Dr. Michele Barbato of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has received a grant of $75,000 for his proposal entitled Performance evaluation of buried pipe installation from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LA DOTD) through the Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC). The LA DOTD is in the process of revising the current specifications to obtain a more cost-efficient design and installation of buried pipes for highway infrastructure. Pipes of various materials will simultaneously be evaluated for their performance considering the impact of various bedding, backfill, and fill cover height requirements so that a process of alternate bidding and alternate construction can be developed for buried pipes installation. The research project aims at determining the effects of geometric and mechanical parameters (e.g., pipe ring stiffness, natural soil surrounding the trench, bedding thickness, and fill cover height) characterizing the soil-structure interaction developed in a buried pipe installation.

Dr. Barbato has also received a grant of $10,000 for his proposal entitled Probabilistic demand analysis of dynamically-excited uncertain structural systems through the Pilot Funding for New Research (Pfund) program as part of the Louisiana Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Louisiana Board of Regents. This research project proposes to develop new analytical and numerical tools for probabilistic demand analysis (PDA) of structural systems rigorously accounting for material, geometric and inertia parameter uncertainties. The developed tools will find application in several Civil Engineering fields (e.g., Earthquake Engineering, Wind Engineering, Hurricane Engineering, Blast Engineering, Offshore Engineering, and Coastal Engineering). This research could have a significant impact on the advancement of a probabilistic Performance-Based design philosophy in Civil Engineering, and will form the groundwork for future proposals to NSF and other Federal Agencies with interests in Hazard Mitigation of structural and infrastructural systems.