Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2004

 


WINTER 2004
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Cover Story:
>>Bridges: Designing, Building, Preserving

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BUILDING BETTER BRIDGES

Last year, faculty and students in Iowa State’s Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) and the ISU Bridge Engineering Center constructed a model bridge upside down to see how it would react to the stress of a simulated earthquake.

They’ve tested bridges as far away as New York and Washington state.

But the majority of Iowa State’s bridge research stays right here at home – in Iowa, where there are more than 25,000 bridges statewide.

“Only four states have more bridges than Iowa. The majority – about 85 percent – of those bridges are the
responsibility of the county engineers,” said F. Wayne Klaiber, professor of CCEE. “We provide assistance in creating innovative, economical bridges that they can build with their own staffs.”

Providing simple bridge designs for Iowa counties to use on low-volume roads is just one of Iowa State’s areas of expertise. The Department of CCEE and the Bridge Engineering Center conduct research on bridge technologies that will help design, build, and maintain
long-lasting bridges.

The Center, which was created in 1988 and became a part of the Center for Transportation Research and
Education in 2000, is involved in the structural health monitoring of bridges, strengthening and field testing, structural dynamic behavior, forensic engineering, failure investigation, and nondestructive evaluation. Graduate student researchers, undergraduate assistants, and CCEE faculty work seamlessly on research projects conducted by the department and the Center.

Current research projects include constructing bridges from decommisioned railroad flat cars (cutting construction costs in some cases from $250,000 to $55,000) and saving older bridges from demolition by applying a strengthening system comprised of carbon fiber reinforced polymers.

Terry Wipf, professor of CCEE, directs the Bridge Engineering Center. He is assisted by Brent Phares (’94, MS ’96, Ph.D. ’98), associate manager; Doug Wood (’78, MS ’90), senior engineering specialist; and Klaiber, a faculty affiliate. Other CCEE faculty involved in bridge research are Lowell Greimann (’64), department chair; Sri Sritharan; Robert Abendroth; and Fouad Fanous (PhD ’82).

Find more info on the Web at www.ctre.iastate.edu/bec and www.cce.iastate.edu/research.

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