Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Astani CEE Seminar
Mon, Feb 04, 2013 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kelly T. Sanders, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering , The University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: The Energy â⬓ Water Nexus: Achieving Cross-cutting Efficiencies Through Better Resource Management
Abstract: Energy and water are vital to economic security and quality of life. Together they enable an ample food supply, electricity production, and safe drinking water. They are also interrelated: energy is required to pump, treat, pressurize, and heat water, and water is critical to producing fuels and cooling power plants. Building on Sandersââ¬â¢ research, this seminar will address both sides of the energy-water nexus to quantify the scale of the relationship and identify synergistic conservation strategies for both resources. The first part of the seminar will discuss research findings that quantified primary energy consumption for water services at the national level. Using a combination of top-down sectoral assessments of energy use together with a bottom-up allocation of energy-for-water on a component-wise and service-specific level, energy use for direct water and steam services was estimated to be 12.3ñ0.3 quadrillion BTUs or 12.6% of 2010 annual primary energy consumption in the United States. The second part of the seminar describes research evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of water conservation schemes through changes to grid-scale power plant dispatch operations in water-scarce regions. Results suggest that shifting the merit order by which power plants are dispatched within the Electric Reliability Council of Texasââ¬â¢ (ERCOT) electric grid can reduce the power sectorââ¬â¢s water withdrawals and water consumption by as much as 90% and 40%, respectively, with an increase in operational costs of about 25-40% based on baseline operating characteristics in 2011. The results of these studies reveal interesting and non-intuitive insights about cross-sectoral conservation benefits. Namely, water conservation in the residential and commercial sectors can yield large energy savings, and changes to the power sector can yield large water savings.
Biography: Kelly T. Sanders received her Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 2007 and a Masterââ¬â¢s Degree from The University of Texas at Austinââ¬â¢s Department of Mechanical Engineering Thermal/Fluids Systems program in 2010. She is currently pursuing a PhD from the University of Texasââ¬â¢ Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. In 2012, Kelly was featured in Forbesââ¬â¢ magazine in its 30 under 30 feature for her research achievements in energy. Her research interests include the nexus of energy, food and water.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 Conference Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Feb 08, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Craig Maloney, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Soft particle suspensions near jamming: structure, diffusion, and rheology.
Abstract: Complex fluids -- suspensions, emulsions, foams, etc. -- can exhibit many of the same behavior as conventional solids: crystallization, dynamical arrest, and development of a shear modulus and yield stress. The volume fraction, Ãâ , of the suspended particles/droplets/bubbles can play the role of temperature in conventional solids. In particular, the random close packing volume fraction, Ãâ rcp, -- very roughly speaking, the volume fraction gumballs occupy when thrown at random into a gumball machine -- plays an analogous role to the glass transition temperature in conventional glass-forming materials like molecular, polymeric, or metallic glasses. Below Ãâ rcp, the suspension is a fluid -- albeit potentially non-Newtonian with a huge viscosity -- while above Ãâ rcp, the suspension has a bonafide zero frequency shear modulus and a corresponding yield stress. This Ãâ -controlled transition from a fluid-like to a solid-like state is called a jamming transition. We will present results on properties of model suspensions of soft, deformable, particles in the jammed state near this transition. In particular, we will show that the internal stresses show anomalous long range correlations with a correlation length that grows as Ãâ approaches Ãâ rcp. We will also discuss how, during steady, quasi-static shearing, long range correlations in the local plastic rearrangements give rise to anomalous behavior in the particle-scale diffusion and how this impacts the rheology.
Host: Prof. Lucio Soibelman
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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CEE Seminar Series
Tue, Feb 12, 2013 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ricardo Taborda, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: High-Frequency Deterministic Earthquake Simulation: Recent Efforts, Present Challenges, and Future Opportunities
Host: Astani CEE Dept
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Feb 15, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Reza Jafarkhani and Daniel Lakeland, CE Ph.D. Candidates
Talk Title: Use of Stochastic Optimization Techniques for Damage Detection in Complex Nonlinear Systems / Philosophy of Science, Continuum Models, and the Molecular Bar
Abstract:
Social-Immediately Following the Seminar in KAP 209
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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CEE Seminar
Tue, Feb 19, 2013 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Zhen (Jason) He, Department of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Talk Title: Novel Bioelectrochemical Systems for Water and Wastewater Treatment
Abstract: As an emerging concept, bioelectrochemical systems (BES) have gained significant attention because of their integrated wastewater treatment and bioenergy recovery. The representatives of BES include microbial fuel cells (MFCs), microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) and microbial desalination cells (MDCs). BES takes advantage of microbial metabolism and electrochemical reactions to oxidize organic compounds and generate electrons that can be extracted as electric energy. This energy can be used either to offset the energy consumption by wastewater treatment, or to drive desalination through integrating drinking water treatment with wastewater treatment. The potential for BES to disrupt current water/wastewater treatment processes is significantâ⬔the treatment plants in the U.S. currently consume a large amount of electricity, whose production requires coal and other heavy-polluting fossil fuels. As a result, the negative effects of energy production on the environment combined with ever-increasing demands for clean water and energy are depleting natureââ¬â¢s resources and ultimately affecting human health. BES offer great promise for treating wastewater and/or desalinating saline water in a more energy-efficient way, and can potentially function as an alternative to todayââ¬â¢s treatment processes. However, the current state of BES for practical application is far from readyâ⬔they still possess challenges that limit their application in treating wastewater/water and producing bioenergy, which require intensive and strategic exploration. This presentation will introduce and discuss two potential applications of BES, bioelectrochemical wastewater treatment and bioelectrochemical desalination, and the key issues/challenges of their research and development. The section ââ¬Åbioelectrochemical wastewater treatmentââ¬Â will focus on MFC configuration, system scaling up, electrochemical limitation, microbial community on electrodes, and electrode modification using carbon nanomaterials. Bioelectrochemical desalination will introduce MDC development. Analysis of energy production, transfer and use in MDCs suggests that MDCs should be operated under a high-current condition. To reduce salinity through dilution by extracting useful water from wastewater, forward osmosis is integrated into MFCs to form osmotic MFCs (OsMFCs). We have hydraulically coupled OsMFCs with MDCs and achieved improved treatment of both wastewater and seawater.
Host: Astani CEE Dept.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Feb 22, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Armen Derkevorkian , CE Ph.D. Candidates
Talk Title: Computational Models for Response Prediction and Change Detection in Nonlinear Soil-Foundation-Superstructure Systems
Abstract: Data-driven reduced-order computational models are proposed to predict the response of complex linear and nonlinear soil-foundation-superstructure (SFS) systems to various non-stationary random excitations. The proposed models are further investigated to establish a general change detection scheme that can be applied on broad range of structural systems. The reduced-order models are developed by incorporating trained neural networks within an ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver and dynamically predicting the response (i.e., displacement and velocity) of the SFS systems to various earthquake records. Then, the models are used for system identification and change detection in the SFS systems. Effects of input delays are investigated in improving the fidelity of the trained networks. The detected changes in the systems are quantified through a measure of a normalized error index. The developed models are tested and validated using experimental data from three relatively large-scale SFS systems. The three systems under consideration consist of identical superstructures with: (a) fixed base; (b) box foundation; and (c) pile foundation. The three SFS systems were developed and experimentally tested at Tongji University. Excitations with various intensity levels were applied on each system to obtain both linear and nonlinear response. It is shown that the general neural network procedure adopted in this paper provides a robust nonlinear model that is reliable for computational studies, as well as furnishing a robust tool for detecting and quantifying inherent change in the target structure.
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Seminar
Mon, Feb 25, 2013 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Christian Hellmich, Ph.D., Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Vienna, Austria
Talk Title: Engineering Science and Mechanics as Key to the Mathematical Identification of "Universal" Patterns Pervading Mineralized Biological Tissues, and Beyond
Abstract:
According to the eminent Austro-American zoologist Rupert Riedl (1925-2005), "ââ¬Â¦ the living world happens to be crowded by universal patterns of organization ââ¬Â¦Ã¢â¬Â. While Riedl, as ââ¬Åclassicalââ¬Â biologist, typically took a descriptive approach to this issue, we ventured, over the last decade and in particular during the last few years, into an engineering science approach of mathematical nature, where we have indeed been successful in identifying ââ¬Å¾universalââ¬Å rules/patterns in structural biology and their mechanical consequences. A majority of our investigations concerned mineralized biological tissues such as bones, for which we identified the following mathematically cast rules: (I) In extracellular bone tissues across different organs from different animals/humans at different ages, mineral (hydroxyapatite) and collagen contents are not randomly assgined to each other, but fulfill astonishingly precise bilinear relations1, which follow from rigorous evaluation of dehydration, demineralization, ashing, and de-organifying test data collected over a time period of more than 80 years of experimental research. Furthermore, (II) the distribution of mineral throughout the extracellular bone matrix or ultrastructure, i.e. its partitioning into the fibrillar and extrafibrillar spaces is governed by the on-average uniformity of hydroxyapatite concentration in the extracollageneous space2, as was evidenced from chemical tests like the ones mentioned before, in combination with transmission electron micrographs. Before mineralization (as well as in unmineralized collageneous tissues such as tendon or cartilage), the fibrillar and extrafibrillar spaces again obey another general rule: (III) Upon hydration, the extrafibrillar space grows propertional to the fibrillar volume gain due to accomodation of water in the intermolecular spaces3, as evidenced from dehydration and neutron diffraction tests. Finally, (IV) mineralization of such tissues is driven by fluid-to-solid phase transformations in the extracollageneous space under closed thermodynamic conditions4, predicting precisely the volume losses which the tissues undergo during mineralization. All these compositional and structural rules may serve as ideal input for multiscale mechanics models for the elasticity5, strength6, and creep7 of bone tissues; enabling various clinical applications, such as Computed Tomography (CT)-based Finite Element (FE) analysis for biomaterial design8.
