Department Seminars: Fall 2010
Past Seminars
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"Nanocomposites for Distributed Structural Monitoring and Damage Detection" Wednesday, December 8, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Gilman Hall 75 Structural deterioration, excessive loading, impact damage, and corrosion have been identified as critical and long-term problems that constantly threaten the integrity and reliability of structural systems (e.g., civil infrastructures, aircrafts, and naval vessels). In particular, the field of structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage detection provides quantitative global- and component-scale structural response data for monitoring the performance of these structures. In this regard, nanotechnology offers a plethora of nanomaterial fabrication techniques for the design of next-generation multifunctional nano-structured systems to solve complex engineering problems. Multifunctional systems are defined to possess a diverse suite of engineering functionalities including self-sensing, actuation, self-healing, power harvesting, among many others. Here, carbon nanotubes are employed and encoded with a variety of electrochemical and electromechanical sensing transduction mechanisms for structural health monitoring and damage identification. |
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"Progressive Collapse Resistance of Reinforced Concrete Structures" Monday, November 29, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Hackerman Hall Room B17 Through manmade hazards (accident or act of terrorism) or natural hazards, structures may be subject to conditions that lead to progressive collapse. Progressive collapse denotes a failure of a major portion of a structre that has been initiated by failure in a relatively small portion of the structure. Analytical and experimental evaluation of progressive collapse resistance of reinforced concrete structures will be presented. The experimental program includes laboratory tests as well as evaluation of response of actual structures following explosion of their columns. In the analytical program in addition to the results obtained form the analysis of actual structures and test specimens, specific modeling techniques and issues such as bar fracture in continuum domain and effects of beam growth on floor response will be discussed. |
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"Contributions of Materials Innovations to Sustainable Infrastructure" Monday, November 15, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Hackerman Hall Room B17 Research aimed at developing new understanding and new technology surrounding cement-based materials is experiencing a major shift, entering a “new age”. Drawing on the advances made during previous decades where significant improvements in strength (1970’s-1990’s) and performance (1990’s-2000’s) were made, innovative technologies are needed today which will contribute to the worldwide investment in sustainable concrete infrastructure. Paths forward will be examined in the context of driving forces (e.g., population growth, emergence of megacities, infrastructure aging, and durability) and policy, with an emphasis on the role technology in reducing the impact of concrete infrastructure on the environment. As a demonstration of the potential role of technology in bringing about this new “green” age of concrete technology, three on-going research projects are presented in this context. |
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"A Signal Processing and Pattern Recognition Method for Drowsy and Fatigued Driver Assistance" Monday, October 25, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Hackerman Hall Room B17 Active safety and driver assistance systems are needed to mitigate crashes or avoid collisions. A particular area of importance is to provide support for fatigued or drowsy drivers. Standard lane-departure warning methods are not effective for drowsiness or fatigue related crashes because of anomalies in steering behavior, unpredictable state of drivers, and severe loss of control in these crashes. Therefore, methods of detecting drowsiness before the drivers’ onset of sleep are of critical importance. A new detection method (algorithm) is developed which focuses solely on the steering wheel data to detect drivers’ drowsiness or fatigue condition. Our algorithm uses an Empirical Mode Decomposition of the steering angle signal to extract specific drowsiness-affected features. A pattern recognition scheme is devised to classify the measured features into alert or drowsy state. The algorithm has shown promising results with over 80% accuracy in detecting drowsiness. It also achieves detection sufficiently early, prior to a hazardous condition (i.e. crashes or lane departures). The method has been licensed and a US patent application is pending. |
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"The Business Side of Engineering" Monday, October 18, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Hackerman Hall Room B17 The consulting business is a competitive one. Good engineering design skills, though critically important, are not the only factor when it comes to winning contracts. Consulting engineers must also understand their clients’ needs, operations, and their expectations on the part of the consultant. This seminar will offer an introduction to the business of engineering, that is, the aspects of the job that most engineers learn on-the-job. Examples include: types of contracts (open-ended versus project-specific); DBB (Design-Bid-Build) vs. DB (Design-Build); scope of work / price proposal; MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) program; construction documentation (plans, specifications, cost estimate, PS&E); advertisement for bids; bidding process; award of the contract; and construction-phase services. |
