News
News
News
Professor Emeritus Ned H. Burns passed away on
November 5, 2016, in Austin. An outstanding teacher, administrator and structural engineering researcher, he served The University of Texas at Austin for nearly 40 years.
Ned graduated as valedictorian from Texas High School in Texarkana, Texas and earned a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 1954.
After two years in the U.S. Army, Ned completed a master’s degree at UT Austin in 1958 and a PhD in civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1962.
Ned returned to The University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor in 1962, became a professor in 1972 and was named Zarrow Centennial Professor in 1983. He served Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for Engineering for four years and Director of Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory for three years. Throughout the years, he also received numerous awards for exceptional teaching and advising at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
At the end of each semester, he would share his philosophy of engineering and life with students: "The truly great man is he who plants shade trees that he will never sit under."
An expert in the area of prestressed concrete, Ned was the first to test the concept of banded tendons that is now standard industry practice for the construction of slabs. He was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2000 “for contributions to development and education in prestressed concrete including unbounded tendon building slabs and high-performance concrete bridges.”
Along with T.Y. Lin, Ned co-authored the textbook, "Design of Prestressed Concrete”, a source book in the industry for the analysis and design of prestressed structures for many decades. He was awarded the ACI Joe W. Kelly Award in recognition of his contribution to education and received the PCI Distinguished Professor Award in 2000. He is a fellow of the ACI, PCI and PTI and ASCE and was named Engineer of the Year by the Travis Chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers in 2000. Ned retired in 2001.
“Ned was a wonderful colleague,” said Department Chair Richard Corsi. “He was both incredibly bright and a gentleman in the very truest sense of the word. He will be missed.”
Ned and his wife Martha were married for 61 years and have three children. He was dedicated to his family and church and also enjoyed woodworking and furniture building. He loved to travel with Martha and enjoyed many trips to Peru, Brazil, Europe, China, Thailand, Japan, Hawaii and many other places in North America.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given $3.9 million to researchers in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin to establish the new Center for Infrastructure Modeling and Management, which will develop and improve open source water infrastructure models and share tools and research findings to assist local communities and stakeholders.
“Cities around the world are struggling to manage flooding and pollution from storm water runoff, and climate change is making things even more urgent,” said EPA regional administrator Ron Curry. “UT Austin will help develop sustainable solutions to 21st-century water problems, while working with communities and coders to promote green infrastructure.”
UT Austin is leading the center in partnership with the Urban Watersheds Research Institute (UWRI), a Colorado-based nonprofit that conducts and promotes research in support of finding sustainable storm water runoff management practices. UT Austin will lead the research focus of the center, while UWRI will organize software deployment, community building and training. Scientists from Brigham Young University, Texas Tech University and North Carolina State University will contribute in both research and outreach for the center.
The center will offer a website (www.ncimm.org), allowing for community engagement with individuals interested in water infrastructure modeling. It will provide training and support services to interested users, making it a hub for those who are interested in software application or water infrastructure modeling research. The center is co-led by Ben Hodges, associate professor in the Cockrell School’s Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering; and Charles Rowney, a research fellow in UT Austin’s Center for Water and the Environment.
“The focus in our department is on cities, water and energy and developing the tools that are so vital to monitoring and improving those areas,” Hodges said. “We are excited to build the Center for Infrastructure Modeling and Management and scale it up to solve some of the biggest problems facing our communities.”
The two lead researchers have assembled a cross disciplinary team, including domain experts for hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, as well as experts in municipal infrastructure, data management and related core technologies.
“Proven real-world skills meshed with world-class research capabilities will give the center an outstanding balance of theory and practice across all technical aspects of the program,” Rowney said.
The center will start by preserving, promoting and extending two tools already developed by the EPA — the Storm Water Management Model, a water quality simulation model used throughout the world for planning, analysis and design related to storm water runoff, sewers, and other drainage systems; and EPANET, a public-domain software that models water distribution piping systems.
