UCLA Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate Student Announcements

https://www.cee.ucla.edu/events/cee-200-sec-1-seminar-mo-li/ UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department C&EE 200 Section 1 Seminar Structural, Geotechnical and Civil Engineering Materials Multifunctional Cementitious Materials for Addressing Infrastructure Challenges Mo Li, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine Today’s needs to improve concrete infrastructure service life and resilience are challenged by the limitations with concrete materials that are intrinsically quasi-brittle, and the absence of spatial damage sensing methods to inform timely maintenance and prevent structural failure. Concrete is susceptible to cracking and deterioration under service conditions and damage under extreme hazard events. Current management practices of concrete infrastructure rely on regular visual inspections that can be subjective and are limited to accessible locations. Structural health monitoring approaches mainly depend on point...

cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Geo-Engineering for Sustainability of Energy Infrastructures Shahrzad Roshankhah, Ph.D. Post-Doctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology Energy related geo-systems involve a wide range of engineering solutions from deep fossil fuel and geothermal energy reservoirs and energy piles to energy geo-storage facilities and waste repositories (CO2 and nuclear). The analysis and optimum design of these systems require proper understanding of geo-materials including their response to extreme temperature and high stress excitations, the implications of mixed-fluid conditions when contrasting fluid viscosities and densities are involved, the effect of static and cyclic coupled hydro-thermo-chemo-mechanical excitations and rate effects on the behavior of long lifetime facilities. In the first part of this talk, we will review the fundamentals of heat conduction in con...

UCLA Dept Public Health-Health Policy and Management   UCLA Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering C & EE 200 Seminar 4275 Boelter hall   11:00 - 12:00, Thursday, May 17, 2018   The Salton Sea: Status and Review of Remediation Alternatives   By   Bruce Wilcox Assistant Secretary for Salton Sea Policy California Natural Resources Agency

cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Seismic Evaluation of Existing Buildings (Physical Testing of a Prototype Building) Ellie Moore Doctoral Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA After passing the mandate by the City of Los Angeles on seismic evaluation of existing non-ductile concrete buildings and a retrofit plan for the non-conforming ones, the need to further evaluate, and/or update ASCE41-13 parameters has become more apparent.  Physical testing of a building subassembly is a powerful tool to provide realistic information on the performance level of existing buildings under seismic loads, as well as to better demonstrate the governing modes of failure of the system working together, rather than evaluating members individually.  The subject of this research is a non-ductile concrete moment frame building located on the UCLA campus.  The preliminary evaluations of the b...

cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Engineering of a Shrouded Wind Turbine: Design Challenges and the Need for Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration Omer O. Erbay Senior Project Manager Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. ooerbay@sgh.com    |    www.sgh.com Wind turbines are complex machines designed to harvest energy from wind.  These machines constantly evolve and come in different forms to capture the wind energy as efficiently as possible.  Each new wind turbine concept, whether to be located at the top of a mountain, in the middle of an ocean, at the roof of a building, along the side of a bridge, or at the top of an electrical pole, requires collaborative effort of a multi-disciplinary group of people to overcome its design challenges.  Coordination of such a multi-disciplinary group also comes with its own challenges. This talk will present some of the struc...

cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Measuring, Monitoring and Evaluating Community Resilience using Remote Sensing Technologies Ronald T. Eguchi President & CEO ImageCat, California                                                                             rte@imagecatinc.com |    www.imagecatinc.com In many instances, disasters act as catalysts in the adoption of new and emerging technologies.  Spawned by the need to rapidly collect vital information for disaster management, technology innovations have o...

cee200: Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Nitrate Removal by Biochar-Amended Woodchip Biofilters Alexander Berger Master’s Student Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA Stormwater biofilters, particularly woodchip biofilters, have been used to remove nitrate from stormwater, but their performance is expected to decrease under extreme weather conditions such as prolonged drying and high rainfall intensity, which are expected to be more frequent during climate change. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of antecedent drying conditions and rainfall intensity on nitrate removal capacity of woodchip biofilters and evaluate whether addition fo biochar would decrease the detrimental effect of high intensity rainfall on nitrate removal. Nitrate removal capacity of biochar-amended woodchip biofilters (0-20% biochar by volume) were compared at storm event with different rainfall intensities (...

CEE 200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Data-driven structural seismic response reconstruction framework: a machine learning perspective Han Sun Ph.D. Candidate University of California, Los Angeles Strucutral seismic resilience society has been grown rapidly in the past three decades. Extensive probabilistic techniques have been developed to address uncertainties from ground motions and building systems to reduce structural damage, economic loss and social impact of buildings subjected to seismic hazards where seismic structural responses are essential and often are retrieved through Nonlinear Response History Analysis. This process is largely limited by availability of model, ground motion time history and computational effort. An alternative data-driven framework is proposed to reconstruct structure responses through machine learning techniques from limited available sources which may potentially b...

cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Taking Care of Aging Infrastructure: An Owner’s Engineer Perspective Albert Kottke, Ph.D. Geotechnical Earthquake Engineer, Pacific Gas & Electric The role of an owner’s engineer is the caretaker of existing infrastructure. They are responsible for continually evaluating exists structures and deciding which are safe, which need to be retrofitted, and which need to be sold or decommissioned. Decisions that seemed insignificant at the time of design or construction may end up being significant issues after years of service. This presentation will introduce Pacific Gas and Electric and the assets that are vulnerable to seismic and geotechnical hazards. Specific examples will include pipelines that cross faults, seismic hazard evaluation, and dam deformation studies. Where:   Haines Hall 220 When:    4 - 6 PM, Tuesday, April 24 Dr. Albert Kottk...

cee200: Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Response and Recovery of Microbial Communities Subjected to Oxidative Treatment Train of 1,4-Dioxane Contaminant Mixtures Yu (Rain) Miao Doctoral Candidate Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, UCLA                                                 The effects of novel combined oxidation and biodegradation strategies on soil microbial community was studied, of a mixture with different levels of 1,4-dioxane and chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs). Oxidation by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) produced ~80% elimination of 1,4-dioxane regardless of the initial concentrations, while was inhibited partly by the high lev...

https://www.cee.ucla.edu/events/cee-200-sec-1-seminar-xinzheng-lu-special-date-time/ cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Nonlinear Time-History Analysis of Super-Tall Buildings and Large Cities Xinzheng Lu, Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China  luxz@tsinghua.edu.cn | www.luxinzheng.net Earthquakes severely threaten the safety of super-tall buildings and large cities. Because many modern super-tall buildings (> 500 m) and large cities are lack of sufficient historical earthquake experiences to establish the empirical models, the nonlinear time-history analysis (THA), which strictly follows the fundamentals of structural dynamics, is used in this study to predict the seismic response of super-tall buildings and tens of thousands of buildings in a city. The proposed model for earthquake-induced collapse simulation of super-tall buildings has been successfully used in the design of ...

https://www.cee.ucla.edu/events/cee-200-sec-1-seminar-paulo-lourenco/ cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department   Masonry structures: traditional or modern? High level research, professional practice and innovation   Paulo B. Lourenço Professor University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal pbl@civil.uminho.pt | www.hms.civil.uminho.pt Modern societies understand built cultural heritage as a landmark of culture and diversity. During the last decades the idea that ancient buildings could be conserved and reused became appealing. Large investments have been concentrated in this field, leading to impressive developments in the areas of inspection, non-destructive testing, monitoring and structural analysis of historical constructions. These developments, and recent guidelines for reuse and conservation, allow for safer, economical and more adequate remedial measures. The presentation first addresses...

https://www.cee.ucla.edu/events/cee-200-sec-2-seminar-eric-hoek/ Impacts of water quality, membrane material and operating conditions on the performance and economics of MF/UF membranes in water and wastewater treatment Eric Hoek, Ph.D. Eric M.V. Hoek is a Professor in the UCLA Department Civil & Environmental Engineering. His UCLA research group explores the union of nanomaterials and membrane technologies for water, energy, biomedical and environmental applications. In the past decade, he has co-authored over a hundred scientific articles, book chapters, patents and proceedings papers, is a former Editor of the journal Desalination and recently co-edited  The Encyclopedia of Membrane Science & Technology  for John Wiley & Sons.Hoek also enjoys applying his basic research knowledge to practical applications having consulted for a range of private companies, law firms, US federal, state and local agencies, private research foundations, NGOs and foreign nation...