OPAL leadership award winners will be honored at the 2019 OPAL Gala, March 14, in Arlington, VA.

The National Academy of Construction has elected Harold F. Force (BSCE 1973, MSCE 1974), president of Force Construction Company, Inc., and executive vice president of Force Design, Inc., as a member of its class of 2018. He was formally inducted on October 11 during the NAC annual meeting, held at the US Grant Hotel. The 2018 class includes 37 new inductees. More than 300 leaders were considered for the selective NAC election process.

In the coming weeks, 40 scooters will be distributed across Purdue's campus to begin a four-week research project on best practices for using e-scooters. The research project, called Jelly, is being led by Darcy Bullock, Purdue's Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program, which is operated out of Purdue's Discovery Park.

Suresh Rao studies failure. Specifically, he examines failures of the infrastructure networks that provide critical services to cities. By examining breakdowns and recoveries in urban infrastructure, he and his team are learning how to design and operate cities better — and help urban communities become more resilient. Rao, Professor of Civil Engineering and the Lee A. Rieth Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering, views cities as complex systems, a conglomeration of engineered networks (utilities, power grids, roads), the institutions that manage them, and the communities that expect their demands to be met reliably and affordably.

A study completed in 2017 by the Lyles School of Civil Engineering was used by the Indiana General Assembly to realign the highway taxation structure that addressed the growing transportation-funding needs. The study concluded that the existing (at that time) fuel tax was inadequate to ensure that the state's roadways were maintained properly. According to the report, federal and most state fuel tax rates have not changed for many years. That and the increased fuel efficiency of modern cars has created a serious funding gap that is rapidly growing.

Electric cars that charge while driving? Purdue civil engineers want to make that leap. Konstantina "Nadia" Gkritza, Associate Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, studies the practicality of a roadway where electric-powered vehicles are recharged as they drive along it.

Sometimes big innovations are made through small steps. Civil engineering researchers at Purdue are developing a way to test the quality of newly laid concrete — through vibrations. Currently, quality testing for laid concrete consists of retrieving a sample from the site, taking it back to a laboratory, and then testing its compression strength. Associate Professor Na "Luna" Lu of the Lyles School believes she and her graduate students have developed a better, faster method.

By infusing concrete with microscopic crystals made from wood cellulose, Purdue Professor Pablo Zavattieri, along with researchers from Purdue's School of Materials Engineering and Oregon State University, have shown they can make concrete stronger. This project, which started in 2011 with a National Science Foundation grant, is now moving from the laboratory to the real world with a bridge under construction in northern California this year.