Structural Engineering
What gives an engineer confidence to project and build something as large and graceful as the Golden Gate Bridge (the creation of late Purdue professor Charles A. Ellis) knowing that it has to withstand the demands of gravity, wind, and earthquakes?
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California
Why did Gaudi think of the Sagrada Familia “upside-down” before he started building it?
The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain (inverted model on the left, actual structure on the right)
Who decides how much reinforcing steel goes into a reinforced concrete column supporting 100 floors in a skyscraper? And how do they make that decision?
How far apart can we place the supports of steel girders in our bridges?
If these questions spark your interest, if you would like to test to failure structural models in one of the largest laboratories in the country, then structural engineering is the right career choice for you. Join Purdue’s School Civil Engineering and enroll in structural engineering courses to leave a mark that will benefit and inspire many, and last the test of time as the Golden Gate has.
Spotlights
January 22, 2019
A team of graduate students from the Lyles School of Civil Engineering placed first runner-up in the first image-based structural damage recognition competition, namely PEER Hub ImageNet (PHI) Challenge organized by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center. Rih-Teng Wu, Tarutal Ghosh Mondal, Yu-Ting Huang and Cheng Qian are the team members from Smart Informatix Laboratory directed by Assistant Professor Mohammad Jahanshahi.
December 11, 2018
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.
November 27, 2018
California's deadly Camp Fire is now 100 percent contained, but low humidity and strong winds in the state mean that wildfires could strike again. Unfortunately, better building materials and planning can only offer so much protection, says Julio Ramirez, the center director for the National Science Foundation's Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Network Coordination Office, and Purdue's Karl H. Kettelhut Professor of Civil Engineering.
August 18, 2018
A recently-established College of Engineering center has made three seed grant awards in the first year of its seed grant competition. Researchers with the Center for Resilient Infrastructures, Systems, and Processes (CRISP) develop solutions to questions such as: What causes some systems - computing, cyber physical, or large-scale engineered systems - to be resilient to disruptions of various kinds? And what causes some systems to “bounce back” from a failure quickly? The projects chosen for seed funding will address different aspects of these broad questions.
August 9, 2018
Civil Engineering grad student Ting-Wei Wang has been named one of five students to receive the 2018-2019 Daniel P. Jenny Research Fellowship from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute. The program connects professors and students with industry experts to advance research in precast concrete. In addition, Ting-Wei was also selected as the recipient of the Alan Mattock Graduate Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded to only one of the five students who received the PCI Fellowship.
August 2, 2018
Mohammad Jahanshahi, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, was awarded the 2017 Kobori Prize recognizing the best paper published in Structural Control and Health Monitoring (SCHM).
April 12, 2018
Mete A. Sözen, Karl H. Kettelhut Distinguished Professor, Emeritus of Civil Engineering, Purdue University died unexpectedly on April 5, 2018, just a few weeks before what would have been his 88th birthday. Mete was in London, England, with his wife Joan visiting their daughter Ayshe and two grandsons when he fell peacefully to sleep. For all of us who knew Mete, this marked the end of an era. Few people have guided and nurtured a field the way Mete led earthquake and structural engineering related to reinforced concrete systems over a period spanning six decades. He had a profound effect on many people and will long be remembered fondly by those who came into contact with him during his career. A celebration of Dr. Sözen's career in teaching will take place on October 11th as the last seminar in The Art of Teaching | Engineering Art series. Dr. Polat Gülkan will deliver the seminar, to which all family, alumni, friends and colleagues are invited to attend and share memories of Dr. Sözen.
December 22, 2017
A team in earthquake-prone Seattle is daring to deliver an 850-ft-tall "proof of concept" for a composite structural-steel frame, instead of a steel frame around a reinforced concrete core. The $570-million Rainier Square Tower project is the culmination of three decades of exploration into composite steel structures for CE alumnus Ron Klemencic, with research being conducted at Bowen Laboratory since 2006.
November 7, 2017
A system under development at Purdue University uses artificial intelligence to detect cracks captured in videos of nuclear reactors and represents a future inspection technology to help reduce accidents and maintenance costs.
October 25, 2017
Robert Frosch, Professor of Civil Engineering, has been named Editor-in-Chief of the ACI Structural Journal Editorial Board. The ACI Structural Journal has been publishing research on the design of structural concrete from many of the brightest minds in the concrete industry since ACI began publishing journals back in December 1912.
October 16, 2017
Robert J. Connor, Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of CAI and S-BRITE, has been selected as the winner of the 2018 AISC T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award. Presented annually, the award recognizes a lecturer and author whose technical paper or papers, published during the eligibility period, are considered an outstanding contribution to engineering literature on fabricated structural steel.
September 15, 2017
Robert Connor, Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of CAI and S-BRITE, has been named Distinguished Alumnus at his alma mater of Lehigh University, where he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering.
September 15, 2017
Julio Ramirez, Professor of Civil Engineering and NHERI-NCO Center Director, is among 25 Purdue innovators inducted into this year's Purdue Innovator Hall of Fame by the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.
April 11, 2017
Dr. Shirley Dyke, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering, was presented with the 2017 CE Outstanding Mentor of Engineering Graduate Students Award at a reception on April 10th hosted by the Civil Engineering Graduate Student Advisory Council.
March 31, 2017
Shirley Dyke and Chul Min Yeum are the first to combine computer vision and deep-learning technologies for rapid assessment of structural wreckage.
March 27, 2017
Robert J. Connor, Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the S-BRITE Center, has been selected to receive the 2017 George S. Richardson Medal. The Richardson Medal recognizes a single, recent outstanding achievement in bridge engineering.
February 24, 2017
On January 20th, 2017 a top tension chord of the Delaware River Turnpike Bridge was discovered to be completely fractured. On the morning of the 21st, Dr. Robert J. Connor, Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the S-BRITE Center was called by engineering consultants working for the PA and NJ Turnpikes to assist in the failure investigation and to help develop immediate inspection and long-term retrofit strategies.
February 17, 2017
A new automated system detects cracks in the steel components of nuclear power plants and has been shown to be more accurate than other automated systems.
December 22, 2016
Amit Varma, Professor of Civil Engineering, has been selected to receive the 2017 Special Achievement Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). This award provides special recognition to individuals who demonstrated particular achievements in structural steel education.
December 21, 2016
On 9 December 2016, civil engineering students represented Purdue in the 10th International Bridge Contest. The team consisted of undergraduate students Daixi Yang, Sijia Wang, Ziyu Liu, Cheng Qian, Scott Houldieson (not pictured), and graduate students Aishwarya Puranam and William Pollalis. Support for the team was provided by Prof. Santiago Pujol and his post-doc, Lucas Laughery.
