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Research into steel bridges funded by three new Federal Highway Administration grants will fortify American infrastructure
LAWRENCE — Several awards from the Federal Highway Administration to the University of Kansas School of Engineering will enable research to improve and lengthen the life of bridges, a critical part of U.S. infrastructure. “Bridges connect our communities, they provide safe passage of people and goods — and when bridges don’t function, communities and the transfer of those goods don’t function, so they’re absolutely critical to our society,” said Caroline Bennett, professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, who is acting as principal investigator on two of the new grants.
KU Engineering develops curriculum to address workforce shortage in microchip production
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Engineering researcher has received a federal grant to explore using “gamifying” techniques to boost the interest of undergraduate students to learn the design and application of electronic hardware. Tamzidul Hoque, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science, led the group that is splitting the $600,000 award from the National Science Foundation. A third of that money will go to KU.
EPA Region 7, KU Center for Environmental Policy to collaborate on research, opportunities
LAWRENCE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 and KU Center for Research officials have signed an agreement to collaborate on projects and initiatives that will benefit both parties. The agreement, signed during a ceremony Feb. 25, outlines a partnership between EPA Region 7 and the KU Center for Environmental Policy. The memorandum of understanding “offers the promise of exciting and mutually beneficial collaborative activities,” said Dietrich Earnhart, CEP director and professor of economics.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Research into steel bridges funded by three new Federal Highway Administration grants will fortify American infrastructure
LAWRENCE — Several awards from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to the University of Kansas School of Engineering will enable research to improve and lengthen the life of bridges, a critical part of American infrastructure.
“Bridges connect our communities, they provide safe passage of people and goods — and when bridges don’t function, communities and the transfer of those goods don’t function, so they’re absolutely critical to our society,” said Caroline Bennett, professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and Dean R. and Florence W. Frisbie Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, who is acting as principal investigator on two of the new grants.
Bennett pointed to the recent collapse of a 50-year-old Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that injured 10 people as an example of the need to upgrade many steel bridges nationwide.
“These sorts of things are happening with increasing frequency, and when they happen not only does it stop transfer of people and goods but it also really decays people’s faith in our societal functioning and their faith in how our infrastructure works — it decays the faith in this nation,” she said. “All of these projects are focused on improving this. They all speak directly to the heart of making our infrastructure safer, more reliable and better functioning for citizens of the U.S.”
Bennett will serve as the primary investigator on a $258,165, 34-month FHWA grant aimed to develop improved detailing in steel bridges to prevent constraint-induced fractures.
“This is a specific type of fracture that can happen in fabricated steel components when you have detailing that produces something we call ‘constraint’ — when the structure can’t deform freely, localized stresses can build up such that the structure is not able to deform in the way that we expect as engineers. This can cause a brittle fracture, and that can bring a structure down,” she said. “The type of detailing practices that might lead to this really aren’t well understood, and we’ve had a couple of bridge failures over the last few decades that have been attributed to constraint-induced fracture.”
The KU researcher pointed to Milwaukee’s Hoan bridge failure in 2000 as a classic example of constraint-induced fracture, when three girders of the 1.9-mile bridge fractured with no evidence of prior fatigue crack development.
“It was a miracle that no one died because of that failure,” Bennett said. “We know that was caused by constraint-induced fracture, but in terms of avoiding that type of failure in different details and on a large scale, the advice engineers are given is pretty imprecise. Our job is to characterize constraint-induced fracture to help engineers detail and design structures in a way where this does not happen, and that we can more reliably look at existing structures and figure out whether they’re at an elevated risk of experiencing constraint-induced fracture. Also, we’ll equip engineers to figure out how to how to deal with this risk and retrofit a structure should it become important.”
Bennett, with fellow investigators and students from the School of Engineering, will use computational simulations and KU’s West Campus Structural Testing Laboratory to characterize the susceptibility of structural stiffener details in steel bridges to constraint-induced fracture, including thick bearing stiffeners, different constraint-relief gap distances between intersecting structural components and continuous welding at the intersection of the flange-web-connection plate.
A second $112,413, 22-month FHWA grant led by Bennett will investigate how to improve university curricula for graduate students studying design of bridges across the nation. According to Bennett and her co-investigators, “universities have reduced credit hours needed for a degree in structural engineering to focus on ‘the basics’ of a graduate education, often excluding bridge engineering.”
At the same time, codes and specifications governing bridge engineering practice have become increasingly complex, according to the researchers.
“We want to take stock of what is happening in the nation regarding existing university education of engineers who might become bridge engineers — and also take stock of what continuing education currently looks like within bridge engineering — and ask, ‘What can we be doing better?’” Bennett said. “A lot of people who become competent bridge engineers require significant on-the-job training because they have not had a lot of formal education directly mapping to bridges. So, how can we better prepare and support people who are going to be working as bridge engineers?”
Through a review of curricula, surveys and direct discussions with engineering faculty across the nation, Bennett and her co-investigators will determine the state of engineering education for bridge design.
“We can provide a really solid capture of what is happening and where the gaps are as well as pathways for people to improve continuing education and engineering education in university settings,” Bennett said. “We’ll provide guidance on how to implement a backwards design process in both settings.”
William Collins, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering at KU, serves as a co-investigator on both grants headed by Bennett. Further, Collins will lead the KU portion of a $130,000, 22-month FHWA grant headed by Modjeski and Masters, one of the world’s leading bridge engineering firms. The investigation will assess effectiveness of ultra-high toughness (UHT) bridge steel within steel bridge members to improve structural reliability for the fracture limit-state, potentially deeming a fracture-critical designation unnecessary.
“The idea of preventing fracture is a big deal in civil infrastructure, especially for bridges,” Collins said. “When exposed to colder temperatures, steel structures are more susceptible to fracture-related failures. This is not typically a concern in buildings because buildings aren’t exposed to the elements like bridges are. In addition to these projects, Caroline and I do a lot of work examining different ways to monitor and inspect for fatigue and cracks. Rather than the design or inspection aspects of controlling fracture, this third project is focused on the material side of things.”
According to Collins, steel-making capabilities have greatly improved in the past few decades, but steel-bridge designs don’t make the best use of steel’s enhanced performance.
“If we can take advantage of some of that increased fracture toughness we have right now in our steels, we can potentially save money on the inspection and maintenance side of things,” Collins said. “This project is looking at some more advanced steels used in other industries. Steels to build towers for wind turbines, for example, often meet a lot of the criteria we have for bridge steels, but they come with improved material properties — so we may pay a little bit more for that on the front end, but we could save money on the back end with fewer expensive inspections over the 50-, 75- or 100-year life of a bridge.”
Collins’ assessment of UHT steels for bridges will take place at Marshal G. Lutz Fatigue and Fracture Laboratory at the KU School of Engineering’s Measurements, Materials and Sustainable Environment Center.
Collins and Bennett’s work under the three FHWA awards will help advance technology to improve a critical piece of American infrastructure at a time when many of America’s roads, rails and bridges are in urgent need of upgrade or replacement.
“In our transportation system, bridges have the highest cost per mile,” Collins said. “Bridges easily become transportation bottlenecks when they’re out of service, whether that’s because they’ve failed or because you have to close a lane down to do an inspection. While there are some complexities to reroute a road if you’ve got to add an extra lane, adding a lane to a bridge can’t easily be done. You’ve got to essentially build a second bridge or add on to it somehow. It’s a much more difficult problem. So, we’re not just concerned with bridge failures, but functional obsolescence as well. The bridge becomes a bottleneck on the whole system.”
Domenic Coletti with HDR and Duncan Paterson with Benesch are collaborators on both grants led by Bennett. In addition, Kansas City-based Genesis Structures, the Kansas Department of Transportation, Coreslab Structures and High Steel Structures are contributing to Bennett’s grant focused on education.
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Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering
KU Engineering develops curriculum to address workforce shortage in microchip production
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Engineering researcher has received a federal grant to explore using “gamifying” techniques to boost the interest of undergraduate students to learn the design and application of electronic hardware.
Tamzidul Hoque, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science, led the group that is splitting the $600,000 award from the National Science Foundation. A third of that money will go to KU; the rest will go to the University of Florida (UF), where Hoque’s collaborators Pasha Antonenko, Mary Jo Koroly and Swarup Bhunia are based.
The project could eventually have a direct impact on Americans’ pocketbooks, Hoque said. The supply chain crisis has driven inflation during the last year — with new car prices, in particular, skyrocketing because manufacturers have been unable to import enough computer chips that most modern vehicles rely on. Due to the increasing adoption of electronic devices, the global chip shortage could also affect other industries such as aerospace, defense, health care and information technology.
That’s led to a growing interest in rebuilding the United States’ chip-production capacity. Intel announced in January a plan to spend $20 billion on a new plant in Ohio, and the company could spend up to $100 billion over the next decade.
But there’s a catch.
Such infrastructure cannot be used without engineers, scientists and technicians with the ability to design, manufacture and use such sophisticated devices. However, misconceptions surrounding manufacturing jobs among college students, along with the growing popularity of computing jobs related to data analytics and artificial intelligence, motivate students with engineering majors to avoid hardware-related courses throughout their studies, according to Hoque.
Even though programming and coding have received great emphasis at the high school and undergraduate level, fundamental knowledge of electronic hardware, i.e., the innards of a computing system — from bits to circuits to systems — and basic operating principles have not received much attention. The basic hardware-oriented core courses often fail to stimulate interest even among the undergraduate students in computer engineering, computer science and electrical engineering, according to Hoque. Due to the lack of interest, these students largely ignore elective hardware-oriented courses later in their degree and do not consider the thriving semiconductor industry as their career choice.
“The problem we are trying to tackle here is that today in the semiconductor or hardware industry, we don’t have enough workforce, and rapid enhancement to the chip-production capacity is not feasible without that,” Hoque said.
The goal of this project is twofold. One aim is to get more students interested in chip design and manufacturing. The other is to help prepare students in other engineering professions, such as mechanical and biomedical engineers, to use those chips in their systems.
“The students from various majors also need to know a lot about hardware so that they can develop new applications for health care systems, new automotive systems and so on,” Hoque said.
Gamifying the teaching process might jump-start the process by making electronic hardware a more appealing topic to early undergraduate students, motivating them to learn about advanced design and operational concepts by taking higher-level courses.
“That’s why we are trying to develop this new course of the curriculum, which will teach fundamentals of hardware from a system perspective through a hands-on approach to students from any engineering major,” Hoque said. “And we will do that using as many interesting games that can be played on our hardware platform.”
Principal investigator Antonenko and Co-PI Koroly will research and evaluate the feasibility of the games at UF and leverage them for high school students and teachers during summer camps and professional development institutes organized by UF’s Center for Pre-collegiate Education and Training.
During the first two years of the project, high schoolers and their teachers will provide feedback on the design of engaging activities. The educational research will focus on the development of students’ situational interest in hardware engineering and strategies to sustain that interest.
Hoque will use the novel curriculum in a new summer class offered at KU as an elective undergraduate course for all engineering majors.
Hoque said the NSF award reflects well on KU’s reputation in the computer engineering field.
“It definitely helps that at the University of Kansas, we have the facilities to develop such a curriculum,” he said. “I’m very thankful to our department and our associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Engineering, Mario Medina, for their support.”
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Contact: Carrie Caine, Institute for Policy & Social Research, 785-864-9102, [email protected]
EPA Region 7, KU Center for Environmental Policy to collaborate on research, opportunities
LAWRENCE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 and KU Center for Research officials have signed an agreement to collaborate on projects and initiatives that will benefit both parties. The agreement, signed during a ceremony Feb. 25, outlines a partnership between EPA Region 7 and the KU Center for Environmental Policy. The memorandum of understanding “offers the promise of exciting and mutually beneficial collaborative activities,” said Dietrich Earnhart, CEP director and professor of economics.
EPA and CEP will work together to identify research priorities and consult on research. Under the agreement, EPA may make paid and volunteer internship projects available, and CEP will help connect students to those opportunities.
EPA Regional Administrator Meg McCollister, a KU alumna, said the partnership was significant for the pathways it creates for student researchers to work with EPA, calling it “a symbol of mutual interest and appreciation for the generation of up-and-coming research scientists and engineers.”
An upcoming listening session at KU is planned at 7 p.m. April 20 on environmental justice, intended as a component of the KU-EPA relationship.
The partnership also is intended to help students apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world.
“At KU, our vision is to educate leaders, to build healthy communities and to make discoveries that change the world,” said Simon Atkinson, KU vice chancellor for research.
The agreement also provides for EPA Region 7 and CEP to share technical assistance. CEP will help connect the agency to faculty affiliates across disciplines for research-related mini-courses, lectures and seminars, and EPA officials will offer their expertise and training to KU faculty and students. CEP will also help EPA build connections to local communities and community organizations.
At the signing ceremony, Jamie Hofling of the Douglas County Department of Sustainability discussed some of the projects the Douglas County Food Policy Council leads with CEP involvement. These include a pilot program with Just Food to take food waste to the city compost pile rather than a landfill, to recover food from farms and donate it to Just Food, and to help community members avoid food waste when eating restaurant meals. To bolster those efforts, CEP has helped the team collect, analyze and report program data.
“These current local community-engaged research efforts serve as excellent models for broader community engagement within EPA Region 7,” Earnhart said.
EPA was founded in 1970, and today, EPA Region 7 works to protect human health and the environment. EPA Region 7 includes Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri as well as the nine tribal nations: Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, Meskwaki Nation (Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa), Omaha Tribe of Nebraska and Iowa, Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, Santee Sioux Nation and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
The Center for Environmental Policy, which is part of the Institute for Policy & Social Research, draws upon interdisciplinary expertise to explore environmental policies, along with related protection efforts, and their impacts on society and nature. Center-sponsored research projects focus on the human decisions behind the formation and implementation of these policies and efforts, and, in turn, their impacts on the environment and related decisions.
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