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"An Overview of the Use of Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Reactors at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission" Tuesday, October 12, 2010,12:00 – 12:45 PM, Hackerman Hall Room B17 The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent federal agency whose mission is to license and regulate the civilian use of nuclear materials in order to protect the public health and the environment. This includes conducting inspection, assessment, and enforcement programs for commercial nuclear power plants. Since the 1970s, the NRC has increased the use of probabilistic risk assessment to complement traditional engineering methods when making regulatory decisions regarding reactor safety. Currently, a variety of probabilistic methods are used in an integrated approach to focus regulatory oversight on plant systems, operations and human performance that are most important to safety. An overview of the history, the techniques and their application to commercial nuclear reactors from the NRC’s perspective will be presented. |
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"The Thomas Viaduct" The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Thomas Viaduct at Relay and Elkridge, MD is the oldest major railroad viaduct in North America and the first built on a curved alignment. It is 175 years old this year and still in use. The bridge is a National Historic Landmark, has been nominated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and is a proposed World Heritage Railway site. Author Carl Condit called it "a masterpiece of the mason's arthttp://ce.jhu.edu.a superb work of architecture as well as of engineering." The Thomas Viaduct was designed by Benjamin H. Latrobe, Jr., a 27-year old surveyor who had never built a bridge before or taken a formal course in Civil Engineering. Latrobe also functioned as what would today be called the project engineer. The two-year construction period took a frightful toll on his health, but he created an enduring monument. Mr. Dilts' presentation will discuss why the bridge was built where it was, how it was built, the background of its young designer, and his sophisticated use of elliptical arches. A fund-raising effort is now underway to restore the bridge and improve its surrongdings in Patapsco Valley State Park. |
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"Modeling Older-Type Reinforced Concrete Corner Beam-Column Joints for Progressive Collapse Simulation" Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings constructed prior to the introduction of ductile detailing principles in the 1970s commonly do not have joint transverse reinforcement. Such “unreinforced” joints, especially those at the edges and corners of buildings, have proven vulnerable to damage and collapse in past earthquakes. For the mitigation of the collapse risk in older concrete buildings, accurate progressive collapse tools need to be developed. An overview of developing such tools using the “element removal” approach will be presented emphasizing recent developments in modeling seismically-deficient RC beam-column joints. In addition, key results from tests of four full-scale RC corner beam-column joints without transverse reinforcement will be presented. Finally, preliminary progressive collapse simulations for non-ductile RC frames will be presented. |
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“Preservation Engineering: Applying Structural Engineering To Historic Building” "What is a Preservation Engineer?" According to the Association for Preservation Technology, preservation engineering "requires enormous effort in reserching, analyzing, reanalyzing, and understanding archaic structural systems and building technology". |
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“Computing at Hopkins: a guide for new graduate students” Engineering requires the use of computational models to predict the behavior of a design. Engineering research often means developing new better computational models. This talk discusses the kinds of facilities available at JHU and the kinds of tools that are used in civil engineering. Included will be a discussion of types of computers that are used and what the future will bring. |
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"Water Resources, Climate and the 21st Century: You Think Things Are Bad Now" As the 20th century ended, the nation faced growing challenges in dealing with its water resources-too little water, polluted water, floods, drought, environmental degradation, and a water infrastructure that was given a "D." graded by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The new century offers climate change, hydrologic nonstationarity, population growth, development pressures, and it continued lack of investment repair and upgrade of critical infrastructure. There is clear need for professionals in all disciplines to become better informed on the water challenges being faced and solutions that should be considered. Now is the time for action. |
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"Real-time Hybrid Testing of Laminated Rubber Dampers for Seismic Retrofit of Bridges" Experimental investigation of laminated rubber dampers by means of real-time hybrid testing of scaled specimens is presented. Purpose of the real-time hybrid testing is to evaluate the dynamic response control performance with experimentally simulated seismic response of a numerical model of a bridge to which the laminated rubber damper is implemented. Since the laminated rubber dampers can exhibit velocity-dependent behavior due to viscosity and other dynamic properties of rubber material, real-time loading is indispensable in testing the performance of the device under realistic test condition for the damper specimens that reflects the loading rate effect. The real-time hybrid experimental system is implemented using the concept of velocity-based loading control, and the obtained test result are compared with those obtained with conventional quasi-static hybrid loading tests. |
Seminar Archives
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