Upcoming Seminars
Sustainability and the Structural Engineer
May 07, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Sara Means
Structural materials such as steel and concrete account for more than 10% of the global carbon emissions, and structural engineers have a responsibility to reduce these carbon emissions in the built environment. This presentation will give an introduction to embodied carbon. What is embodied carbon, how do you calculate it, and how do you reduce it? We will discuss which materials are most sustainable and how to reduce embodied carbon in your projects. We will also give an overview of a simple Life Cycle Assessment.
Past Seminars
Coupled Processes in Subsurface Shales
May 15, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Dr. Roman Makhnenko
Tight shale-like formations are often considered as barriers for fluid flow in geo-energy projects, such as CO 2 and H 2 storage or deep disposal of nuclear waste. The appropriate shale formations should have high clay content and dominant pore sizes on the order of nanometers. Their sealing capacity is determined by high non wetting fluid entry values, low permeability, high ductility, and it varies with physical, thermal, and chemical disturbances over time.
Weak Column Base Connections for Steel Moment Frames
May 08, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Professor Amit Kanvinde
Column base connections are arguably the most important connections in steel buildings, transferring loads from the entire structure into the foundation. At the interface of steel and concrete, these connections are complex in terms of behavior, design, as well as structural interactions with the building frame. This lecture will address “Weak” column base connections for seismic conditions, wherein the base connections can be designed to sustain large inelastic rotations. This contrasts with the common practice of designing the base connections to be stronger than the attached column.
Building Tall in Today’s Environment
May 03, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Dean Schoenberg & Mack Conachen
The presentation will focus on some of the more unique challenges that Thornton Tomasetti is facing in our industry today related to revisions in code provisions, an increased scrutiny on green building and the desire to use more sustainable construction materials such as mass timber as well as the tools we use to execute projects with complex geometry.
Design Considerations for Waterfront and Near Shore Structures
April 10, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: William Bruin
Located in harsh marine environments, coastal and waterfront developments require special considerations to ensure resilience over the project’s design life.
Structural Forensics Case Studies
April 03, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Dr. Aaron Freidenberg
Structural collapses can occur due to extraordinary events as well as design or construction errors. The presentation will include a case study of a partially collapsed reinforced concrete bridge and a separate case study of a badly damaged house, both of which occurred for reasons that are not immediately obvious. With help from the audience, we’ll present convincing arguments of the root causes of the failures and the parties at fault for those two case studies.
Some Scale Effects in Modeling Soil Behavior
March 15, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Andrew Whittle
This lecture will summarize recent progress that addresses three different topics associated with modeling scale effects in soils: The first concerns the classic problem of physical scaling of foundation bearing resistance on sands: Here, advances in elasto-plastic modeling of compression and shear properties (using the MIT-S1 model) can explain the effects of relative density and foundation length scale on the bearing mechanisms, while further work is needed to predict shear banding at large deformations.
Micromechanically Motivated Phase Field Approaches for Modeling Fracture in Materials Undergoing Large Deformations
March 08, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Christian Linder
The study of fracture in materials is inevitable in fields like engineering and medicine for optimizing the performance and ensuring the safety of structural and biological systems. Interestingly, their unique underlying micromechanisms characterize the failure in different materials. Brittle fracture is observed in certain materials like glass, ceramics, concrete, and even highly stretchable elastomers, wherein catastrophic failure occurs when the material fracture strength is reached.
A Framework to Assess the Seismic Performance of Multiblock Tower Structures as Gravity Energy Storage Systems
March 06, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Professor José E. Andrade
In this talk, we propose a framework for seismic performance assessment of multiblock tower structures designed to store renewable energy. To perform our assessment, we deployed, in tandem, physical and numerical models that were developed using appropriate scaling for Newtonian systems that interact via frictional contact. The approach is novel, breaking away from continuum structures for which Cauchy scaling and continuum mechanics are used to model systems. We show that our discontinuous approach is predictive and consistent.
Turning Disaster Into Knowledge
February 27, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Jonathan D. Bray
Advancing hazard-resistant design demands an understanding of what happens when a disaster occurs. Documenting and sharing the key lessons learned from extreme events around the world contributes significantly to advancing research and practice in hazards engineering. Unanticipated observations from major events often define new research directions.
Framework for Extracting Causal Information using Data from Disparate Structural Experiments
February 22, 2023 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Professor Henry V. Burton
The physical laboratory experiment is a primary tool in advancing our fundamental understanding of structural behavior under seismic loading. For a given project, the results from one or a small set of physical experiments are used to understand how different structural properties or design strategies affect behavior.