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Archives: Monthly Archives: January 2016

Climate Changing Connecticut

By Heidi Douglas

UConn Science Salon Examines Climate Change Impacting Our State.

UConn Science Salon is a dynamic series of science programs featuring outstanding speakers, a fun happy hour, and a chance to make great connections. Our third salon highlights discussion regarding Climate Changing Connecticut.

Climate change is often discussed in the abstract context of ‘global warming.’ But just because the planet as a whole is warming, it doesn’t tell us much about the future of our little piece of it. This UConn Science Salon will focus on how climate change will affect Connecticut in particular. Will we get more storms, or fewer? Will our seasons change, or just get more extreme? How fast will sea level really rise, and should we worry about it? We’ll explore how people and municipalities can intelligently adapt to changes in water resources, seasons and temperatures, and how our communities might not just survive, but thrive, in a time of changing climate.

Thursday, November 12, 2015 |6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

NIXS Restaurant |40 Front Street, Hartford, CT

Meet our panel:

Christine Kirchhoff, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, UConn

Ken Enright-Kato, Director, Office of Climate Change, Technology and Research, DEEP

Jessica LeClair, Program Manager, Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation

Mike Shor, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, UConn

John Volin, Professor and Head, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, UConn

Everyone is welcome to attend. A complimentary drink ticket and appetizers are included with the $15 cost of registration. Advanced registration is required at http://bit.ly/UConnSciSalonClimate

Questions? Contact Heidi Douglas, Director of Engineering Alumni Relations at 860.961.8052 hdouglas@engineer.uconn.edu

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Securing Water Resources in Ethiopia

By Colin Poitras

A $4.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation will allow University of Connecticut researchers to collaborate with colleagues around the world in order to help local governments and communities in Ethiopia’s Blue Nile river basin better manage their agricultural and water resources.

The funds, released today, come from NSF’s Partnerships in International Research and Education or PIRE

“This grant will position the University of Connecticut as a global leader in the multidisciplinary field of water and food security,” says Provost Mun Choi. “We particularly value the quality of scientific and cultural exchanges that are made possible through the PIRE program for students, faculty, and researchers from UConn, Ethiopia, and other international universities.”

Maximizing existing resources

A team led by environmental engineering professor Manos Anagnostou will use the funding to develop a novel forecasting system for the region that integrates predicted seasonal rain forecasts with climate, watershed, and crop yield models. In doing so, the team hopes to keep local farmers and civic leaders better informed of environmental conditions so they can improve crop yields and minimize losses in times of drought.

At the same time, the funding will allow UConn assistant professor of sociology Elizabeth Holzer and her team of social scientists to identify and try to reduce local political and institutional barriers that have made it difficult to implement scientific forecasting and other relief measures, hindering efforts to protect the land and improve conditions in the largely arid region.

“This is a very important and prestigious grant, and it is the first NSF PIRE grant UConn has received as the lead institution,” says Jeff Seemann, UConn’s vice president for research.

With 12 river basins and an estimated 122 billion cubic meters of water, Ethiopia’s water problems aren’t due to a lack of water. But a lack of technological resources and expertise in water management – along with other barriers – had kept all but a small fraction of it from being used domestically. Close to 50 million Ethiopians don’t have access to safe and reliable sources of drinking water due to recurring drought and domestic issues. Rural areas are hit the hardest, with some family members walking four hours a day to access water from open sources that may be limited to shallow pools contaminated with animal and human waste. Water-borne illnesses, like cholera and diarrhea, are the leading cause of death of children under five in the region.

Recognizing the urgent need for relief, UConn researchers have been working in Ethiopia since 2010 when the University first entered into a partnership with Addis Ababa University with the support of a $2.45 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development/Higher Education Development (USAID-HED). The result of that work led to the establishment of the Ethiopian Institute of Water Resources, Ethiopia’s first institute dedicated to addressing critical water-related challenges at the national and regional level.

In the ensuing years, UConn has helped educate and train a skilled local workforce to address local and regional water issues. The program has supported 38 students toward completion of their graduate degrees, 14 of whom were women. Two students recently completed the Ph.D. program, and another 50 students are currently pursuing their doctorates. The Institute’s outreach activities have connected with more than 16,000 local residents, teaching the importance of hand-washing, providing experiential learning for undergraduates, and guiding one local community on how to install a defluoridation vessel.

The PIRE grant, however, is much more research-intensive. NSF’s PIRE program is intended to advance the frontiers of science and engineering, while forging robust collaborations among scientific experts around the world.

“By linking together researchers from around the world, PIRE allows us to leverage U.S. dollars and improve scientific outcomes,” said Rebecca Keiser, head of NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering, which manages PIRE. “These rich partnerships will tackle some of today’s most pressing research questions, from predicting natural disasters to understanding intricacies of the human brain.”

The highly competitive five-year grant also supplies funding to UConn’s partner institutions on the project. Those partners include the University of Wisconsin, University of Oklahoma, and the International Food Policy Research Institute in the U.S. The project leverages resources and research expertise from international collaborators as well. Those additional collaborators include Addis Ababa University and Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia; the University of Kassel in Germany; Université Joseph Fourier, France; University of Reading, UK; and Sunmoon University, South Korea.

While the engineers develop a forecasting system that is flexible enough to serve both local farmers and regional water managers, Holzer, who holds a joint appointment in UConn’s Human Rights Institute, and her team will be using social science – including stakeholder feedback, surveys, and qualitative analysis – to investigate and analyze local decision-making in different communities to see how it can be improved when it comes to managing land and water resources. Social scientists at Addis Ababa University and Bahir Dar University will assist with this part of the project.

“We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work more closely with our colleagues in Ethiopia in such a vibrant interdisciplinary collaboration,” says Holzer.

Ultimately, the researchers hope to develop a model practical road map that can be used by low-income communities vulnerable to climate variability.

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Connecticut Urban and Transportation Film Festival

Transportation engineering students need to be able to communicate with a wide array of stakeholders because their work usually impacts and is impacted by the general public. This is especially true of transportation planning. Accordingly, through a grant from UConn’s Center for Transportation and Livability Studies (CTLS), two professors (Dr. Norman Garrick from Civil & Environmental Engineering and Dr. Carol Atkinson-Palombo from Geography) collaborated with Clarence Eckerson who runs an advocacy group called StreetFilms, to train students to make short films to address issues in transportation sustainability. This course took place in Spring 2015.  Films produced during this course will be showcased during the inaugural Connecticut Urban and Transportation Film Festival held on Wednesday, September 23, 2015 on the Storrs campus in Laurel Hall, room 101. Reception is at 6:15.  Screening starts at 7PM.

In addition to that, two of the student films (below) have been accepted for screening at the New Urbanism Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA on October 8-11, 2015. This is a remarkable feat for anyone producing their first film, not to mention that these students are engineers. 

The Millennial Shift Towards Walkable Cities

CTfastrak: First Impressions of Hartford’s New Transit System

The New Ubarnism Film Festival

HOME

StreetFilms

http://www.streetfilms.org/

Alumni News

Karen Isherwood

Karen Isherwood (B.S. Civil Engineering, ’97), P.E., LEED AP, joined BL Companies in Meriden, CT, as a senior engineer.  In this part time role, Isherwood will continue delivering engineering design services through her company as well.  She founded Isherwood Civil Engineering in 2010 and serves clients in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

 

 

Joe Rimiller

Joe Rimiller, P.E., P.T.O.E. (B.S., Civil Engineering, ’01; M.S. Transportation & Urban Engineering, ‘03) joined BETA Group Inc. as a senior project engineer.  A registered Professional Engineer in Connecticut and also a registered Professional Traffic Operations Engineer, Rimiller will focus on traffic signal design and traffic impact studies.  He serves as secretary/treasurer of the Connecticut Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

 

Andrew R. Gere

Andrew R. Gere (B.S. Civil Engineering, ’92) was promoted to chief operating officer at San Jose Water Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SJW Corp. In this position, Gere has primary and direct responsibility for all company field activities and departments. He supports and advises the CEO in decision making and has primary responsibility for design, development, implementation, reporting, and monitoring of key performance metrics, policies, and procedures for the company. Gere joined the company since 1995 and earned an MBA from Santa Clara University in 2002.

 

 

 

Faculty News

Four SoE Faculty Win NSF CAREER Awards, including Prof. Kay Wille and Prof.Timothy Vadas

Four Engineering faculty members have won CAREER awards, each receiving $500,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). According to the NSF, CAREER awards are the “most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.”

“This award will shape significantly the research direction of our group and lays the foundation for fruitful collaborations across various disciplines, including mechanics, chemistry, polymer-science and liberal arts,” said Dr. Kay Wille, one of the recipients. “It feels like a dream came true, and I am so grateful to the National Science Foundation for their financial support and their trust in our research.”

Among them, there are two faculty members are within our department:

– Kay Wille, Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering: “Understanding  Behavior and Properties of Nano-Sized Particles in Cement-Based Materials.”

This project will investigate the behavior and properties of nano-sized particles in cement-based materials. Nanoparticles have the potential to lead to more dense materials, and to carry over specific functionalities leading to novel material design possibilities, such as intelligent multi-functional highly durable engineered concretes. These design possibilities could go a long way toward addressing the current poor condition of the nation’s aging infrastructure, as well as prepare for future infrastructure concerns. Unlocking the full potential of nano-sized particles in cement-based systems is currently held back by the limited understanding of the mechanisms by which they disperse throughout the concrete matrix. This information is critical for understanding and improving the material’s strength and durability.

 

– Timothy Vadas, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering: “Impact of Urbanization on Organic Carbon-Metal Interactions and Trophic Transfer in Streams”

This project addresses the increasingly urbanized landscape and the increasing negative impact of metals from both stormwater and wastewater effluent on organisms in streams. It’s designed to develop more effective management strategies for impaired streams in urban areas.

To address the stream impairment issues associated with different metal sources, the projects aims to get a better understanding of metal bio-uptake under urban stream conditions. To do this, Vadas and his research team will analyze the presence and form of metals in different stream sources. Laboratory studies will assess the interactions of the different metal forms with benthic microbial communities into macroinvertebrate organisms. 

 

Study Wins Young Researcher Paper Award

UConn researchers have been awarded the TRB Committee ANB20 (Safety Data Analysis and Evaluation) 2015 Young

Researcher Paper Award. Assistant Professor Karthik C. Konduri, Professor John Ivan and UConn graduate assistant Kai Wang are part of a team that authored the paper, “A Copula Based Joint Model of Injury Severity and Vehicle Damage in Two-Vehicle Crashes.” The award will be presented at the ANB20 Committee Meeting during the TRB Annual Meeting in January 2016 in Washington DC.

Honors For Two CTI Staff Members

It was a big month for the Connecticut Transportation Institute, with two staff members winning prestigious honors:

Dr. Donna Shea, Program Director of the Technology Transfer Center, was named the 2014 WTS Connecticut Woman of the Year. WTS, formerly known as the Women’s Transportation Seminar, bestowed the award for Dr. Shea’s “exceptional contributions to the transportation industry; your role in the implementation of several successful programs; and especially your leadership, both your efforts in Leadership training for others and the example you set every day as a capable professional.” 

Dr. Eric Jackson, Director, Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center, received a Bright Idea award from the Innovations in American Government Awards by the Kennedy School at Harvard University. The award was given for the Crash Data Repository, which was developed at the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center and funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The Crash Data Repository is a web tool designed to provide access to select crash information collected by state and local police. It’s designed to provide members of the traffic-safety community with timely, accurate, complete and uniform crash data.

Researchers Explore the Potential of Ultra-High-Strength Concrete To Repair Bridges

According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), more than 30 percent of the 600,000 bridges in the U.S. have exceeded their 50-year design life, requiring an investment of $20.5 billion annually for maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation. But what if you could significantly reduce this cost with the development of novel repair and rehabilitation methods that, at the same time, avoid the kind of construction zone traffic interruptions that make rush-hour commutes a nightmare?

Researchers at the University of Connecticut are studying an innovative method for repairing corrosion-damaged steel girders using an advanced concrete material. They’re focusing on the common corrosion damage at the ends of bridge girders, which may significantly reduce a girder’s load-bearing capacity. This damage is caused by years of exposure to water and de-icing road salt commonly used this time of year. The project, which was funded by Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) and supported in part by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and industry collaborators Lafarge and Infra-Metals, promises to dramatically reduce repair costs and considerably simplify the rehabilitation process.

 

“Traditional methods for repairing corrosion-damaged steel bridges are so costly, complex, and time-consuming that necessary repairs are often delayed,” said Dr. Arash Zaghi, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and the principal investigator of the research project.

A number of factors make the traditional method of bridge repair so cumbersome – for instance, there’s preparing the surface of the steel girders, which can include sanding and drilling holes for bolted additions. The need to remove existing paint is another major impediment of current repair methods. Because the majority of structurally deficient bridges are old enough to have lead paint, extensive – cost-prohibitive, sometimes – abatement protocols should be stringently followed. One of the most costly girder-end repair tasks is the jacking of the entire superstructure, which can account for more than 70 percent of the project’s costs. Also, rehabilitation work often requires the closure of one or more lanes along the roadway, or even the entire bridge.

The problem of deteriorating bridges, and the vast resources needed to repair them, is well-known to the public. President Barack Obama addressed it in a 2013 State of the Union address:

“[T]onight, I propose a ‘Fix-It-First’ program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country.”

In its infrastructure report card for 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the nation’s bridges a grade of C+. Or, to put the situation in numbers:

• Over two hundred million trips are taken daily across deficient bridges in the nation’s 102 largest metropolitan regions.
• One in nine of the nation’s bridges are rated as structurally deficient
• The average age of the nation’s 607,380 bridges is currently 42 years.
• The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that eliminating the backlog of the nation’s deficient bridges by 2028 would require an investment of $20.5 billion annually, which is almost $8 billion more than what is being spent.

But using Ultra-High Strength Concrete (UHSC), an advanced, low-porous construction material, to repair the corrosion-damaged steel girders could dramatically reduce the resources needed for such repairs. As part of this alternative repair technique, being experimentally and analytically studied at UConn, UHSC panels are cast over the beam’s corroded web plate. This method, the researchers found, requires minimal surface preparation, as no paint removal is required. No jacking is required, since the rehab work can be done when bridge is in service.  And the process is so simple and straightforward that construction time and the need for lane closures are significantly reduced.

So what makes UHSC so much better than traditional concrete? Due to an optimized mixture design, it has a compressive strength greater than 22,000 pounds per square inch and excellent durability properties. As a result, UHSC can withstand much greater forces, and has a much better resistance to environmental attack than conventional concrete, which has strength of about 5,000 pounds per square inch. The concrete used in this study was an off-the shelf product, Ductal JS-1212, supplied by Lafarge

Although it’s been around for about 20 years, the benefits of UHSC are just starting to be widely recognized.

“Especially in the last year, the use and implementation of UHSC in the construction industry has significantly increased and is gaining momentum,” said Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Kay Wille, who’s also co-chair of the international symposium, which takes place later this year in New York.

Playing a key part in the research is Kevin Zmetra, PhD candidate at UConn and a recipient of a STEM Fellowship from the Department of Homeland Security. The fellowship paid for his tuition, half of his university fees and provided a stipend. He worked on the project with his advisor and the project Principal Investigator, Dr. Zaghi, and Dr. Wille.

“I became involved in the bridge project a few months after beginning the fellowship,” Zmetra said. “Dr. Zaghi had the project available and required a PhD student familiar with large scale experimentation and finite element modeling.  I had performed both while working on my Master’s Degree.  I thought the project had great potential to solve a critical issue facing our nation’s infrastructure.”

The researchers constructed loading experiments on three one-third-scale girders, modeled after one from an actual bridge in Connecticut.  One was an “undamaged girder” that was tested as the benchmark. Another specimen served as the “damaged girder.” To simulate corrosion damage, the researchers reduced the thickness of the lower portions of the girder’s web (the vertical plate of an I-beam) and the bottom flange (the horizontal plate) by 66 percent.  A third girder was also constructed with the same level of simulated corrosion – this is the girder the researchers used to directly test the effectiveness of the repair method using UHSC.

The three girders were tested on a high-capacity loading frame, built in-house specifically for the project, to test the end load bearing capacity of the girders. With a 550,000-pound hydraulically load ram, the girders were subjected to several loading/unloading cycles with increasing force and displacement magnitudes until the capacity of the girders was exceeded.

The findings:
• The undamaged girder bore a maximum capacity of 180,000 pounds at the end bearing before the web buckles. 
• The damaged girder bore a maximum of 43,000 pounds.
• The damaged girder, repaired with UHSC bore a capacity of 225,000 pounds – the weight equivalent of more than 100 Ford trucks. 

In other words, the damaged girder bore a capacity only 24 percent of what the undamaged girder could handle. The damaged girder retrofitted with the novel repair method, however, even exceeded the capacity of the undamaged girder by 25 percent. And it improved upon the damaged girder’s capacity by a massive 424 percent. These experiments demonstrated the effectiveness and the promise of the novel repair method.

With the successful completion of the first phase of the study, the researchers will further pursue their discoveries in the second phase of their research. This includes a more extensive look at plate-girder beams and the potential to completely eliminate the need to jack the bridge and the potential to reduce lane closures. They will also use salt-fog testing to investigate the long-term durability of these repairs.

“This repair technique has the potential to address the critical problem of corrosion- damaged steel bridges around the nation in a creative way,” Zaghi said. Once this methods is established, state and federal agencies could restore many bridges at a fraction of the cost and time, and increase the safety of our transportation infrastructure. “The issue of the aging infrastructure in the U.S is a complex one, and traditional methods are simply not the best way to address it – we are just too comfortable with them. We need to promote revolutionary approaches.”