Blume Center Students and Faculty
attend 13WCEE

The Blume Center was well represented at the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Vancouver Canada, August 1-6. Over 20 faculty and students attended the conference. Profs. Anne Kiremidjian, Greg Deierlein, Chuck Menun, Allin Cornell, Helmut Krawinkler, Kincho Law, Ronnie Borja and Eduardo Miranda, and Ph.D. Candidates Jose Andrade, Hesaam Aslani, Kerri Tokoro and Paul Cordova all presented papers. Ph.D. Candidates Gee Liek Yeo, Kyle Douglas, Won Lee, Pooya Sarabandi, Hesaam Aslani and Qiang Fu had poster presentations. Many Blume Center alumni, affiliates and friends were also at the conference and over 70 attended a Blume Center Reunion dinner at Aqua Riva on August 4. Participants were overheard saying that is was "the best reunion dinner yet."

Blume Center News

Ph.D. Candidate Kerri Tokoro has won ASCE's 2004 O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship in Structural Engineering. The fellowship was endowed in 1963 to foster advances in structural design and construction. Tokoro's research is on developing a technique to predict response interactions in steel frame structures.

Dr. Renate Fruchter, in collaboration with Dr. Ichioka and Mr. Date from Obayashi Corporation, Japan, worked with Stanford OTL to license and deploy at Obayashi the ThinkTank web-based collaboration technology developed by Dr. Fruchter's team in the PBL Lab at Stanford.

Ph.D. Candidate Jack Baker was awarded a fellowship to participate in the East Asia Summer Institutes in Japan program, sponsored by NSF, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He visited several major research centers as part of the National Hazards Mitigation in Japan program, and then spent two months as a visiting researcher at Nagoya University and Kyoto University.

Dr. Renate Fruchter gave three presentations at the 10th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ICCCBE-X), in Weimer, Germany this June. Dr. Fruchter also gave an invited lecture on "AEC Global Teamwork" at the Technical University Bochum in Germany.

Prof. Ronnie Borja edited a special edition of the International Journal of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering on "Computational Failure Mechanics for Geomaterials," volume 193, issues 27-29, July 9, 2004. The special edition contains 20 fully refereed articles (over 500 pages) by some of the most active researchers in the area of computational failure mechanics.

Profs. Allin Cornell, Greg Deierlein, Helmut Krawinkler, and Eduardo Miranda presented papers at the International Workshop on Performance-Based Seismic Design - Concepts and Implementation, held in Bled, Slovenia, from June 28 to July 1. This workshop, organized by Profs. Fajfar (U. of Ljubljana, former Shimizu Visiting Professor at Stanford) and Krawinkler, brought together 44 of the leading researchers and engineers from 14 countries to assess the state of knowledge and practice related to performance-based earthquake engineering. The PEER Center was the main sponsor of the workshop.

Prof. Ronnie Borja presented a keynote lecture at the 4th European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering (ECCOMAS 2004) held in Jyväskylä, Finland, on July 24-28, entitled "Deformation Bands in Multiphase Porous Materials".

In July, Prof. Sarah Billington led a half-day hands-on session for the Stanford Summer Engineering Academy introducing incoming freshmen to civil engineering. Students participated in a web-based activity where they worked as teams of civil engineers to decide if a certain dam should be repaired or decommissioned based on running fracture analyses and risk analyses as well as evaluating environmental impacts.

Prof. Sarah Billington attended the Planet-X Symposium titled Technology Innovations Toward a Sustainable Planet" held on the Stanford Campus in July. Ph.D. Student Molly Morse presented a poster at the symposium on the research she is conducting with Prof. Billington regarding bio-degradable composites for the building industry.

Prof. Helmut Krawinkler gave a presentation on “Sidesway Collapse of Frames with Deteriorating Properties” at the SEAOC Convention held in Monterey from August 25 to 28.

Collaborations in Mathematical Geosciences (CMG Research)

A new research project begins this summer under the direction of Profs. Dave Pollard (Geological and Environmental Sciences), Rafe Mazzeo (Mathematics), and Ronnie Borja (Civil and Environmental Engineering) entitled “Mathematical modeling of the dynamics of multi-scale phenomena during folding and fracturing of sedimentary rocks” funded by National Science Foundation. The project aims at characterizing the geometric shapes of the sedimentary layers within two well-exposed folds using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data sets, and the principles of differential geometry. The dynamics of folding and fracturing will then be analyzed using continuum mechanics principles and the finite element method to investigate the physical interactions between kilometer-scale folds and the meter-scale fractures observed in the Sheep Mountain Anticline in Wyoming and the Raplee Ridge Monocline in Utah.

NSF NEES-R Awards

The Blume Center is represented well in the first round of NEES research grants, with Stanford faculty and alumni involved with five of the ten projects that were awarded by the NSF. Prof. Helmut Krawinkler is leading a project to investigate the sideway collapse of deteriorating structural systems. Prof. Anne Kiremidjian will be working with the research team at the University of Nevada Reno dealing with seismic performance of bridge systems with conventional and innovative materials.Prof. Amit Kanvinde (PhD '94), who recently joined the faculty at U.C. Davis, is leading a project on testing and simulation of ultra-low-cycle fatigue cracking in steel structures. Amit will be collaborating with his former adviser, Prof. Greg Deierlein, and a Stanford graduate student on this project. Prof. Luciana Barroso (PhD '99) is co-PI on a project at Texas A & M concerning the in situ determination of soil modulus and damping as a function of induced strain. Prof. Jerome Lynch (PhD '03) is co-PI on a project at the University of Michigan dealing with damage tolerant and intelligent slab-column frame systems, which combine advanced materials and embedded wireless sensors. Look for more developments on these and other projects in upcoming newsletters.

Spring 2004 Graduates

Arash Altoontash and Gloria Ting Ting Lau received their Ph.D. degrees in Structural and Geotechnical Engineering during the Summer quarter. Arash is now working at Walter P. Moore and Assoc., in Los Angeles, and Gloria is with FindLaw, Inc. in Mountain View.

Published Papers

Han, T.S. and Billington, S.L., "Seismic Analysis of Structural Concrete Frame Buildings using Interface Modeling," ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 130(8): 1157-1168 (2004).

Billington, S.L. and Yoon, J.K., "Cyclic Response of Precast Bridge Columns with Ductile Fiber-reinforced Concrete," ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, 9(4): 353-363 (2004).

Alumni News

Pablo Sanz (MS '02) and his wife, Alejandra, welcomed their first child, a daughter, on June 30. Emma weighed in at 6 lbs., 10 oz., and was 20" long. Proud papa returned to Stanford this Fall to study for his Ph.D.