Johns Hopkins University Department of Civil Engineering

Structures Program Area

Our Structures Program faculty have a deep affinity for the physical pieces that collectively form the built environment. Like the rest of Civil Engineering, mechanics provides the core from which this research  eminates. Below are the program’s key strengths:

Earthquake Engineering: A wide variety of faculty have opportunities in this area, including multi-hazard performance-based design, development of novel fuse elements for structural components, extending performance-based design principles to new materials, smart structures, and more. Applications include buildings and bridges as well as the broader infrastructure (pipes, towers, etc.) and span from the material scale to the city/regional scale as well as from theory (e.g. in control algorithms) to practice (e.g. in new building specifications).

Stochastic mechanics and structural reliability: Structures at Johns Hopkins has a rich tradition that continues today. A distinguishing feature of the work conducted in the program is the degree to which probabilistic methods and uncertainty are embraced in all of the research: from optimization of structural topology to advanced analysis for steel structures. The central role of uncertainty analysis and quantification, as well as reliability, runs throughout the training and research.

Optimization: Optimal design of structures has long been an important consideration, but the emergence of multi-physics tools to simulate structural performance along with multi-objective goals to improve both structural (across all hazards) and energy performance to create more sustainable structures has lead to increased needs in this area. Research in the program is largely focused on topology optimization and other free-form design techniques.

Cold-Formed Steel Structures: The Thin-walled Structures Group within the Structures Program provides one of the world’s most comprehensive research experiences in the development, behavior, and design of cold-formed steel structures. Research in this area has lead to far-reaching changes in the design of these efficient, but complex, stability-critical structures.

The Structures program also spans outside of the built environment to problems and challenges that benefit from the perspective or knowledge-base of structural engineering. In addition, active collaborations are particularly common when working across a variety of scales; such as materials with the MoM Program or cities with Systems Program.

 

Structures Affiliated Research Groups

• The following research groups are housed in the Department of Civil Engineering and affiliated with the Structures program.
• Thin-walled Structures Group (Schafer)
• Smart Structures and Hybrid Testing Laboratory (Nakata)
• Historic Structures and Covered Wooden Bridges (Sangree) 
• Sensor Technology and Infrastructure Risk Mitigation Lab (Mitrani-Reiser)
• Computational Mechanics Research Laboratory (Ghosh)
• Stochastic Systems and Micromechanics Group (Graham-Brady)
• Topology Optimization Group (Guest)

Structures affiliated faculty collaborate broadly across the school and university and are associated with a number of additional Departments, Centers, and Institutes. Contact an affiliated faculty member for additional details.

Examples of Ongoing or Recent Structures Research

A wide variety of research is currently active in the Structures program. A few representative projects:

• NEES-CR: Enabling Performance-Based Seismic Design of Multi-Story Cold-Formed Steel Structures
• Advanced Acceleration Control Methods and Substructure Techniques for Shake Table Tests
• Sheathing Braced Design of Cold-Formed Steel Wall Studs
• Energy Dissipation and Buckling Mitigation through the use of Steel Foams
• Structural Resilience Modeling under Impact
• Earthquake Recon. and Disaster Mitigation Efforts for Hospitals
• Cross-section Stability of Structural Steel

Structures Relevant Associations

• ASCE – Structural Engineering Institute
• ASCE – Engineering Mechanics Institute
• Network for Earthquake Eng. Simulation
• Pacific Earthquake Eng. Research Center
• Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
• Structural Stability Research Council
• Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute
• Int’l. Assoc. for Bridge and Str. Eng.
• U.S. Assoc. for Computational Mech.
• Int’l. Assoc. for Structural Safety & Reliability

Join Structures

Graduate students interested in pursuing the Structures Program area should express this interest in their application, and they should be interested in working with one of the Structures-affiliated faculty.