Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for May
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System Earthquake Risk Assessment (SERA)
Thu, May 01, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Dennis Ostrom, Consultant - San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Southern California EdisonDr. Ostrom will present the Development of a utility developed System Earthquake Risk Assessment (SERA) and present it from a utility perspective. Characterization of the hazard, component vulnerability, system vulnerability, development of performance goals, return to service times, system performance and future studies and/or research will be discussed and presented.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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CFD-approach in investigation of consequences of accidental large-scale fires
Wed, May 07, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Medzid Muhasilovic - EPFL Swiss Federal Institute of Technology AbstractDue to the increasing accidental fires in enclosures, especially in that area of modern society where our freedom is mostly expressed traffic and tourism there is an on-growing need to undertake scientific and technological research, aiming at better understanding of these reactive flow phenomena and their consequences. One of the direct benefits coming out of such research is implication of optimal methods for fire suppression that certainly must get along with world-wide statistical data for one tunnel-fire on each 107th kilometre of covered (tunnel) road.
Results of the CFD-investigation on simulated heptane-fires of Heat Release Rate (HRR) of 20MW and of 50MW within two different road tunnels without forced longitudinal ventilation, are presented, pointing at both at the direct and indirect consequences of such large-scale uncontrolled combustion.Keywords: Fires in Enclosures, HRR, Tunnel, Soot Distribution, IrradianceLocation: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Optimum Cleanup Scenarios for VOCs and Perchlorate in Baldwin Park Operable Unit, San Gabriel Valle
Wed, May 07, 2008 @ 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
PhD Defense for Christian SamThe Baldwin Park Operable Unit (BPOU) in the San Gabriel Valley basin, California has been identified by the USEPA as a ground water contaminant superfund site. This research employs optimized hydraulic gradient control to cost-effectively remove the contaminant plumes. Perchlorate (PCR) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), predominantly tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE) are still prevalent in the Baldwin Park Operable Unit (BPOU). This study proposes a methodology that optimizes available ground water and surface water resources and blocks, traps and reduces the contaminant concentration below the maximum contaminant level (MCL) or notification level (NL). The current strategy by USEPA and other agencies involved in the cleanup of BPOU is "pump and treat." Pump and treat has not been effective as high levels of PCE, TCE and PCR are still prevalent in BPOU after approximately 14 years of clean up. Blending ground water from wells not impacted by the contamination with ground water from wells impacted by the contamination is a supplemental strategy employed by the water purveyors to circumvent the contamination problem. This research provides an overall systematic strategy to clean up the entire aquifer at BPOU.The MODFLOW, MODPATH and RT3D modules of Ground Water Vistas (ground water modeling program) are used to generate the ground water flow model, particle tracking model and contaminant transport models. Further migration of the contaminants is limited. Contaminants are rapidly trapped and removed by a set of experimentally designed injection and production wells. The procedure utilizes sequential simulation with optimization to optimally and rapidly remove the contaminants using a hydraulic gradient scheme. The hydraulic gradient scheme was run to test future scenarios using assumed wet and dry cycles from the hydrologic base period.An economic analysis was performed to compare the cost of the existing system with the cost of the strategy proposed in this study. The strategy proposed in this study resulted in a cost effective solution.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Carbon Foams and Carbon Nanotubes: Modeling Based on Structural Mechanics
Thu, May 08, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Xin-Lin Gao, Professor Texas A&M UniversityAbstractCarbon foams, first developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in the 1990s, are rapidly emerging as a new class of ultra-light cellular materials for structural and thermal management applications. They are blown from a coal-based or chemically synthesized pitch precursor through a bubble forming process and have a 3-D open-cell structure, with the cell size ranging from tens to hundreds of microns. Recent research efforts have been focused on how to optimize the foam properties based on reliable processing-structure-property relationships. In the first part of this seminar, three micromechanical and computational models developed by the speaker's group using structural mechanics will be discussed. The first two are based on a single unit cell (a tetrakaidecahedron), with one using Castigliano's second theorem and the other employing the matrix method for space frames. The third model accounts for the randomness in foam microstructures and involves hundreds of cells, which is developed using the Voronoi tessellation technique and the finite element method.The discovery of carbon nanotubes in 1991 is one of the key breakthroughs that have taken us into an emerging era of nanotechnology. Nanostructured materials will be playing a critical role in the new era. In the second part of this seminar, two multi-scale analytical and computational models developed by the speaker's group using structural mechanics and energy principles will be presented. One is a shear-lag model for estimating load transfer in carbon nanotube-reinforced polymer matrix composites based on molecular structural mechanics and elasticity, and the other is a continuum-based model for predicting Young's modulus of single-walled carbon nanotubes developed using finite deformation kinematics and energy equivalence.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes