Category: Announcements

Friday, August 22:
9:00 – 9:30am – Refreshments (Outside CEEB 1017)
9:30 – 10:30am – Orientation Presentation (CEEB 1017)
10:30 – 11:00am – Break (Outside CEEB 1017)
11:00 – 12:00pm – Area Meetings
1:30 – GEO Presentation (CEEB 1017)

Area Meeting	Room#/Building
Construction Management	3310 Newmark
Construction Materials	2117 Newmark
Environmental	3350 Newmark
EWES/SRIS	2310 Newmark
Geotech	2218 Newmark
Structures	1310 Newmark
Transportation	1311 Newmark
WRES	2311 Newmark
3+2/BS+MS	Thursday, 4pm Quade Conference Room 1220 Newmark

A new study led by Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Shelly Zhang developed a new composite material designed to change behaviors depending on temperature to perform specific tasks. The team first used computer modeling to conceptualize a two-polymer composite that can behave differently under various temperatures based on user input or autonomous sensing.

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Professor Bassem Andrawes will lead a new research center with the goal of improving the durability and extending the life of transportation infrastructure by advancing the technologies used in precast concrete systems, thanks to a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a University Transportation Center.  The Transportation Infrastructure Precast Innovation Center (TRANS-IPIC) will be a consortium of five universities, including Purdue University, Louisiana State University, SUNY University at Buffalo and the University of Texas San Antonio.

“Deterioration of transportation infrastructure is a pressing national problem,” Andrawes said. “We cannot address this critical problem without adopting transformative technologies that are specifically tailored for transportation infrastructure systems. Many of the emerging technologies such as nano and high-performance materials, robotics and automated manufacturing sound exciting theoretically, but are faced with major practical challenges that hinder or prevent their application.”

A major reason for this issue, he said, is the difficulty and high cost of incorporating these very delicate technologies into the construction site using conventional construction techniques. Providing a well-controlled manufacturing environment would significantly increase the feasibility of incorporating these new technologies in the delivery, maintenance and management of transportation infrastructure.

Precast concrete (PC) is, by definition, manufactured in a controlled environment, so the path for introducing and implementing new technologies that can drastically and swiftly impact the durability and service life of infrastructure is much more feasible and straightforward using PC.

“A quite large sector of our transportation infrastructure is built or repaired using PC – for example, bridges, tunnels, railroads, pavement and ports – so deploying new PC technologies will impact the durability of multiple modes of transportation,” Andrawes said.

The new center will focus on the following three key research topic areas: A) Application of New Materials and Technologies, B) Construction Methodologies and Management, and C) Condition Monitoring and Remote Sensing. The research that TRANS-IPIC will offer will play a significant role in supporting the U.S. DOT Strategic Plan goals including Transformation, Climate & Sustainability, and Safety.

TRANS-IPIC’s mission is to leverage research innovation and strong industry support to foster research and education that focus on utilizing PC and its related technologies as an economic approach to provide a quick boost for the durability, safety and climate-adaptability of various modes of transportation networks in the U.S. through infrastructure repair or reconstruction. The consortium will address various aspects of PC technologies including materials, design, modeling, manufacturing, quality control, installation, operations and condition assessment.

The research that will be carried out through the center will focus on a broad range of innovative topics pertinent to the advancement of the durability, resilience and economics of PC transportation infrastructure. TRANS-IPIC researchers will study the use of PC-related solutions that are based on innovative and smart materials – for example, smart composites and metals – and novel emerging manufacturing methods that involve robotics and automated manufacturing – for example, 3D printing, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Building Information Modeling – guided by big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence.

The center will also provide long-term solutions by replacing our existing infrastructure with more durable components that are built in a controlled environment with advanced durable materials – for example, ultra-high performance concrete, fiber reinforced concrete and fiber reinforced polymers – and built more efficiently to reduce cost and carbon emissions and increase quality and productivity using advanced design optimization techniques like topology optimization, innovative manufacturing methods, quality control technologies and industrial operating processes.

The center will also work on developing a new generation of intelligent transportation infrastructure that has an innovative built-in capability of self-condition assessment using smart materials and remote sensing.

Source

CEE assistant professor Shelly Zhang has received the 2023 Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). 

The AFOSR is the basic research arm of the Air Force Research Laboratory. They have awarded $25 million to 58 scientists and engineers from 44 research institutions and businesses from around the United States. 

YIP recipients receive 3-year grants of up to $450,000. For this award session, AFSOR received more than 175 proposals requesting around $78.5 million in FY23 funding. 

Zhang said her project “aims to create a generative design approach and validation strategy for next generation, light-weight composite flight structures made of multiple materials with dissimilar properties.”

The goal is to improve the strength and durability of structures under dynamic environments, Zhang said.

“Composites are commonly used in flight structures because of their excellent performance under extreme conditions, but current composite structures are often designed based on intuition and may not fully consider all potential configurations with superior properties,” Zhang said. “To address this, we will develop a multi-material design optimization approach. By leveraging optimization theory, mechanics and computational models, this approach will simultaneously maximize the stiffness, strength and toughness of light-weight composite structures to find the optimal structural shape and distribution of multiple material phases.”

Zhang’s group will use 3D printing techniques to build prototypes and validate their performance based on strength. 

Zhang is one of four faculty members from The Grainger College of Engineering who were awarded funding from YIP in this round.

Source:  https://cee.illinois.edu/news/Zhang2023YIP