Structural Engineering

Levees, Earthquakes, and California's Water Distribution System

January 30, 2017 - 12:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Scott J. Brandenberg

The Sacramento / San Joaquin Delta is the hub of California's water distribution system, providing fresh water to over 20 million Californians and directly supporting our $50 billion/year agricultural industry. A network of over 1,100 miles of levees circumscribes Delta "islands" that lie as much as 10m below sea level. Unlike traditional flood control levees that are intermittently loaded during high water events, the Delta levees constantly impound water and have as little as a meter of freeboard at high tide.

What to Expect: Advice from the Future

January 23, 2017 - 12:00 pm

Speaker: Lon McPhail

Your first 30-60-90 days - how to learn the company needs and add value to make yourself indispensable.

Social media and your professional life - making sure you're employable and sending the right message to your colleagues

Email do's and don'ts...and don't ever's - it's only "a quick little note" until it's read back to you by the Senate oversight committee for internal affairs. :-)

Get Fired Up: What Structural Engineers Should Know About Fire Design

January 18, 2017 - 12:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Maria Garlock

The increasing complexity of building structures makes it sometimes difficult to apply a prescriptive approach for fire design and at the same time maintain efficiency, economy, and elegance.  While there is a place for prescriptive design, there are other tools that better enable the design intent.  This lecture begins with a historical examination of fires in major structures and the impact that these events had on fire design.  Then, new opportunities for fire design through a performance-based approach are discussed.  Such an approach requires knowledge of the fire characteristic, therm

An Immersogeometric Framework for Patient - Specific Heart Valve Design and Analysis

January 17, 2017 - 1:30 pm

Speaker: Professor Ming-Chen Hsu

In this work, we present a framework for designing patient-specific bioprosthetic heart valves using recently proposed isogeometric analysis based parametric design platform and immersogeometric fluid–structure interaction (FSI) analysis. The patient-specific aortic root geometry is reconstructed from the medical image data and is represented using non-uniform rational B-splines. We then parametrically design prosthetic heart valves based on the aortic root, using a Rhino/Grasshopper-based interactive geometric design platform.

Creating and Presenting Credibility of Computational Solid Mechanics Analyses

January 11, 2017 - 12:00 pm

Speaker: Dr. H. Eliot Fang

Advanced computational modeling, high performance computing technology, and extensive knowledge of simulation form a strong and unique foundation of research, development and engineering at Sandia National Laboratories that enable the Lab to meet its commitment of ensuring the national security of the United States.

The Mono Bucket-Next Generation Foundation Structure for Offshore Wind Turbines

January 09, 2017 - 12:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Lars Bo Ibsen

The Mono Bucket is the latest generation foundation structure. The Mono Bucket is specifically designed for offshore wind turbine application, combining the key benefits of a gravity base foundation, a monopile and a suction bucket, and building on a legacy of more than 2,000 suction technology-based foundations from the oil and gas industry.The Mono Bucket has proven its ability, having been successfully installed in a wide variety of site conditions, including sand, silt, clay and layered strata.

Structural and Environmental Monitoring using Robotics

Speaker: Dr. Hyun Myung

In this talk, the robotics technologies to provide various services in civil environment will be introduced, mainly focusing on structural monitoring, environment monitoring, and autonomous navigation technologies. For Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), vision-based SHM and a wall-climbing drone for SHM will be introduced. For environmental robotics, JEROS (Jellyfish removal robot), oil spill protection robot, green algae removal robot will be introduced.

Wood Revolution: Inspiring Design with Innovative Wood Structural Systems

November 28, 2016 - 1:00 pm

Speaker: Jennifer Cover

Due to their high strength, dimensional stability and positive environmental performance, mass timber building products are quickly becoming materials of choice for sustainably-minded designers. This presentation will provide a detailed look at the variety of mass timber products available, including glue-laminated timber (glulam), cross laminated timber (CLT), nail laminated timber (NLT), heavy timber decking, and other engineered and composite systems. Applications for the use of these products under modern building codes will be discussed, and examples of their use in U.S.

Structural Health Monitoring for Civil Infrastructure Decisions

November 21, 2016 - 1:00 pm

Speaker: Dr. Matthew D. Smith

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) owns, operates, and maintains an immense portfolio of large civil infrastructure ranging from bridges and dams to recreation sites and shoreline. Given the reality of a constrained budget and the declining performance of existing infrastructure assets, making maintenance and repair decisions that maximize the value delivered to the nation is challenging.

Performance-Based Seismic Design of Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco

November 14, 2016 - 1:00 pm

Speaker: Albert Chen, P.E., S.E.

The Transbay Transit Center is a modern multimodal transit center, which will become a physical and symbolic gateway to downtown San Francisco. The three-level above grade steel superstructure accommodates five regional bus transit systems and one intercity bus operator, and the two-level below grade concrete train box serves two rail systems and future California High Speed Rail.