Scott Olson - US grants

9413336 Olson Lake Superior State University requests support from NSF for a connection of its campus network to Michnet and NSFNET. Michnet is the midlevel network located in the state of Michigan that will provide operations and network information services. It will give Lake Superior State University a 56 thousand bits per second connection to the NSFNET, a high speed (1.5 - 45 million bits per second) National Backbone network. The university needs greater functionality and network speed to be able to access supercomputers, libraries, and make file transfers along with being able to implement a more reliable mail system. Students and faculty research will benefit from the link. This is also a unique opportunity for the school to explore innovative educational resources.

9452675 Carluccio The Central Connecticut State University will initiate a three- week, residential, multi-disciplinary Young Scholars project which will provide science enrichment activities for 50 students entering grades 9 and 10. This summer program will emphasize research participation in biology, chemistry, the earth sciences, and physics. The students will be involved in a combination of laboratory and field experiences and experiments, a research project, demonstrations, lectures and discussions to encourage participants to pursue careers in science and engineering education. The program provides intensive interdisciplinary exposure to science concepts and methods as students design and conduct their own experiments.

This award is an outcome of the National Science Foundation 07-506 program solicitation "George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Research" competition. This project is led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and includes a subaward to Valparaiso University. Seismically-induced ground failures are a pervasive and growing source of economic loss from earthquakes. Concurrently, the nation's growing infrastructure needs demand more and larger bridges with increased spans and traffic volumes, thus requiring the use of large, stiff foundations such as large diameter shaft groups or gravity caissons. When seismically-induced ground failures occur, these foundations must contend with large, but unknown lateral forces. A common solution is to conservatively remediate large blocks of soil susceptible to failure, which involves high construction costs, increased construction time, and greater environmental impacts. This project will evaluate novel ground improvement geometries, such as chevrons and arches, to "deflect" laterally moving soil thereby reducing: (1) lateral loads on large foundation elements; (2) ground improvement costs; and (3) time and environmental impacts. This will be accomplished via an innovative integration of centrifuge experiments (performed at the NEES equipment site at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and Self-Learning Simulations (SelfSim) using the Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation software. This integration is termed "Simulation-designed Experiment - Experiment-driven Simulation" (SDE-EDS).

This novel integration will result in robust mitigation strategies for seismically-induced ground failure that can be implemented in a performance-based earthquake engineering environment. Besides reducing societal impacts from ground failures by reducing ground improvement costs, environmental impacts, and construction time, other broader impacts include: (1) opening new avenues for future performance-based earthquake engineering studies involving foundation performance and ground improvement; and (2) initiating an educational exchange between Valparaiso University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to expand student exposure to research and better prepare them for practice. Data from this project will be made available through the NEES data repository (http://www.nees.org).

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is evaluate water layer evolution during seismic shaking, as well as its impact on engineered structures. Ground failures related to liquefaction (e.g., lateral spreads, building settlement/tilting, floating of buried structures, flow slides) represent a significant and growing source of economic loss resulting from earthquakes. These failures damage nearly all forms of infrastructure, including lifeline and transportation facilities, building foundations, dams and levees, and waterfront structures. Understanding and mitigating these consequences is critical to maintaining resiliency following a major earthquake. However, some studies show that discrete layers of water may form within the subsurface during earthquakes, and these poorly understood ?water layers? may be responsible for a significant percentage of infrastructure damage. Therefore, it is imperative that the geo-profession answer questions such as: How and where do water layers form during earthquakes? If water layers form, how persistent and continuous are they? How do water layers influence engineering structures and our interpretation of prehistoric earthquakes?
To answer these questions, an integrated field, laboratory, and centrifuge study will be undertaken to evaluate water layer evolution during seismic shaking, as well as its impact on engineered structures. The field studies will search for water layer signatures by examining numerous liquefaction sites in central and southern California and paleoliquefaction sites in the New Madrid and Wabash Valley seismic zones that are conducive to forming water layers during (or after) shaking. The laboratory and centrifuge studies will evaluate water layer formation under a wider variety of controlled conditions.
The educational plan focuses on building engineering judgment in students through an ?integrated problem assessment? approach that involves fusing hands-on demonstrations (employing the laboratory equipment constructed for this project), expert-based forums, problem-based learning, cooperative learning, and creative thinking with traditional lectures and discussions. This integrated approach will better prepare students for engineering practice, where working in teams with experts from multiple disciplines to develop creative engineering solutions is commonplace.
The broader impacts from this study include: (1) reducing economic losses related to earthquakes by developing tools to assess water layer formation so that proper mitigation measures can be adopted; (2) providing fundamental input to seismic hazard analysis in regions of the United States (such as the central and eastern U.S.) where paleoliquefaction studies provide the primary basis for these analyses; and (3) developing a new breed of engineers and students who blend expertise from multiple disciplines (including geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, engineering geology, engineering seismology, sedimentology, hydrology, and engineering mechanics) using ?engineering judgment? and ?integrated problem assessment? to address geohazards and mitigate their impacts.

This Rapid Response Research (RAPID)award provides funding to allow the investigators to augment previous, limited-scope DCPT and Vs investigations with additional and deeper investigations into the effects of the Haiti earthquake.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010 caused tremendous damage to the built and natural environment, destroying buildings, crippling the Port-au-Prince seaport, and causing large coastal, roadway, and slope failures. The PIs participated in a reconnaissance trip to Haiti as part of a Geo-engineering Extreme Event Reconnaissance team. The team published preliminary findings at: http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Haiti_2010/Cover_Haiti10.html. The team brought back an extensive set of data from this initial reconnaissance, including shear wave velocity (Vs) and dynamic cone penetration test (DCPT) data at several sites.

However, after an initial damage assessment and an evaluation of preliminary findings, a number of critical details that require further investigation have been identified. Given the tremendous damage that resulted from this earthquake, it is imperative that the profession maximize what is learned from this event in order to minimize damage during future earthquakes in Haiti, in other developing coastal nations, and elsewhere around the world.

The intellectual merit of this activity is threefold. (1) The team will augment previous, limited-scope DCPT and Vs investigations with additional and deeper investigations, as well as soil sampling and lab testing to understand liquefaction in carbonate sands, as these sands are poorly represented in the worldwide liquefaction case history database despite their worldwide presence. This work will chiefly involve sampling and testing along the southern coast of Port au Prince Bay, primarily between Leogane and Petit Goave, and along the major rivers north of Port au Prince. Subsequent lab testing will include ring shear and cyclic triaxial testing. (2) The team will expand initial observations of potential topographic effects on damage patterns on the hillsides and slopes in communities surrounding Port-au-Prince, such as Petion-Ville. This effort will involve collecting slope strike and dip angles, proximity to ridge tops, and obtaining shallow Vs measurements in areas identified with noticeable damage patterns apparently influenced by topography. (3) The team will collect 15 to 20 near-surface Vs profiles in low-lying areas of Port-au-Prince where potential soft-soil amplification effects leading to noticeable damage patterns are observed. These measurements will be spatially-distributed in both areas that suffered heavy damage and areas that suffered minimal damage. These efforts will be enhanced using innovative 3D imaging software and calibrated digital cameras to develop 3D digital elevation models of damage at these sites.

The broader impacts of this project are focused on training students and improving the state-of-practice of engineering. Each team member will bring one graduate student to train them to perform reconnaissance and will encourage them deliver seminars about their experiences and the team will interact with personnel from Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources in Haiti. Additionally, the team will publish findings on liquefaction of carbonate sands, topographic effects, and site effects. Evaluating geophysical data and laboratory testing of samples recovered at select sites will also involve training graduate and undergraduate students.

This award is co-funded by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).

This project supports the 2nd USUCGER (United States Universities Council for Geotechnical Education and Research) workshop for early career geotechnical engineering faculty. The workshop will be a two-day event including keynote speeches, panels, facilitated group discussions, and mock Project Description review sessions. The workshop will help junior geotechnical faculty understand the role of the geotechnical engineer in addressing grand engineering and societal challenges. Participants will be actively engaged thorough the facilitated group discussions, mock Project Description review session, and a poster session where they get share their research interests with other participants. The workshop will be an integrated program that facilitates experience-sharing and mentoring between early career professionals and successful midcareer and senior professionals and promotes peer-to-peer interaction and relationship-building among early career professionals. The workshop will provide a forum for junior faculty to exchange their experiences on important issues affecting their career path with other both junior and senior faculty members. The targeted outcome is to help young geotechnical scholars launch their academic career productively, avoiding common pitfalls and enhancing the probability if successful on their academic journey.

The workshop will feature structured programs to engage the participants and facilitate interaction among them and with mid-career and senior professionals. It will update early career faculty on current research priorities and funding trends for NSF and other funding agencies. The program will feature keynote sessions and keynote panels on important academic issues, including tenure and promotion. It also will enable early career professionals (junior faculty, postdocs, and senior graduate students) to share personal experiences (both successful and unsuccessful) and avoid common pitfalls in starting an academic career. Participants will be asked to submit a mock Project Description prepared in NSF format, peer review two such descriptions prior to the workshop, and then participate in a panel review of the Project Descriptions at the workshop, providing training in proposal preparation and in peer review. Participants will also have the opportunity to build relationships with their peers that will be invaluable as they progress in their academic careers. The workshop will also provide participants with essential skills that they can share with other early career faculty at their home institutions. And, by facilitating the success of early career professionals, it can maximize the potential for a successful return on the investment made by their home institution and other stakeholders in their career development.

Countless hydraulic fill and tailings dams, levees, and other slopes contain loose soils with little or no internal cohesion. This state renders them vulnerable to failures under seismic events in which the soil becomes "liquefied." Although large flow failures of such earth structures are uncommon, the catastrophic consequences of such failures dramatically elevate the associated risk. Modeling this behavior requires reliable estimates of how the strength of a liquefying soil evolves to its minimum as internal water pressures are generated during an earthquake. Of equal importance is understanding how the soil subsequently regains its strength as water pressures dissipate once shaking ceases. To date, there are no full-scale field measurements of this strength evolution to guide model development; therefore, engineers must rely on strength estimates calculated after the fact from sparse, poorly documented flow failure case histories. The uncertainty in selecting design values of residual strength is exacerbated if the soil contains significant amount of fine particles, as each empirical method suggests a different approach to account for fines. This project will provide practicing engineers a better understanding of the large-strain behavior of liquefiable soils, improved estimates of residual shear strength, and new calibrated modeling tools that are required to make crucial decisions on high-risk, high-consequence projects involving tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. The project's education and technology transfer plan includes training and mentoring graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines (geotechnical, mechanical, and electrical engineering, as well as fluid dynamics).

This interdisciplinary project centers on developing a potentially transformative understanding of the shearing resistance of liquefiable soils (including its evolution during pore pressure generation, residual strength mobilization, and pore pressure dissipation) in an environment with greater realism than available in conventional laboratory tests. Specifically, novel centrifuge models will utilize a thin metal coupon (plate) pulled through a liquefiable soil before, during, and after shaking to directly measure the soil's residual strength and strength recovery. By embedding a pressure transducer in the coupon, it will be possible for the first time to measure pore pressures directly on the shearing surface in a liquefied soil. The large number of measurements will allow the researchers to explore the effects of fines content (soil compressibility), effective stress, and strain rate on residual strength. Cone penetration resistance and shear wave velocity will be measured in-situ in the centrifuge models, allowing the researchers to validate or improve empirical residual strength correlations. In turn, the physical measurements from the centrifuge testing program will enable the researchers to calibrate a multi-disciplinary, fluid dynamics-based stress-strain constitutive model for evaluating liquefaction problems such as flow slides, debris flows and lateral spreading around pile foundations. This project will utilize the NHERI Centrifuge facility at the University of California, Davis.