“This project ties into our nation’s aging infrastructure,” Hodges said. “If there are potential flooding problems, we want to understand where in the storm water drainage system chain that happens and where to fix it. On the pipe distribution network side, the big issues we have are water losses through leaks in decaying infrastructure, and contamination, such as occurred in Flint, Michigan. Part of our goal is to enhance the model’s ability to answer critical water quality questions for the water supply.”
The center will work with stakeholders to conduct research and update and enhance these tools so they can continue to be useful. Because the center will be working with crowdsourced contributions, a licensing model will also be developed.
“The EPANET and SWMM models have been pivotal technologies for decades, and the opportunity to work with the communities that have created and supported them, and to help build a new and even stronger technical foundation for the future, is truly a privilege,” Rowney said.
For more information about the EPA’s water research grants, visit epa.gov/research-grants/water-research-grants.
Research Engineer Hossein Yousefpour (Ph.D. 2015) received the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute’s 2016 Robert J. Lyman Award for a paper that provides unique insight into the behavior of concrete arches built by an accelerated construction method.
The award, named in honor of PCI’s third president, recognizes a paper that offers the greatest contribution to the advancement of plant production, site erection, or general construction of precast concrete structures. The paper, “Construction Stresses in the World’s First Precast Network Arch Bridge”, was co-authored by Professor Todd Helwig and Professor Oguzhan Bayrak, who also received the award.
The researchers reported major findings from a monitoring study on the West Seventh Street Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas. Designed by the Texas Department of Transportation, the bridge is believed to be the first precast concrete network arch bridge in the world.
The innovative bridge, completed in 2013 as a replacement for a century-old bridge, consists of 12 prestressed, precast concrete network arches. Due to the state-of-the-art construction of this bridge, some of the most critical stresses in the life of the arches occurred during construction. The research team conducted an instrumentation program to make sure that the arches were not damaged during the fabrication, transport, and erection procedures.
They instrumented the bridge with 224 vibrating-wire gages that were embedded in the arches prior to concrete placement. The gages were monitored during post-tensioning, handling, and transport as well as deck construction.
The instrumentation provided data on the stresses induced in the arches, which were used to ensure a safe environment throughout construction. The measurements also provided a means for evaluating the accuracy of stress calculations that were made during design.
This research was also featured in the PCI Journal September-October 2015 issue.
Students will focus on creating solutions to environmental challenges facing the planet.
Professor Kerry Kinney and Associate Professor Atila Novoselac have completed a study of the air quality inside portable classrooms. The research team collected a detailed set of building ventilation and microbiological measurements from school portables and made suggestions for low-cost methods to improve the indoor air quality in these increasingly common structures.
Over one third of U.S. schools use portables, also known as temporary buildings, to provide classroom space when there is a capacity shortage. The research team is particularly interested in understanding the relationship between ventilation factors and the microorganisms and pollutants that are found in the air within these portables.
Their study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, found that while portables all tend to look the same, they can vary substantially in construction, design and operation. They also found that even though portable classrooms are different from conventional classrooms, the indoor levels of carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds in the older portables were similar to those found in conventional classrooms.
Fourteen portable classrooms situated in a hot and humid climate were investigated, with nine classrooms selected for detailed examination. The HVAC system, building, and environmental conditions were characterized in these classrooms. The classrooms were similar in size with a suspended ceiling or a small attic space; a crawl space also existed beneath each portable. Each portable building contained two classrooms, divided by an interior wall.
In some cases, the attic spaces were vented to the outdoors. When combined with loose-fitting suspended ceiling tiles, this vented attic creates a large leakage path of indoor air to the outdoors and vice versa. Open vents may allow wildlife or unwanted pests to enter into the attic space. The leaky ceiling and attic space also make pressurization of the occupied space difficult.
A properly operating mechanical ventilation system could provide the necessary pressurization of the conditioned/occupied space while controlling the source of fresh air and preventing air from crawl spaces or attics from entering the classroom. However, this was not the case in many of the tested classrooms, where insufficient pressurization allowed wind and temperature differences between the indoor and outdoor environment to drive uncontrolled airflow from the attic and crawl spaces into the classroom.
Microbial samples collected during the study indicate that some of the microorganisms found in the indoor air were also found in the attic and vice versa, suggesting that there is communication between the spaces. Not surprisingly, though, human-associated bacteria were the most commonly detected taxa in the indoor air of these classrooms, which are typically occupied by 20 to 25 students. Also, positively pressurizing the classroom with fresh outside air increased the fraction of outdoor microorganisms in the indoor air, although human-associated taxa persisted.
The HVAC systems also differed substantially from portable to portable, with most being undersized and/or improperly configured for fresh air delivery. A frequent finding was that the fresh air intake system was disabled by closing the fresh air damper or by taping over the external air vents; anecdotal evidence suggests that this was done to overcome insufficient cooling capacity in the HVAC units. Only one portable in the study had a fresh air intake system with sufficient capacity to operate as intended.
Only a few of the classrooms investigated in this study met the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard requirements for ventilation; the majority of classrooms had a slightly lower ventilation rate than the standard’s recommendation. The results also show that buildings with a vented attic allowed for more uncontrolled infiltration due to weather-related pressure changes than their counterparts with non-vented attics. This resulted in greater overall ventilation rates for vented vs. non-vented attics.
Many of the indoor air quality indicators found in portable classrooms were similar to those found in regular classrooms. When comparing overall ventilation rates and indoor CO2, VOC and formaldehyde concentrations, the portable classrooms were similar to standard school buildings. It is important to note that for standard classroom buildings the air quality is managed through controlled ventilation, since interior classrooms of a large school building cannot directly exchange air with the outdoor environment. This differs from the infiltration ventilation mechanism prevalent in portable buildings, where every surface – walls, ceilings, and floors - leads to the outdoor environment.
The leakiness of the portable building shell combined with their proximity to the outdoor space results in overall ventilation rates similar to those found in typical school buildings and, thus, similar environmental conditions. However, this proximity to the outdoor environment also brings with it other issues. For instance, evidence of water intrusion due to weather was commonly found in portable classrooms.
The results collected to date suggest that several relatively easy solutions can be implemented to improve ventilation conditions and minimize uncontrolled ventilation in portables. These include:
- AC units should be sized for expected loads, which eliminates the need to close or disable the fresh air vents.
- The HVAC system should be designed to deliver fresh air independent of the cooling load through a dedicated ventilation system.
- Attics should be unvented, with insulation installed against the rafters rather than on top of the suspended ceiling; this will allow for positive pressurization of the occupied space to control infiltration.
- Regular maintenance of the portables should include verification of positive pressurization (2.5 – 5Pa) and proper ventilation (typically >3 air changes per hour); this will prevent uncontrolled infiltration that could transport undesirable pollutants into the occupied space.
Portables are here to stay as a cost-effective solution for schools trying to meet student enrollment demands. Since portable classroom buildings often remain in place for extended periods of time, it is important that they be treated the same as permanent school buildings.
Professor Ellen Rathje has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). She is recognized for contributions to civil engineering including research accomplishments in geotechnical earthquake engineering and leadership in technical organizations and large, collaborative projects.
ASCE Fellows have made celebrated contributions and developed creative solutions that change lives around the world. It is a prestigious honor held by fewer than 3.5% of ASCE members.
Rathje is the Warren S. Bellows Centennial Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering and is currently the principal investigator for the DesignSafe-ci.org cyberinfrastructure for the NSF-funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure. Her research spans the technical areas of seismic-site response analysis, seismic-slope stability, and satellite remote sensing of geotechnical phenomena.
Within earthquake engineering, she has promoted the incorporation of uncertainty in site-response analysis and seismic-slope stability analysis, and has developed tools and approaches for use in engineering practice. She also helped pioneer the application of satellite remote sensing to geotechnical engineering, using optical satellite imagery to document the occurrence of earthquake-induced landslides and measure ground displacements due to landslides and liquefaction.
"Being involved in earthquake engineering research is rewarding to me because it has the potential to save lives and reduce the effects of earthquakes on communities," said Rathje.
Rathje has taken on important leadership roles in various organizations. Since joining ASCE as an undergraduate student, she has remained active in the organization through the Geo-Institute’s Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics Committee and the Geo-Institute’s Awards Committee. From 2007 to 2015 she was an Associate Editor for the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.
She is a founding member and current co-chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association. She was also a member of the board of directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute from 2010 to 2013.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering is once again ranked in the top 10 in U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings, strengthening the department's position as one of the nation’s elite engineering departments.
The undergraduate program in Civil Engineering is ranked No. 4 and the Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering is ranked No. 7.
In addition, the Cockrell School of Engineering is ranked as the No.11 best engineering school in the country, and several of UT Austin’s engineering programs ranked in the nation’s top 10 for their respective programs, according to U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings released on Sept. 13.
Assistant Professor Paola Passalacqua has been selected to receive the 2016 Association of Environmental Engineering & Science (AEESP) Award for Outstanding Teaching in Environmental Engineering and Science.
This nationally recognized award within the environmental engineering and science profession is given annually to honor a faculty member (typically early-career faculty) who has made substantive contributions toward excellence in classroom performance and related activities, both at the individual's home institution and beyond.
Award winners demonstrate extensive knowledge of the subject area, commitment to professional mentoring and inventiveness in design of classroom and field activities that motivate and challenge students.
“I’m very honored to receive this award and thankful to the colleagues and students who have supported my nomination and who have given me feedback," said Passalacqua. "Teaching gives me the opportunity to interact with students, improving me as a person, a teacher, and a researcher.”
Passalacqua’s research interests lie at the intersection of water resources engineering, hydrologic sciences, and geomorphology. The goal of her program is to advance our understanding of how topographic patterns arise, evolve, and interact with climate and ecosystems in order to improve predictions of the response of the Earth-surface to disturbance and change and develop sustainable management solutions. Her research group merges the analysis of remote sensing data (high-resolution topographic data – LIDAR Light Detection and Ranging - and satellite images), numerical modeling, statistical analysis, and fieldwork.
She will receive the award at the Water Environment Federation’s Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference on Sept. 26 in New Orleans, LA.
Professor Kenneth Stokoe, the Jennie C. and Milton T. Graves chair in engineering, was recently named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Distinguished Membership is the highest honor ASCE can bestow. It is reserved for civil engineers who have attained eminence in some branch of engineering or in related arts and sciences, including the fields of engineering education and construction. Stokoe is recognized for world-renowned contributions to the understanding of soil dynamics in geotechnical engineering.
Several of Stokoe's developments are commonly used by engineers worldwide, including resonant column apparatus to assess soil properties, cross-hole seismic methods for measuring in situ wave velocities in soil and rock, and a spectral-analysis-of-surface-waves method for geotechnical and earthquake engineering applications.
Stokoe was an early advocate of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program at the National Science Foundation, and his team at The University of Texas at Austin developed a world-class, large-scale, mobile field capability for nonintrusive and nondestructive characterization of the ground. He was also the first to measure modulus degradation of soil in situ using the large NEES Center shakers.
As an educator, he has mentored many graduate and doctorate students and has played a key role in elevating the geotechnical engineering program at The University of Texas at Austin. His former students have gone on to successful careers in academia, business and government, a great source of pride for Stokoe. "I simply enjoy what I do," said Stokoe.
“This recognition is a reflection of the tremendous advancements that Ken has made in civil engineering, and particularly in geotechnical engineering," said Department Chair Richard Corsi. “His efforts contribute to our great stature as an academic community.”
Stokoe’s research achievements have earned him several awards, including the Karl Terzaghi Lecture and the H. Bolton Seed Medal from ASCE, the Harold Mooney Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysics, the Frank Friechkenect Award from the Engineering and Environmental Geophysics Society, and the C.A. Hogentogler Award from the American Society for Testing and Materials.
The 2016 class of Distinguished Members will receive their honors at the ASCE 2016 Convention, which will be held in Portland, OR, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1.