Tag: Civil Engineering

Shane Ferrell Presents at International Conference

Tech Today

Pasi Lautala, director of the Rail Transportation Program, and graduate student Shane Ferrell (CEE) recently presented the paper “Cold Climate Freight Railroads” at the International Heavy Haul Conference in Shanghai, China. Ferrell was one of six students worldwide sponsored by the IHHA to participate in the conference.

Lautala and Ferrell also made invited presentations about Michigan Tech and its Rail Transportation Program at Shijiazhuang Railway Institute and the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute (CAREERI), in Lanzhou, China.

Graduate Students Earn Honors

Published in Tech Today.

CEE Professors, Graduate Student Win Rudolph Hering Medal
Alex Mayer and David Hand, both professors of civil and environmental engineering, and Karen Endres, a former PhD student, have been named winners of the 2009 Rudolph Hering Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The award is given annually for the best paper on environmental engineering or water resources published in an ASCE journal during the previous year.

Their award-winning paper is titled “Equilibrium versus Nonequilibrium Treatment Modeling in the Optimal Design of Pump-and-Treat Groundwater Remediation Systems.”

The prize is a prestigious one among environmental engineers. The medal will be presented at the Environmental and Water Resources Institute Annual Congress May 17 in Kansas City.

Graduate Student Awarded Travel Assistance to Railway Conference
Graduate student Shane Ferrell, a member of the Rail Transportation Program, was awarded $1,800 in travel assistance from the International Heavy Haul Association to attend its June 2009 conference in Shanghai, China.

The Rail Transportation Program at Michigan Tech was established by the Michigan Tech Transportation Institute in 2007. The program provides rail-related education and research activities, engaging students and faculty with industry partners.

Graduate student and faculty talk about rail transportation

Published in Tech Today.

Pasi Lautala, director of the Rail Transportation Program, and graduate student Shane Ferrell, president of the Rail Engineering and Activities Club (REAC), were invited guests of Dick Storm recently on his “Keeping It in the UP” radio program on WOLV 97.7.

To download an MP3 file of the interview, which focuses on rail transportation in North American and rail activities at Michigan Tech, click here.

Three Michigan Tech Graduate Engineering Programs Ranked in Top 50

Tech Today

by Jennifer Donovan, public relations director

Graduate school rankings released today by US News & World Report rank three of Michigan Tech’s graduate engineering programs in the top 50 nationwide. The annual rankings evaluated 198 graduate schools of engineering.

Michigan Tech’s programs ranked as follows:
* environmental engineering: 33
* mechanical engineering: 48
* materials science and engineering: 49

Two other graduate programs at Michigan Tech ranked in the top 100 nationwide, as did the College of Engineering overall. Those rankings include:
* civil engineering: 58
* geological and mining engineering and sciences: 77
* College of Engineering: 82

“Our long-term goal is to advance the reputation of our graduate programs,” said President Glenn D. Mroz. “That is not a timid goal, but we know what we need to do; it is spelled out in our strategic plan. We are laying the groundwork now, and we know it won’t happen overnight. We are competing with the best universities in the US and the world for resources and talented graduate students. But Michigan Tech is becoming more and more competitive.”

Each year, US News & World Report ranks graduate schools of business, education, engineering, law and medicine. According to the magazine, the rankings are based on two kinds of data–the opinions of graduate school deans, program directors, senior faculty and employers of new graduates, and statistical measures such as student-to-faculty ratio, faculty research activity and doctoral degrees awarded.

Engineering specialties are ranked solely on the basis of assessments by department chairs in each specialty. The American Society for Engineering Education recommends the names of department chairs to be surveyed.

The rankings will be featured in the May 2009 issue of US News & World Report. Information is also available at www.usnews.com/grad and www.usnews.com/aboutgrad .

CEE Students Present Seminar April 16th

Published in Tech Today.

Two graduate students in civil and environmental engineering will present a seminar at 4 p.m., April 16th, in Dow 642.

Shane Ferrell, a master’s student, will give a talk, “Cold Climate Embankment Stabilization.” He will address, in part, transportation infrastructures in cold climates.

Baron Colbert, a doctoral student, will give a talk, “The Application of Warm Mix Technology to High Percentage Recycled Asphalt Pavement (RAP) Mixtures.” He will address, in part, the effects that warm mix asphalt has on recycled asphalt pavements.

For more information, contact Zhanping You at 487-1059 or at zyou@mtu.edu .

Grad Student Draws on 19th Century Findings for 21st Century Research

Tech Today

by Marcia Goodrich, senior writer

Deep in the stacks of the J. R. Van Pelt and Opie Library, Joe Miller stumbled upon a 112-year-old book that gave him a start.

Miller is a civil engineer specializing in heavy-timber roof design. He settled at Michigan Tech to get his PhD and to learn more about keyed beams than anyone in the history of carpentry. Keyed beams, lovely and useful though they may be, are in one sense an also-ran in the world of wood.

Miller explains in the context of the Upper Peninsula, where the old-growth, white-pine forests were ferociously clearcut in the 19th century. “By 1900, all the large trees were forested,” he said. The massive timbers required for constructing large buildings and reinforcing mine tunnels were no more. Builders needed a cheap, local alternative, so they began making big beams out of two smaller ones.

They cut mated notches in the lesser beams, fastened them together, and pounded close-fitting wedges, or keys, into the notches. The technique keeps beams stiff and bound tightly together, which prevents them from slipping (and breaking prematurely) when heavily weighted in the middle.

Keyed beams have been around since the 18th century. More recently, builders have adopted other technologies, but they aren’t always popular. “A lot of my clients had problems with steel beams or glue-laminated timbers,” Miller said. “Aesthetically, they wanted to use a more-natural approach that could be achieved locally, with local materials.”

Now, with keyed beams gaining a new following, Miller is developing the first theoretical model to represent their capacity under load. In other words, how much weight can they take before they break? And what factors determine if a keyed beam will be stiff enough?

Which brings us back to the library and the 112-year-old book. Miller was perusing the library’s offerings on the subject when he stumbled across an 1897 reference volume, buried in the basement, authored by Edward Kidwell of Hancock.

Kidwell, as it turns out, was on the faculty at the Michigan School of Mines. And he was one of the earliest researchers to conduct valid scientific tests on keyed beams and document the results. “It wasn’t until I’d chosen a school and a dissertation topic that I found his book,” Miller said, still struck by the coincidence. On top of this, Miller found Kidwell’s century-old reports to be both reliable and engaging.

“I appreciated his candor,” he said. In the book, Kidwell was critical of earlier keyed beam experts whose assertions did not stand up to scrutiny. “I also tested his methods, and everything he said appears spot on,” Miller said. “And Kidwell provided enough detail so that I could plug his numbers into my model.”

In addition to working with Kidwell’s findings, Miller has been testing his model against experimental evidence gathered in his own lab, where he has been building and testing keyed beams fabricated from solid oak, yellow poplar and wood laminate. “I’ve found that the inclination and shape of the keys can have an incredible effect” on the strength of the beam, he said.

“To be reinvestigating a concept that’s been around 300 years is kind of cool,” he said. It’s also cool to be building on foundational work conducted right here over 100 years ago.

Graduate Student Selected to Attend Leadership Conference

Published in Tech Today

Timothy Colling, senior research engineer with the Michigan Tech Transportation Institute, has been selected to participate in the Eno Transportation Foundation’s Leadership Development Conference in Washington, DC, in May.

The conference brings together the top 20 graduate students in transportation engineering from across the country for the one-week program, in which participants meet top government officials, leaders of transportation organizations and members of Congress to get a firsthand look at how transportation policy is developed and implemented.

Colling is a doctoral student in civil engineering and assistant director of Michigan’s Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP).

His advisor, Professor Bill Sproule (CEE), says that this is “a tremendous opportunity” for Colling and “a recognition that he is one of the country’s future transportation leaders.”