School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

First Place: Meshach Ojo
Electrochemical Accelerated Testing and Non-Destructive Evaluation of Iron-Sulfide Concrete Deterioration

Ojo’s work addresses the urgent need for rapid, reliable, and non-destructive methods to assess concrete deterioration caused by pyrrhotite, which has affected more than 35,000 homes in Northeastern Connecticut. Because damage can take years to become visible and full foundation replacement remains the only remedy, Ojo’s project aims to validate an electrochemical accelerated testing method and evaluate deterioration through multiple non-destructive indicators, including their correlation with actual strength loss.

Second Place: Sahel Niyafard
Vision-Based Structural Health Monitoring of Porcelain Railway Insulators Using Multi-Platform Image Tracking

Niyafard presented a low-cost, non-contact framework for tracking the loading behavior of railway insulators that experience continuous vibration and environmental stress. Using digital imaging, rulers for calibration, and analysis platforms including MATLAB, Python, Blender, and SynthEyes, the study compared multiple motion-tracking algorithms to evaluate displacement and insulator condition. Findings showed that vision-based methods, particularly MATLAB and SynthEyes, provide accurate and reliable alternatives to traditional inspection techniques.

Third Place: Prakash Bhandari
Long-Term Field Monitoring of Highway Bridge Expansion Joints Using a Low-Cost Wireless Sensor System

Bhandari developed and deployed a wireless IoT-based monitoring system for highway bridges, integrating cloud computing and dockerized web interfaces for continuous data collection. The study analyzed displacement, rotation, temperature effects, and traffic-induced noise to assess joint performance, and used an artificial neural network trained on finite-element simulations to estimate bearing fixity as an indicator of structural health. The results demonstrate strong potential for scalable, real-time bridge monitoring and highlight the influence of non-thermal loads on joint behavior.