The knowledge we gained in studying biological tissue, was also instrumental in driving forward the multiscale mechanics of wood9, ceramics10, and concrete11, materials that share quite some microstructural, chemical, and mechanical features with bone.
Biography: Dr. Christian Hellmich is Full Professor for Strength of Materials and Computational Mechanics in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). At this university, he received his engineering degree in 1995, his Ph.D. Degree in 1999, and his Habilitation degree in 2004. Between 2000 and 2002, he was a Max Kade Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work is strongly focussed on well-validated material and (micro)structural models, both for materials such as concrete, soil, rock, wood, or bone as well as man-made biomaterials, and for structures such as tunnels, pipelines, bridges, or the vertebrate skeleton including implants and tissue engineering scaffolds - with complementary experimental activities if necessary. He has held several leadership positions in projects with the tunnel and pipeline industry, as well as in the interdisciplinary and international material research activities sponsored by the European Commission, including his role as the coordinator of the mixed industry-academia consortium ââ¬ÅBIO-CT-EXPLOITââ¬Â, merging computer tomography with continuum micromechanics. He has published 85 papers in international refereed scientific journals in the fields of engineering mechanics, materials science, and theoretical biology, 19 book chapters, and more than 100 papers in refereed conference proceedings. Dr. Hellmich has served as the Chairman of both the Properties of Materials Committee of the Engineering Mechanics Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Poromechanics Committee of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, as associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE), and in the editorial board for six other journals. As community service, he has (co-)chaired and/or supported more than 50 international conferences, and reviewed for 71 scientific journals and 11 science foundations. He was awarded the Kardinal Innitzer Science Award of the Archbishopry of Vienna in 2004 (for his habilitation thesis), the Science Award of the State of Lower Austria in 2005 (for his achievements in the micromechanics of hierarchical composites), and he was the recipient of the 2008 Zienkiewicz Award for Young Scientists in Computational Engineering Sciences, sponsored by the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS). For further activities in the multiscale poro-micromechanics of bone materials, he received one of the highly prestigious ERC Grants of the European Research Council in 2010: and he was elected member the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 2012, he was rewarded the prestigious Walter L. Huber Research Prize of the ASCE, for his contributions to the microporomechanics of hierarchical geomaterials and biomaterials.
Host: Prof. Roger Ghanem
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 Conference Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Seminar
Tue, Feb 26, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Mardavij Roozbehani , Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Talk Title: Efficiency and Risk Tradeoffs in Dynamic Multi-Agent Networked Systems
Abstract: In this talk, we first introduce a few problems that arise in the context of modeling, analysis, and design of future power networks, and in characterization of the trade-offs that exist among different performance and robustness objectives in such networks. We will then introduce a specific model of a dynamic oligopolistic energy market, in which, a set of distributed agents with market power dynamically update their output (consumption or production) decisions. In this model, the agents have complete knowledge of how their decisions affect the market price, and are fully rational in strategizing their decisions to minimize their expected cost. By characterizing the statistics of the stationary aggregate output process across a spectrum of networks from fully cooperative to fully non-cooperative, we show that a tradeoff exists between efficiency (aggregate system cost) and risk (tail probability of aggregate output). Although the non-cooperative network leads to an efficiency loss - widely known as the "price of anarchy" - the stationary distribution of the corresponding aggregate output process has a smaller tail, whereas, the cooperative network achieves higher efficiency at the cost of a higher probability of output spikes. Furthermore, the cooperative network has a smaller output variance, which can be interpreted as higher robustness to disturbances, but it also has a higher probability of large output spikes, which can be interpreted as higher fragility to certain disturbances. We then establish the connection between these tradeoffs and some results from the classical control literature, and conclude with suggestions for future research directions.
Biography: Mardavij Roozbehani is a principal research scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2008. His Ph.D. research focused on developing a control theoretic framework for verification and implementation of software systems. Between 2008 and 2011 he held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at MIT, LIDS, focusing on applications of control and optimization in power systems and energy networks. His current research interests and activities include distributed and networked control systems, software and finite-state control systems, and dynamics and economics of energy networks with an emphasis on robustness and risk. Dr Roozbehani is the recipient of the 2007 AIAA graduate award for safety verification of real-time software systems.
Host: Dr. Ketan Savla
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes