Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials
[ High-Performance Materials | Seismic Hazard Mitigation ]
[ Computational Mechanics & Structural Analysis ]
[ Computer-Aided Structural Engineering (CASE) Center | Engineering Learning Environments ]
[ Facilities | Program | Courses | Faculty | Contact Information ]
Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials offers graduate instruction and research in structural analysis and design, behavior of structural systems, earthquake engineering, engineering science and mechanics, high-performance materials, computer-aided engineering, and intelligent engineering learning environments. The faculty, students, and staff are encouraged to form partnerships to create an environment that fosters learning, discovery, and creativity. The faculty are leaders in their respective fields and are committed to developing in their students the skills needed to solve real-world problems. The program's academic and research activities have attained an international reputation for excellence in areas such as computer-aided engineering; cladding effects on, and hybrid control of, the response of tall buildings to earthquake and wind; steel connection design and behavior, and the creative use of advanced structural materials and composite systems to improve the infrastructure. Numerous opportunities exist for students to become involved in research activities that promote multidisciplinary solutions to civil engineering problems of national and international importance.
High-Performance Materials [ Return to top ]
Experimental and analytical programs are being conducted for assessing the capacity of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites, high performance concrete (HPC), and high-performance steel (HPS) for use in new construction and in the rehabilitation of aging infrastructure. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of:
- Design guidelines for FRP structural systems under static and dynamic loads in adverse environmental conditions
- Modular FRP deck concepts for building, bridge, and offshore applications
- Accelerated test methods for FRP composites to characterize their long-term behavior
- Development of new optimized polymer composite structural shapes
- Development of polymer composite railroad crossties
- Analysis of geometrical and material discontinuity in composite structures
- Cyclic testing and analytical evaluation of advanced cladding connections
- Design of HPC mixes for strength and durability
- Applications of HPC to bridge prestressed girders
- Innovative repair and rehabilitation technologies
- Use of cladding as a passive control system alone, or in combination with, active systems for hybrid control
- Detection of damage in FRP composites and concrete with ultrasonic waves
- Application of optical techniques for quantitative nondestructive evaluation
- Strength ductility of high-performance steel components
Seismic Hazard Mitigation [ Return to top ]
Experimental and analytical research is being conducted in multidisciplinary areas of earthquake engineering and seismic hazard mitigation. Georgia Tech is one of the seven Core Institutions in the NSF-funded Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center. The MAE Center is a multidisciplinary center that focuses on reducing losses in future earthquakes that may effect the central and southeastern United States. Current research areas include:
- Inventories of essential facilities and transportation networks in Mid-America
- Performance of rehabilitated steel connections
- Foundation remediation for buildings and bridge columns
- Response modification of highway and railroad bridges
- Seismic mitigation using smart materials
- Retrofit of bridges using fiber-reinforced polymeric (FRP) composites
- Response modification of buildings using passive and semi-active controls
- Nonlinear dynamic response of low-rise buildings with flexible floor and/or roof diaphragms
- Large-scale tests of beam-column connections of typical Mid-America buildings
- Testing of large-scale low-rise building systems
- Dynamic properties of Mid-America soils
- Liquefaction and post-liquefaction response of soils
Computational Mechanics and Structural Analysis [ Return to top ]
Continuing rapid advances in computing power are making it possible to address many issues in structural engineering that were recently considered unfeasible. There are numerous research initiatives underway to expand the capabilities for mathematical modeling of the behavior of solids and structures, and to apply these capabilities to improve structural engineering practice. Current research projects include:
- Finite element modeling of limit states and post-ultimate behavior of structural components and systems
- Object-oriented software architectures for mechanics computing
- Parallel computation
- Computational modeling of polymeric composite materials
- Computational algorithms in solid mechanics with applications to shape optimization methods and error estimation and adaptive meshing.
- Micro-mechanical models of damage - applications to composite structures.
- Characterization of nonlinear material and structural response using neural networks.
- Inelastic torsional-flexural response of framing members of open-walled cross-section.
- Analysis of composite steel beam-connection-concrete slab interaction in building frame structural systems.
- Second-order inelastic analysis and design of frame structures
- Analysis of the behavior of horizontally curved bridges
Computer-Aided Structural Engineering (CASE) Center [ Return to top ]
The Computer-Aided Structural Engineering Center is an advanced computer software research and development facility. It is dedicated to maintaining a national and international leadership role in the research and development of structural engineering analysis and design software. The Center serves as a technological pipeline through which results of research and development flow from Georgia Tech to industry, government, and educational institutions in a form with the highest standards of quality and performance. Such results are embodied in the computer program GT STRUDL. Current focuses are on the following:
- Man-machine communication, including specialized graphical modeling and results interpretation in the Windows environment
- Large sag cable network analysis
- Non-linear dynamic analysis, including multi-support excitation
- Sequential analysis and construction simulation
- Reinforced concrete design based upon finite element results
- Implementation of up-to-date design standards for structural steel and reinforced concrete
Engineering Learning Environments [ Return to top ]
Research uses engineering cognition to develop intelligent learning environments, including tutorial systems. These activities focus on:
- Assessment of learning using technology
- Impact and needs for visualization to comprehend engineering phenomena
- Interactive on-line simulations
- Computer assisted intelligent learning environments
- A longitudinal assessment of Civil Engineering students
- Educating faculty and students on using technology in the classroom
- Incorporation of virtual reality in the design process
Facilities [ Return to top ]
The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech is equipped with state-of-the-art structural engineering and engineering mechanics laboratories, instrumentation facilities, and machine shops. The laboratories include a broad range of equipment and instruments appropriate for research in all aspects of modern structural engineering and structural mechanics and materials problems.
Full-scale Test Facility
Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials operates a modern, efficient and high quality experimental research facility for research, development, test and evaluation of all classes of structures and construction materials. The new 16,000 square-feet of laboratory includes the following features:
- Strong floor 180-ft. long, 40-ft. wide for testing large-scale model and full-size single and multi-span bridge systems
- L-shaped strong wall 35-ft. tall for testing up to three-story full-size building systems in both vertical and two horizontal directions as well as structures such as towers, cranes, architectural cladding and mechanical components
- Large environment test room 19-ft. long, 13-ft. wide, and 12-ft. high with cyclic temperature range from 160oF to -40oF, 20% to 95% relative humidity, fresh and salt water spray, and UV lighting for all types of exposure and durability testing
- Composites preparation facility for manufacture of fiber-reinforced polymeric structural composites
- Two 30-ton overhead cranes for handling all structural test components
- Numerous computer and manually controlled hydraulic actuators having large load capacity and strokes for static, dynamic, and cyclic/fatigue testing
- Automated data acquisition systems for recording up to 100 channels of load, strain, and displacement
- Two universal tension/compression testing machines with up to 400-kip capacity and up to 10-ft. long specimen length
- Several universal testing machines for cyclic and dynamic materials testing
- Concrete/masonary compression test machine with 800-kip capacity
- 1400 ft2 concrete mixing and preparation facility with ASTM compliant test apparatus
- NDT/Optics laboratory equipped with multiple lasers, acoustic emission and ultrasonic test apparatus, and electronic instrumentation
- Machine shop and electronic shop
This complete range of modern equipment and facilities in the Structural Engineering and Materials Research Laboratory provides Georgia Tech with the research, development, test and evaluation capabilities to meet any research need.
Photoelastic Instruments
The School also has photoelastic instrumentation for stress analysis. It includes polariscopes for studying photoelastic models and for using birefringent coatings on structural components. There is also a high-magnification polariscope for studying stress concentrations.
Computing Environment
In addition to sharing campus computing resources, which range from numerous computer clusters of Personal Computers, Macintosh, and UNIX workstations to parallel supercomputers, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has its own computational capabilities. These include four PC computer labs, computer equipped classrooms and a wide array of research-related computing devices, including SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM, and HP UNIX workstations. In addition, the School also has computers for video conferencing capabilities.
M.S./Ph.D. Program [ Return to top ]
The program in Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials (SEMM) offers an extensive array of courses for students pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. At the M.S. level the program offers degrees based either on course work only (30 hours) or course work and research that total 30 hours (24 credit hours of courses / 6 credit hours of research). The M.S. degree typically takes one calendar year to complete for the course work only option, and slightly longer for the course work/research option. M.S. students considering continuing to the Ph.D. degree are strongly encouraged to follow the course work/research option. The course work only option is not a terminal degree, but is geared primarily towards those students interested in careers in design offices and governmental agencies.
The M.S. program offers a great degree of flexibility to students, with only one course being required (CE 6551, Advanced Strength of Materials). Other courses are selected with the help of an academic advisor based on the student's background and interest. While the large number of offerings in the SEMM program can constitute a complete graduate program, students are encouraged to explore the possibility of taking complementary courses in geosystems engineering, construction management, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and mathematics to broaden their curriculum.
The requirements for the Ph.D. program in SEMM are as follows.
Ph.D. Qualifying Exam
The Ph.D. qualifying exam is divided into written and oral portions that deal with typical course work material covered through the end of the typical M.S. program.
Written Portion: All Ph.D. students are required to take and pass the written portion of the qualifying exam within fourteen (14) months from their admission into the Ph.D. program. The exam is given twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. This allows an incoming student at least two opportunities to take the exam.
The exam is given in two days in two sessions: four hours in the morning of the first day and four hours in the afternoon of the second day. The morning session is closed-book and addresses basic undergraduate topics in the areas of structural mechanics and structural analysis. Students are required to answer six out of nine questions. The afternoon session is open-book and centers on the areas of structural mechanics, structural analysis, and structural design at the undergraduate/M.S. level. This session consists of eight problems equally distributed among the three areas. The students are required to answer four of the eight questions.
The exam is administered by a committee of faculty members who choose the questions from among those submitted by the faculty as a whole. Students are allowed to take the written portion of the exam twice.
Oral Portion: Once a student passes the written portion of the exam, an oral examination must be scheduled no later than six (6) months from the written exam date. The oral exam is administered by a committee of at least four (preferably five) faculty members. The candidate and her/his advisor should select this committee carefully as it is intended to serve as the guidance committee for the doctoral dissertation.
Ph.D. Dissertation Topic
After completing both the written and oral portions of the qualifying exam, the student is required to prepare in writing, and present orally to the guidance committee, a proposal pertaining to the chosen research topic. This must be submitted within six months of passing the oral exam. The guidance committee will meet with the candidate to discuss the topic and the research approach proposed and to offer suggestions to enhance the work. Once the proposed topic has been approved, the student may proceed with preparation of the dissertation. It is expected that the candidate will meet periodically with the committee members either individually or as a group to discuss the progress on the work. It is suggested that these meetings take place at least every six months.
Ph.D. Final Defense
Once the advisor has approved the preliminary draft of the dissertation, it can be presented to the Ph.D. committee for written comments. The committee will have four weeks to review and comment on the work. The student will need to address these comments and make revisions prior to scheduling the final Ph.D. dissertation defense. Once the committee has deemed that the dissertation is substantially complete and all major comments have been addressed, the final exam can be scheduled.
Graduate Courses [ Return to top ]
Experimental Stress Analysis
Study of surface stress and strain using brittle coatings and strain gauges. Electrical resistance cemented and welded strain gauges, strain gauge circuits, static and dynamic problems, transducer design and circuits. Vibrating wire strain gauges. Application of failure theories.
Reinforced Concrete Members
Advanced behavior and design of reinforced concrete members: ductility and inelastic response; deep beams, corbel and torsion design; column slenderness and biaxial bending; shearwalls; moment redistribution; and serviceability considerations including effects of creep and shrinkage.
Structural Dynamics
Vibration and dynamic response of linear and nonlinear structures to periodic and general disturbing forces, with and without damping effects. Response analysis of multi-degree-of-freedom systems. Wind and earthquake effects.
Earthquake Engineering
Characteristics of earthquakes; design and rehabilitation of civil engineering structures for earthquake ground motion; code provisions; case studies.
Plasticity and Viscoelasticity
Plastic deformation, yield conditions, flow rules and normality, relaxation and creep, models of viscoelasticity, problems of tubes and spheres, torsion and bending; slip line fields, viscoelastic boundary value problems, variational principles.
Advanced Mechanics of Composites
Anisotropic elasticity, failure theories, hygrothermal behavior, 3-D stress analysis of laminates, thick laminates, free edge effects, stress concentration at cutouts, adhesive and mechanical joints, creep and fracture of composites, hybrid composites and advanced topics.
Theory of Elastic Stability
Concepts on elastic stability, simple mechanical models, buckling of beam-columns and frames, buckling of beams on elastic foundation, energy methods, torsional and lateral buckling, buckling of plates.
Theory of Plates and Shells
Basic theory of plates, pure bending of laterally loaded rectangular and circular plates, approximate methods, nonlinear considerations, stiffened and anisotropic plates. Stress and deformation of shells with and without bending under various loading conditions, shells forming surfaces of revolutions, and shallow shells.
Prestressed Concrete
Principles and practice of prestressed concrete. Analysis and design of statically determinate and indeterminate beams, and one-way and two-way slabs; precast pretensioned, post-tensioned, and segmental systems; service load, ultimate strength, and load balance techniques. Application to both buildings and bridges.
Reinforced Concrete Slab Systems
Analysis and design of two-way slab systems, structural walls, and complex building configurations. Equivalent frame and analysis, strip and yield-line technique, application of finite element method to design of slab systems.
Energy Methods in Mechanics
Virtual work, principles of potential energy and complementary energy, Castigliano’s theorems, generalized and stationary variational principles, Galerkin and Rayleigh-Ritz methods, structural applications, nonlinear problems, Hamilton’s principle and dynamics.
Rehabilitation of Existing Structures
Deterioration science; corrosion of steel, alkali-silica reaction, freezing and thawing, etc. Assessment and evaluation of existing structures, non-destructive testing (NDT), and non-destructive evaluation (NDE). Properties, selection, and application of repair materials. Rehabilitation management, planning, and strategies. Seismic retrofit of existing buildings and bridges. Case studies and recent research.
Nonlinear Design of Frame Structures
Analysis and design of structures based on ultimate load capacity (i.e. plastic design). Application of the fundamental theorems of plastic design to continuous beams, frames and grillages.
Finite Element Method of Structural Analysis
Introduction to the fundamental principles and proper use of the finite element method with emphasis on the analysis of solid and structures. Weak variational form of boundary-value problems. One-, two-, and three-dimensional finite elements, including plane solids, beams, three-dimensional solids and shells; interpolation methods; numerical integration; convergence criteria; calculation of stresses. Modeling, approximations, and errors.
Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis
Nonlinear deformation and ultimate load analysis of frame, plate and shell structures. Lagrangian formulations for nonlinear analysis of solids and structures, including consistent linearization and nonlinear state determination. Incremental-iterative approaches for solution of nonlinear problems; basic techniques in computational plasticity. Software implementation of nonlinear finite elements.
Advanced Strength of Materials
Study of advanced topics from mechanics of materials with application to civil engineering structures. Typical topics: generalized stress and strain, failure theories, torsion, shear flow, buckling, fatigue.
Computational Methods in Mechanics
Generalization of finite element concepts; Galerkin-weighted residual and variational approaches; mixed and hybrid finite element formulations, applications in analysis of solids and other field problems; transient dynamic analysis; software implementation.
Matrix Structural Analysis
Static analysis of framed structures by flexibility and stiffness methods; computer models and solution for applied loads, temperature, support settlement, and member prestrain effects; introduction to nonlinear models and analysis.
Damage, Failure and Durability of Composite Materials
Provide knowledge of the fundamental concepts and methods related to analysis and assessment of damage, failure and durability of composite materials.
Structural Systems
Behavior and design of structural steel and concrete building and bridge systems. Introduction to structural planning with emphasis on economics, overall structural behavior, serviceability and strength considerations, building and bridge codes, design concepts, and interaction with architects and other design professionals.
Manufacturing of Composites
Major manufacturing techniques for metal-, ceramic- and polymer-matrix composites. Modeling of processes with emphasis on fundamental mechanisms and effects.
Structural Modeling
Modeling of structures for static, dynamic, and nonlinear analysis using finite elements. Effects of parameters on the structural behavior.
Engineering Programming Methods
Rigorous and formal techniques for creating quality engineering software are presented. Topics include top down program development, documentation, and testing using formal data structures and algorithms. Applications of these techniques are provided through numerical solutions of engineering problems.
Wave Propagation in Solids
One-dimensional waves; time-harmonic plane waves in elastic half-spaces, reflection and refraction at a plane interface, Rayleigh surface waves and Stonely waves; harmonic waves in waveguides, Love waves, Rayleigh-Lamb modes; forced motion in a half-space, Cagniard-de Hoop method; wave propagation in anisotropic media.
Object Oriented & Multimedia Programming for Engineers
This course will cover object-oriented programming and multi-media programming techniques as related to engineering problem solving. Emphasis is placed on the proper utilization of these concepts in engineering and their programming constructs.
Knowledge-based Programming Methods in Engineering
Non-algorithmic computer representations to engineering problems are presented, including rule-based, object-based, case-based, and hybrid approaches for representing knowledge. Techniques of knowledge acquisition, uncertainties, and verification will be coupled with the representation, development and usage of the knowledge.
Applied Elasticity
Introduction to traction, stress and equilibrium; deformations, strain and compatibility; constitutive equations; two-dimensional problems in Cartesian and polar coordinates; application to extension, bending and torsion; introduction to three-dimensional problems using displacement potentials.
Design of Polymer Composite Structures
Strength, behavior, and design of polymeric composites, structural members, and connections for civil engineering applications.
Structural Steel Design
Strength, behavior, and design of steel structures according to working stress and load and resistance factor design. Plate grinders, composite steel-concrete beams, bolted and welded connections, beam-columns, and members under torsion.
Probability in Civil Engineering Design
Risk Analysis, and Decision Theory in Civil Engineering
Faculty [ Return to top ]
Contact Information
To receive application materials and information regarding graduate studies, please contact the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering:
Graduate Program
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
(404) 894-2246, (404) 894-2278 FAX
gradinfo@ce.gatech.edu
For more information concerning SEMM, please contact:
Dr. Abdul Zureick, Discipline Coordinator
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
(404) 894-2294, (404)
894-2278 FAX
abdul.zureick@ce.gatech.edu