Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Mon, Feb 03, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ruggiero Lovreglio, Massey University, New Zealand
Talk Title: Virtual and Augmented Reality Application for Human Behavior in Disasters
Abstract: Abstract: Understanding how people behave during disasters is fundamental to enhance the safety of building from the design stage to the maintenance stage. To date, new technologies can be used to facilitate the investigation of human behaviour and training. This presentation will illustrate the Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications carried out by Dr Lovreglio et al. to investigate the evacuation behaviour in building fires and earthquakes and for safety training. The presentation will highlight the advantages and limitations of these technologies as well as possible future implementations of VR and AR.
Biography: Biography: Dr Ruggiero Lovreglio (known as Rino) is Senior Lecturer at Massey University (New Zealand) where he teaches Digital Construction and Research Methods. He got his PhD in 2016 from the Scuola Interpolitecnica (Politecnico di Bari, Milano e Torino) on Human Behaviour in Fire. To date, he has been investigating human behaviour in several disasters such as building fires, earthquakes and wildfires. His research uses new technologies such as Virtual and Augmented Reality to investigate behaviours and training people. He has published more than 50 papers, 30 of them are journal articles. He is an Associate Editor for Safety Science (IF: 3.6), a member of the Editorial Board of Fire Technology (IF: 1.4) and co-author of the 6th edition of the SFPE Handbook. More info regarding Dr Lovreglio previous working experience and achievements is available at http://www.lovreglio.info
Dr Ruggiero Lovreglio
PhD, MEng, BEng
Associate Editor, Safety Science
Editorial Member, Fire Technology
Host: Dr. Burcin Becerik-Gerber
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Vanderley M. John, Ph.D.
Wed, Feb 12, 2020 @ 02:00 AM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Vanderley M. John, Ph.D., Professor of Building Materials Construction Engineering, Polytechnic School, University of Sao Paulo
Talk Title: Overview of Research on low-carbon cement and industrial ecology at Poli USP
Abstract: Overview of Research on low-carbon cement and industrial ecology at Poli USP
Vanderley M. John
Professor of Building Materials of Polytechnic School, University of Sao Paulo.
The environmental crisis, the global demand for more and better-built environment, adaptation to population aging and the digital industrial revolution are setting an accelerating pace of innovation. The construction sector will be forced to innovate.
To make possible the reduction of environmental impacts we need metrics suited to use in today's decision-making made by non-experts. LCA is too expensive and complex for that. From a construction point of view, it is incomplete. Its efficacy is reduced by generalized use of secondary data, which also defeats the capacity to identify the best supplier and drive poor performers out of the market. Producing meaningful benchmarks for each LCA indicator is unpractical. Results of ongoing research focused on developing simplified LCA-based metrics, focused on construction grand environmental challenges will be presented. The indicators are cheap and easy to measure, making possible to build benchmark using primary data. They are simple to understand and interpret and suited to be applied at multiple scales of built environment. Examples will be given on wood and cement-based materials, including industry-wide benchmarks and new resource use efficiency metrics.
Cement-based materials are the most largely used artificial materials -“ some 30 billion metric ton each year - making the bulk of the stock of built environment. Currently it uses 1/3 of the flow of materials and emits 8% of anthropogenic CO2, shares that are growing. Cement industry is considering carbon capture and storage technology, an environmentally risky and costly technology. Example of a new low-cost technology that combines packing for minimum water demand, dispersion and replacing binders, by large fractions of fillers will be given. It allows reducing +60% of the total binder +50% the CO2 footprint and 40% of water consumption, in comparison with our global benchmark. The technology has been tested at industrial conditions. The technology is scalable, and a UN Environment estimates a mitigation potential of 900 MtCO2 /year by 2050.
Finally, considering the urgency of technological change, it is crucial to partner with industry to accelerate innovation and increase success rates. The development of the Sustainable Construction Innovation Center (CICS USP), an innovation hub entirely funded by private money will be present. It includes the construction of the CICS living lab, a building designed to demonstrate new construction technologies in actual use conditions accelerated innovation and to foster the investigation of user well being and user-building interactions.
Host: Dr. Lucio Soibelman
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Salina Palacios
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Sonny Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Feb 13, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ameet Pinto, Northeastern University
Talk Title: How do we manage the drinking water microbiome?
Abstract: See attached abstract.
Host: Dr. Adam Smith
More Information: A. Pinto Abstract _2-13-2020.pdf
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Subhayan De , Postdoctoral Associate, Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder
Talk Title: Design Optimization under Uncertainty using a Stochastic Gradient Approach
Abstract: Design optimization of complex engineering systems requires understanding and modeling the underlying physical phenomena and their interactions. In addition, uncertainties and their influences on both the design objective and the design constraints must be considered to achieve a robust design. Such uncertainties are typically due to intrinsic variabilities in the system or manufacturing processes, as well as the lack of knowledge in precisely describing the governing physics in terms of mathematical/computational models. However, accounting for uncertainty in the optimization process requires, for example, computing the statistical moments of the objective, which may lead to high computational costs. For example, a Monte Carlo approach based on random sampling in such cases requires many forward and adjoint solves, thus requiring significant computational resources. To alleviate this computational burden, in this talk, a stochastic gradient-based approach will be discussed. In this approach, stochastic approximations of the gradients, using only a handful of random samples of the uncertainty, are constructed at every design optimization iteration. Popular variants of stochastic gradient descent algorithms (e.g., AdaGrad and Adam) are used with this approach. In practical engineering settings, often models with different levels of fidelity are employed to describe the problem at hand. Lower-fidelity models (e.g., using coarser grid discretizations) can be simulated cheaply but may lead to inaccurate solutions relative to high-fidelity models (e.g., using fine grid discretizations) that are often expensive to simulate. To reduce the design optimization cost further, these low-fidelity models are incorporated in the optimization process to propose bi-fidelity versions of stochastic gradient descent algorithms with a linear rate of convergence. The stochastic gradient approach for design optimization is illustrated using numerical examples from shape and topology optimizations. These examples show that the use of stochastic gradients along with bi-fidelity approaches can reduce the computational cost of design optimization under uncertainty significantly. In the presence of uncertainty in the microscale properties of the structure, homogenization methods like FE2 require solving boundary value problems to quantify the effect of microscopic heterogeneity at the macroscale for all random samples in a Monte Carlo approach. Instead, the stochastic gradient-based approach is applied to this multiscale optimization problem to reduce the computational effort of design under microstructural uncertainty. The design of a fiber composite beam with uncertain microstructural properties is used to illustrate the proposed stochastic gradient approach. Ongoing work will introduce the application of this approach to 3D structural components with microstructural uncertainty and the limitations applying it to large-scale realistic aerospace structures, such as solid rocket fuel design.
Biography: Bio: Dr. Subhayan De is a postdoctoral associate in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder). His research at CU focuses on design optimization under uncertainty and physics-based machine learning. Subhayan received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2018, where he was supported by a Viterbi Ph.D. Fellowship, a Gammel Scholarship and several NSF grants. At USC, he worked on probabilistic model validation, machine learning, uncertainty quantification, and structural control design. Subhayan also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from USC and an MEng in Structural Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He received his B.Eng. in Civil Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Host: Dr. Erik Johnson
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Sonny Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Feb 27, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Emily Grubert, Ph.D., Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Conventional Hydroelectricity and the Energy Transition
Abstract: See attached Abstract and Bio.
Host: Dr. Kelly Sanders
More Information: E. Grubert Abstract_ 02-27-2020.pdf
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes