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The Virginia Engineer
VOLUME LV
NUMBER 3 March 2006
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Virginia’s Engineering Address - www.vaeng.com
March 2006
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The Virginia
Page 1
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March 2006
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Volume LV
Number 3
March 2006
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March 2006
Page 3
spent on these repairs."
Purdue civil engineers have installed a bridge deck containing the
fiber-reinforced polymer bars in a
span over Interstate 65 at Thayer
Road near Demotte, IN. It is the first
fiber-reinforced polymer-bar bridge
Funding for highway transpor- which is very expensive, but replac- deck ever installed in the state.
As steel rebar corrodes, it causes
tation projects continues to be head- ing the rebar with bars made out of
line news, not only in Virginia, but fiber-reinforced polymers could ex- the rebar to expand, eventually causing chunks of concrete to
across the country. The
break away from the bridge
wrangling over how best to
deck. This not only results
allocate finite resources, bein driving hazards but also
tween those who demand
increases the exposure of
more new and better highunderlying bridge compoways and those who denents to road salt, which
mand more and better
leads to more corrosion. The
maintenance of existing
salty water also causes steel
ones, and how best to raise
bars in both the upper and
the money to actually fund
bottom portions of the
those allocations continues
bridge deck to act as the
to paralyze legislation,
negative and positive poles
thereby exacerbating an alof a battery, respectively, inready dire situation.
creasing the rate of corroMeantime, scientists
sion.
and researchers across the
According to Prof.
country have been busy deFrosch, "This battery effect
veloping and refining maaccelerates corrosion in the
terials and techniques to adbridge deck, but replacing
dress an important cost elthe steel rebar in the upper
ement in many highway
portion of the deck with ficonstruction and mainteber-reinforced polymer bars
nance projects — bridges.
eliminates one of the poles
Civil engineers at
and shuts down this battery
Purdue University are deeffect."
veloping a new generation
The fiber-reinforced
of bridges that will contain
polymer bars must be excorrosion-resistant plastic
tensively tested, however,
bars reinforced with glass
before they can be used to
or carbon fibers rather than
replace steel rebar in bridge
steel bars, promising to
deck construction, he goes
double the number of years
on to say. The bars are made
between expensive repairs.
of a plastic polymer that is
Concrete-strengthening
reinforced by fibers of glass,
steel bars called "rebar," curcarbon or another material.
rently used in bridge con"Glass is the least expenstruction, are susceptible to
corrosion, especially in the Robert Frosch, an associate professor of civil engineering sive right now, at about a
"deck," which is the upper- at Purdue, displays various types of reinforcing bars used dollar a pound," Prof.
most portion of the bridge in bridge construction. At top left are two segments of con- Frosch says.
The price of carbon fithat serves as the riding sur- ventional steel rebar, and the remaining segments are
face. The rebar embedded samples of corrosion-resistant plastic bars reinforced with bers has dropped consisin bridge-deck concrete is glass or carbon fibers. (Purdue News Service photo/David tently since the material was
first developed for exotic
exposed to corrosive de-ic- Umberger)
applications, such as its use
ing road salt that seeps
through cracks in the pavement, ac- tend the lifetime of a deck to perhaps in construction of stealth aircraft.
"Over the years it's gone from
cording to Robert Frosch, an associ- 50 to 100 years," Prof. Frosch notes.
"If we could make bridges last $500 a pound to $5 a pound and can
ate professor of civil engineering.
"Bridge decks generally have to longer, we could do other things still come down from there," Prof.
be replaced every 20 or 30 years, with the money that now has to be Frosch says. "The more you use it,
Research Could Reduce
Transportation Project Costs
Page 4
March 2006
the cheaper it becomes."
Comparitively, the cost of steel
over the same time period has more
than doubled.
Prof. Frosch worked with doctoral student Cihan Pay, who recently graduated, to analyze how
well the new synthetic bars perform.
As the bars are embedded lengthwise inside concrete structures, they
often have to be spliced by overlapping the bars.
"We call this overlapping the
splice length of the bars," Prof.
Frosch explains. "The longer the
splice length, the greater amount of
force the beam can withstand before
it breaks."
The researchers are studying
how much splice length is needed
for specific applications, using hydraulic machinery to exert force on
test beams until they fail.
"We're studying a range all the
way from 12 inches up to about 54
inches of splice length," Prof. Frosch
says.
The research is funded by the
Federal Highway Administration
(FHA) through the Joint Transportation Research Program of Purdue
and the Indiana Department of
Transportation and is being conducted at Purdue's Robert L. and
Terry L. Bowen Civil Engineering
Laboratory for Large Scale Research.
Data collected from the experiments will yield important information about how much force the bars
can withstand when different splice
lengths are used.
A portion of Dr. Pay's research
delved into the fundamental physics of how the concrete bonds to the
overlapping bars. He used data from
the research to develop mathematical equations for a new "fundamental model" that describes the precise
performance characteristics depending on different splice lengths.
"Bond failure is very bad," says
Dr. Pay. "When it happens, there is
no warning. People have no time to
react."
The model may be used in the
future by the American Concrete Institute in new guidelines for the design and construction of concrete
structures with fiber-reinforced
polymer bars.
"These are the guidelines for
how engineers design structures using these bars," Prof. Frosch said.
"The report will contain a chapter on
splices and development of reinforcement."
According to Dr. Pay, his equation for bond strength will apply to
all materials, including steel bars.
"It's going to be one simple equation that works across the board," he
said.
Sensors have been inserted in the
deck of the Thayer Road bridge to
constantly record data that will be
used to learn how well the structure
is performing. The data can be remotely monitored from Purdue.
"Strain gauges provide a tool to
measure the amount of stress in the
bars," Prof. Frosch said. "Gauges are
attached inside the bridge deck as
well as on the girders under the
deck."
The researchers eventually will
publish papers detailing how the
bridge deck responds when subjected to actual traffic. Several states
have built bridges with fiber-reinforced polymer bars, but the material is still considered experimental
and is not in widespread use.
Prof. Frosch said new research
will provide a means for increased
use of these materials.
The cost alone, not to mention
the disruption, of replacing bridges
damaged as a result of some catastrophic event, natural or manmade, is staggering. An earthquake
engineer at the University at Buffalo
(UB) has developed a new “multihazard” design for bridges that will
make them more resistant to terrorist attacks and earthquakes.
The new structural design for
bridge piers developed by Michel
Bruneau,
director
of
the
Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research
(MCEER) at UB, will protect bridges
from both seismic and blast forces,
helping to keep them from collapsing in the event of earthquake or terrorist attack.
“Since many bridges are, or will
be, located in areas of moderate or
high seismic activity, and because
many bridges are potential terrorist
targets, there is a need to develop
March 2006
structural systems capable of performing equally well under both
events,” says Bruneau, a professor
in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering in the UB School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences.
Prof. Bruneau’s design for
bridge piers — the columns that support the bridge superstructure — is
intended for small- and mediumsized bridges commonly constructed over major highways or
across bodies of water. As targets for
terrorist attacks, these bridges may
not have the symbolic allure of the
Brooklyn Bridge or the Golden Gate
Bridge, but they could be targeted
because of the potential economic
disruption their collapse would
cause, Prof. Bruneau notes.
“There is a lot of interest in protecting large, monumental bridges.
However there are other bridges that
are extremely important as lifelines
to large cities,” he says.
“Terrorists may not achieve the
same symbolic satisfaction taking
down one of these smaller bridges
as they would a monumental bridge,
but if their objective is to disturb the
economy, they have more access to
these bridges than the monumental
bridges.”
Prof. Bruneau’s bridge-pier design uses corrosion-resistant steel
tubes filled with concrete, but without reinforcing bars. The steel and
concrete bind together, forming a
composite structure, which gives the
piers superior strength and ductility — meaning the piers will bend
without breaking when subjected to
significant blast and seismic forces.
For the bridge pier’s footing, additional structural shapes are embedded in concrete to resist the large
flexural (bending) forces developing
at the base of the bridge piers. Most
bridges built today are supported by
conventional reinforced concrete
columns. These columns likely
would breach, leading to bridge collapse in the event of a major blast,
Prof. Bruneau says.
Prof. Bruneau’s bridge-pier design had been shown previously to
provide adequate seismic protection, but had not been tested for blast
resistance until recently. In field tests
Page 5
The Federal Highway Adminis- bridge-pier concept. Also contributperformed at the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers Research Facility in tration (FHA) funded the research ing to the research were UB graduate students Diego
Vicksburg MS, one-quarter
Lopez Garcia and
scale prototypes of Prof.
Shuichi Fujikura.
Bruneau’s bridge piers
The bridge-pier dewere subjected to blast
sign also could be ideal
forces similar to what
for accelerated bridge
would occur “if someone
construction,
Prof.
packed their trunk with exBruneau says, because a
plosives and tried to blow
bridge’s superstructure
up a bridge,” Prof. Bruneau
can be placed on top of
says.
the steel tubes while
Permanent bends, but
waiting for the concrete
no significant damage,
within the tubes to cure
were experienced by the
and gain strength. In
bridge piers as a result of
contrast, concrete colthe test blasts, according to
umns commonly used
Prof. Bruneau.
in new bridge construc“However, expert opintion must cure for sevion and results from softeral days before they can
ware modeling indicate
support the bridge suthat a comparable concrete
A scale model of a bridge pier designed by a University at
perstructure.
pier, reinforced with rebar,
Buffalo earthquake engineer was shown to withstand signifiProf. Bruneau’s rewould have exhibited sigcant blast forces with only minor damage.
search is one example of
nificant breaching of the
UB’s expanded research
concrete, resulting in failure
focus on “extreme
of the bridge,” he notes.
events,” defined as
Prof. Bruneau says his
events that have a sudbridge-pier design is inden onset, cause mass
tended for new construccasualties and destruction, but future research
tion, and have a major
will focus on development
impact on facilities and
of retrofit variations for exlifelines. “UB 2020,”
isting bridges.
UB’s strategic planning
The multi-hazard atprocess, has identified
tributes of Prof. Bruneau’s
“Extreme Events: Mitidesign, which offers protecgation and Response” as
tion against two hazards in
one of UB’s 10 strategic
one design, should make it
strengths, representing
attractive to state departareas across the disciments of transportation
plines where UB has the
looking for cost-effective
best opportunities to
solutions for new bridge
build academic excelconstruction, Prof. Bruneau
lence and achieve sigsays.
nificant
academic
“There are many simiprominence and recoglarities between seismic and
nition.
blast effects on bridges,” he
Prof. Bruneau will
explains. “Both are rare
present his research in
events and both induce sigMay 2006 at the Amerinificant damage in the
can Society of Civil Enstructural elements of a
gineers’ “Structures
bridge.
Congress” to be held in
“This is why we apSt. Louis.
proached this design from
While these new dethe multi-hazard perspective. We wanted to develop In field tests the bridge piers experienced only minor damage velopments in bridge
design and composition
a design that provides pro- after being subjected to significant blast forces.
may provide enormous
tection against both hazards, at one cost.”
and testing of Prof. Bruneau’s financial benefits in the future, what
Page 6
March 2006
about the many thousands of existing bridges across the country which
are in dire need of repair?
The simplistic answer would be
to replace them with newer, better
designed structures. But this approach ignores the reality of the
enormous amount of time, the staggering amount of money, and the
scope of the labor effort which
would be required to complete the
task. The existing approach, involving largely ineffectual but very costly
efforts to patch up and make do, has
not proved to be the solution either.
So, what is the solution?
Well, according to one University of Wisconsin professor, the answer may well be a bandaid.
Long polymer "bandages," designed initially to enable troops to
quickly and easily repair or reinforce
bridges to bear the weight of 113-ton
military tank transport vehicles,
now could be used to quickly and
inexpensively strengthen aging rural bridges and concrete culverts
around the country.
With initial funding from the
Army Corps of Engineers, Lawrence
Bank, professor of civil and environmental engineering professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
(UW-Madison), and his then-student Anthony Lamanna, perfected
these bandages, or fiber-reinforced
polymer (FRP) strips. Subsequently
they patented the strips through the
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
In wartime, the strips could be
key to keeping important transportation routes available, noted James
Ray, a structural engineer for the U.S.
Army Engineer Research and Development Center. "The main thing
these strips would be used for is if
the bridges don't have sufficient capacity to start with," he said. "The
military loadings are very heavy
compared to what bridges are normally designed for."
Using fiber-reinforced composite strips to bolster concrete structures isn't a new concept. Bridge repair crews have been gluing them in
place for more than a decade.
Unfortunately, the process of
transforming the crumbly, cracked
and pockmarked underside of a de-
cades-old concrete bridge into a surface suitable for glue takes good
weather, a lot of time and, typically,
a great deal of labor.
"You have to sandblast; you have
to repair with a mortar," explained
The fiber-reinforced polymer
strips developed to reinforce aging bridges by civil and environmental engineering professor
Larry Bank require little preparation, effort and time to install.
Here, Dave Winke and Frank
Schneider from the Rock County,
WI, Public Works Department
and then-student Andrew
Kuether (MS '03) mechanically
fasten the strips to the underside
of the Stoughton Road Bridge in
rural Edgerton, WI. Before the
city replaced the reinforced bridge
in 2003, workers and UW-Madison researchers conducted a variety of tests to determine what
loads would make it fail. Photo
copywrite 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Prof. Bank. "Typically on bridges,
you're doing things overhead, which
is also unpleasant."
Mimicing a practice common in
the building trades, an obvious alternative seemed to be simply fastening the strips to the bridge using
a tool similar to a power nailer. The
problem, however, was that existing
strips, which contain only longitudinal fibers, wouldn't hold up when
the fasteners punctured them. In
much the same fashion as a dry
board cracks or splits along the grain
when a nail hits the wrong place, the
fasteners caused the strips to split
along the longitudinal fibers.
"When you attach with fasteners,
you have to have different properties in the strip," explained Prof.
March 2006
Bank. "You have to have high bearing strength - which is that you could
press on the strip with these fasteners and it's not going to crack and
split."
Strongly resembling duct tape
without the stick, the reinforcing
strips developed by Prof. Bank and
Mr. Lamanna combine carbon fibers,
glass fibers and glass mats. The
mats, which are woven in tight crisscrosses as opposed to containing
only longitudinal fibers, are key to
the new strips' success.
"If you make a hole in the strip
and you push on the hole, the weave
allows it to carry that load," Prof.
Bank said. "If you just have these
longitudinal fibers, if you make a
hole and you push on it, it's going
to slide."
The newly developed strips,
which are stiff but not rigid, act like
super-strong bandages that workers
can quickly and inexpensively attach
to the underside of a bridge with
powder-actuated concrete fasteners.
To test the strips, county workers installed them on the decaying
1930s Stoughton Road bridge in
Edgerton, WI, in 2002. "It was really
bad," said Tom Hartzell, Edgerton
public works director. "There were
some big cracks that went all the
way through."
During the installation, which
took three workers less than a day, a
thunderstorm whipped up. The
bridge was in such poor condition
that rainwater and run-off poured
through the cracks. "You cannot use
a technique where you bond on
strips in that environment," Prof.
Bank emphasized.
Total cost for strengthening the
bridge was about $8,000; eventually,
Edgerton replaced it at a cost of
$196,800, including plan development, state review, old bridge removal and new bridge construction.
Continued research and development of new materials and construction techniques will hopefully
be instrumental in creating new opportunities to help make existing
funding available for other transportation projects. Solving the problem
of what to do about America’s crumbling transportation infrastructure
may well depend upon it. ##
Page 7
Report Assesses Impact Of Road
Development On Natural Environment
The National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) has issued a new report entitled “Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of
Paved Roads.” The report is the
broadest study to date examining
how road development in the
United States affects the natural environment, focusing
specifically on wildlife habitats. The 250-page report
serves as a virtual road map
for state and local highway
authorities, as well as engineering and construction
companies, to work in concert
with environmental groups
on highway development.
Despite more than four
million miles of paved roads
in the United States, the country is in the midst of a capacity shortage. Federal and state
governments forecast the
need for additional highway
construction, particularly in
suburban and exurban areas where
it will greatly impact wildlife ecosystems. Because no single law exists addressing ecological concerns
for transportation projects, there is
wide discrepancy on how to balance
environmental concerns and road
planning.
Since the mid-1990s, several federal transportation statutes have directed national and state highway
authorities to adopt a more sensitive
approach to the environment, particularly with respect to wildlife
habitat disruption caused by new
roads. Now, with an increasing
amount of federal money being directed to new highways, ecological
concerns become more important
than ever.
“Although a wide range of laws,
regulations, and policies require that
new road construction take in some
consideration of wildlife impact, the
existing legal structure leaves significant gaps,” according to Margaret Strand, a partner with Venable
LLP’s Transportation and InfrastrucPage 8
ture practice. “This report represents
an important consensus from some
disparate and often opposed stakeholders – in particular, state and federal highway authorities and conservation groups. We think it will serve
as a handbook for ecologically
minded road construction for years
to come.”
Ms. Strand authored the chapter
in the NAS report that provides a
legal context for road planning and
policy and she contributed significant portions to other chapters. Joining her on the NAS committee were
a number of prominent researchers
and professionals from the transportation and environmental fields, including representatives from the
Wildlife Conservation Society, Western Transportation Institute and the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The report's recommendations
focus on the need for integration of
ecological considerations in all
phases of road development, including maintenance of existing roads.
The study’s key recommendations
include:
• The establishment of a set of rapid
screening and assessment methods
for environmental impacts of transportation and a national ecological
database.
March 2006
• A national effort to develop standards for data collection.
• Improved models to predict how
roads will affect environmental conditions.
• Development of an environmental information and decision support
system by federal and state transportation agencies.
• Better collaboration among transportation and natural resource planners to support mutual objectives.
Ms. Strand was uniquely
qualified to contribute to the
NAS report, bringing a rare
combination of exceptional
credentials in both transportation and the environment. She
recently served as Special Assistant Attorney General to
the State of Utah in order to
negotiate a settlement with
the Sierra Club and other conservation groups that allowed
for the construction of the new
Legacy Parkway along the
shores of the Great Salt Lake.
From 1984 to 1991, she was
Chief of the Environmental
Defense Section in the U.S.
Justice Department, Environmental and Natural Resources
Division. Ms. Strand has served on
the Environmental Law Committee
of the Transportation Research
Board, National Academy of Sciences since 2002 and was a member
of the National Academy of Sciences
Board on Environmental Studies
and Toxicology from 1993 through
2001. She has also authored numerous works on environmental law issues including the Wetlands
Deskbook (Environmental Law Institute, 1993, 1997).
“We think the new report represents a turning point. It represents a
meeting of the minds that accommodates both the need for highway expansion with the need for habitat protection,” said Ms. Strand. “There are
so many stakeholders whose interests
need to converge in order to achieve
the best approach to well-planned
road development – state and local
highway authorities, engineering
and construction firms, trucking
companies, as well as the millions of
Americans who traverse the
country’s highways every day.” ##
Over 150
Candidates
Pass PE Exam
Over 150 candidates from Virginia successfully
passed the October 2005 Professional Engineer licensing exam. The newly licensed P.E.’s include: Patricia
Michelle Aguirre, P.E., of Manassas; Tarek Alkhrdaji,
P.E., of Springfield; Melany R. Alliston, P.E., of
Herndon; Curtis Bryant Annibale, P.E., of Fairfax; Scott
David Arnoe, P.E., of Virginia Beach; and Paul David
Aronsohn, P.E., of Newport News.
Other successful candidates include, Mark Alan
Baker, P.E., of Bristow; Wesley Allen Baker, P.E., of Virginia Beach; Elizabeth Elaine Baldwin, P.E., of Fairfax;
Clary Denisse Barreto-Acobe, P.E., of Vienna;
Nathaniel Adam Bawcombe, P.E., of Alexandria; Joseph Edward Beck III, P.E., of Glen Allen; Tahir Yaseen
Benabdi, P.E., of Manassas; Lamont Lavane Benjamin,
P.E., of Richmond; Scott C. Blossom, P.E., of
Williamsburg; Katherine Thompson Borden, P.E., of
Alexandria; and Kathryn Dianne Bowers, P.E., of
Chesapeake.
Also, Yvette Nicole Brett, P.E., of Hampton; Evan
Ross Brockwell, P.E., of Virginia Beach; David
Winthrop Brown, P.E., of Hampton; William Andrew
Browning, P.E., of Goochland; Keith John Burger, P.E.,
of Blacksburg; Rebekah Dawn Burke, P.E., of Virginia
Beach; Allison Marie Bbuschy, P.E., of Midlothian; Matthew James Butcher, P.E., of Arlington; and Robert
Irwin Butler, P.E., of Chesterfield.
Also, Joseph Edward Caldwell, P.E., of Hardy;
Heather Ann Campbell, P.E., of Richmond; Wallace L.
Carter, P.E., of Portsmouth; Ryan Edward Caya, P.E.,
of Roanoke; Thomas John Cirata, P.E., of Poquoson;
Conradie Piet, P.E., of Newport News; Brian David
Cornell, P.E., of Reston; Jonathan Michael Cosby, P.E.,
of Richmond; Michael Rochelle Cutchins, P.E., of
Franklin; and Rex Alan Cyphers, P.E., of Stafford.
Also, Grant Martin Davis, P.E., of Springfield;
Shane Michael Davis, P.E., of Shenandoah; Clifton Joseph Dayton, P.E., of Chantilly; Michael Lewis Easley,
P.E., of South Boston; Essam Eldin Elmesiry, P.E., of
Manassas; Susan Ann Estes, P.E., of Newport; Shaukat
Faheem, P.E., of Sterling; Joann Fendell, P.E., of Falls
Church; Ewa Rodzik Flom, P.E., of Chantilly; Ryan
Kuroash Foroughi, P.E., of Stafford; Jason Carrol
Fowler, P.E., of Courtland; Marcos Freeman, P.E., of
Virginia Beach; and Jason Matthew Frick, P.E., of
Chesapeake.
Also, Jason Jerome Garofalo, P.E., of Glen Allen;
Kristie Haddon Garofalo, P.E., of Glen Allen; David
Alan Gary, P.E., of Virginia Beach; Robert Scott Good,
P.E., of Luray; Frank Anthony Gulla, P.E., of Richmond;
Michael Robert Hagopian, P.E., of Annandale; James
Douglas Hale, P.E., of Richmond; Christopher Scott
Hamilton, P.E., of Richmond; Patrick Kevin Harnett,
P.E., of Herndon; Kristina T. Harris, P.E., of
Fredericksburg; Joel James Hartman, P.E., of Suffolk;
Obed Paul Higgins IV, P.E., of Toano; John Daniel
Hines, P.E., of Virginia Beach; Terry Lee Hinton, P.E.,
of Norfolk; Edward Bradley Hobbs, P.E., of Chesapeake; Mark Kevin Hottman, P.E., of Annandale; and
Haoxiong Huang, P.E., of Alexandria.
Also, Paul Lee Jenkins, P.E., of Reston; Joseph
Wayne Johnson, P.E., of Stephens City; Lynn Pugh
Kaerwer, P.E., of Richmond; Ravi K. Kantamaneni, P.E.,
of Arlington; James Daniel Knox, P.E., of Glen Allen;
Joseph P. Koscinski, Jr., P.E., of Chesterfield; David P.
Kramer, P.E., of Lebanon; Jason Richard Krempl, P.E.,
of Chesterfield; William Charles Kreye 2nd, P.E., of
Hanover; Richard James Krumenacker, P.E., of Alexandria; Ramesh Kumar, P.E., of Woodbridge; and
Patrick Arden Kunze, P.E., of Arlington.
Also, Robert Craig Leonard, P.E., of Bristol;
Zhenyang Li, P.E., of Reston; Ashley Craig Lickliter,
P.E., of Chesapeake; Lyndon Loh, P.E., of Fairfax; Allen
Ross Long, P.E., of Newport News; Mark G. Luxbacher,
P.E., of Pembroke; William Stanley Magann Jr., P.E., of
Chesapeake; Andrew Richard Maginnis, P.E., of
Herndon; John William Masi, P.E., of Newport News;
Jon Michael Mccalmont, P.E., of Richmond; and
Michael J. Mcgough, P.E., of Arlington.
The Show 2006
The Richmond Chapter of The Instrumentation,
Systems, and Automation Society (ISA) is pleased
to present
The Show 2006
at the Richmond Fairgrounds Complex
on March 22, 2006.
The annual trade show will not only feature
exhibits and demonstrations by manufacturers and
their representatives, but will offer FREE
informative seminars on a wide variety of topics.
Firms interested in exhibiting at the event are
encouraged to contact Lateef Baruwa at
[email protected] or visit www.isa-va.org
as soon as possible as space is limited.
March 2006
Page 9
Other successful candidates include, Craig Michael
Meiser, P.E., of Annandale; Matthew Eric Melkerson,
P.E., of Fredericksburg; Oscar Rolando Merida Jr., P.E.,
of Leesburg; Julie Ann Meyer, P.E., of Leesburg; Kimberly Dawn Mihalik, P.E., of Reston; Natoya La’shawn
Miller, P.E., of Alexandria; Michael Dean Morgan II,
P.E., of Lynchburg; Amy Jo Morris, P.E., of Fairfax Station; Sarah Jane Morton, P.E., of Glen Allen; Weston
Lee Moyers, P.E., of Falls Church; and Daniel Andrew
Musiker, P.E., of Norfolk.
Also, Ihab Osman Nafie, P.E., of Alexandria; Ryan
Charles Nagel, P.E., of Norfolk; Derek Scott Neilson,
P.E., of Norfolk; Marvin Thomas Newton, Jr., P.E., of
Newport News; Emmanuel Chuka Nnoli, P.E., of
Woodbridge; Abdullah Noorzad, P.E., of Chantilly;
Amy Lynn Novak, P.E., of Virginia Beach; Christy
Michelle O’Berry, P.E., of Norfolk; Michael Joseph
O’Hara, Jr., P.E., of Arlington; Brendan M. Owens, P.E.,
of Alexandria; and Brian Delmon Owens, P.E., of Glade
Spring.
Also, Timothy Wayne Pace, P.E., of Collinsville;
Michael Young Packard, P.E., of Arlington; Nicole
Young Pak, P.E., of Fairfax; Scott Michael Parr, P.E., of
Burke; Angela Theresa Parrish, P.E., of Christiansburg;
Stuart Paul Patterson, P.E., of Virginia Beach; Brett
William Paulin, P.E., of Chantilly; Kurt Matthew Peters, P.E., of Hampton; Kevin Barnes Phillips, P.E., of
Lynchburg; Elaine Sears Pickering, P.E., of Centreville;
David William Pratt, P.E., of Alexandria; Robert Wayne
Prunty III, P.E., of Fairfax; William M. Purcell, P.E., of
Norfolk; and Andrea Lee Putscher, P.E., of Fairfax.
Also, Chitra Ranganathan, P.E., of Blacksburg;
Donald Caldwell Ricker, P.E., of Richmond; Heather
Lesley Robinson, P.E., of Norfolk; Seth Owen Roderick,
P.E., of Harrisonburg; Harold Lino Rodriguez, P.E., of
Alexandria; Edgardo Luis Rosario, P.E., of
Woodbridge; Michael Rossi, P.E., of Fairfax; Jason
Clark Rushing, P.E., of Arlington; and Amy D. Ryan,
P.E., of Blacksburg.
Also, Michael William Saunders, P.E., of
Christiansburg; Ronald Edward Schindler, P.E., of
Portsmouth; Tyson James Scofield, P.E., of
Christiansburg; Vishnu Vr Seri, P.E., of Chantilly;
Jonathan Bruce Siegel, P.E., of Norfolk; Elizabeth Grace
Sitter, P.E., of Ashburn; Brendan M. Smith, P.E., of Falls
Church; Gregory Scott Smith, P.E., of Fredericksburg;
Basant K. Sood, P.E., of Clifton; Kurt Allen Stafford,
P.E., of Glen Allen; Jack Allen Starr, P.E., of Fairfax;
James Roy Strozier, P.E., of Franklin; John David Stutz,
P.E., of Suffolk; Jacinto Dayao Su, P.E., of Falls Church;
and Gerald A. Sullivan Jr., P.E., of Lexington.
Other successful candidates include, Michal Tabor,
P.E., of Arlington; Stephen Robert Tekampe, P.E., of
Centreville; Robert Trivino, P.E., of Richmond; Brian
A. Turner, P.E., of Norfolk; Marc Hudson Viau, P.E., of
Portsmouth; Eulion James White, Sr., P.E., of Virginia
Beach; Matthew Bert Whittaker, P.E., of Abingdon; Jason Perrow Wilkins, P.E., of Midlothian; Scott Joseph
Wise, P.E., of King George; Bingzhi Yang, P.E., of Falls
Church; Xiao Zhang, P.E., of Reston. ##
Page 10
March 2006
Fuel-Saving Device Could
Revolutionize Industry
An experimental fuel-saving device developed at
Clarkson University could possibly revolutionize the
trucking industry.
“The aft end of ground vehicles is often a design
compromise between functionality and aerodynam-
Clarkson University has announced an experimental device to reduce the "drag" on tractor Trailers that increases
fuel efficiency approximately 10%. The device could save
truck operators $4,000 per year.
ics,” explained Ken Visser, associate professor of
Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering. “Traditional transport vehicles have a flat aft end that creates a large drag on the vehicle at highway speeds,
which ultimately reduces gas mileage and increases
costs and emissions. We have designed extendable
flat plates that can be mounted to the truck’s rear
doors to reduce drag.”
The device, which resembles a second set of doors
when closed and opens out into a box-like structure,
has been studied in Clarkson’s wind tunnel as well
as on full-scale vehicles in cross-country road tests.
“The most recent data based on road testing indicates that the device will save approximately onehalf mile per gallon, an increase in fuel efficiency of
about 10 percent,” said Prof. Visser. “This translates
into a savings of about $4,000 per year for a truck
running 150,000 miles at $2.50 a gallon of fuel.”
Prof. Visser and his team of graduate and undergraduate student researchers tested various shapes
and created a prototype in 2000. After developing the
technology and design, he was awarded a grant from
NYSERDA and contracted with the Plattsburgh,
N.Y.,-based company Composite Factory Inc. to
manufacture the device using efficient lightweight
composite materials. A design patent for the unique
concept is currently in the works.
The next step is a 50-truck fleet test. “Once we
can test run this on a larger scale we will really be
able to quantify the fuel savings and environmental
benefits,” said Prof. Visser. ##
NASA Continues Exploration
Of Scientific Frontier
The science is tiny as carbon
nanotubes and the silica shells that
cover single-cell algae. And it’s as
practical as finding a leak in a spacecraft and understanding a new material for the next space telescope.
Researchers affiliated with Iowa
State University’s Center for Nondestructive Evaluation are working on
17 projects for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The
work is in its fourth year and is focused on finding new materials to
monitor the health and safety of
spacecraft and developing new
methods for inspecting spacecraft.
The research projects are supported
by $7 million appropriated by Congress from 2002 to 2005.
“This research is laying the foundation for the future,” said R. Bruce
Thompson, an Iowa State Anson
Marston Distinguished Professor in
Engineering and director of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation.
“Space is a whole new area to apply
our toolbox and develop new tools.”
Here are four examples of the research Iowa State scientists are doing for NASA:
• Leak detection
It’s not easy to find a leak in a
spacecraft. The leaks can be caused
by collisions with tiny meteorites or
orbiting space debris. The noise of
pressurized air escaping a spacecraft
shoots into the vacuum of space. Besides, spacecraft walls are covered
with gear, instruments, gadgets and
tools. So it once took astronauts two
weeks to find a leak in the International Space Station.
Dale Chimenti, an Iowa State
professor of aerospace engineering,
and Ronald Roberts, a scientist at the
Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, are working on measurement
and computing technology that can
detect and pinpoint leaks in about
30 seconds. Prof. Chimenti said the
system detects the minute vibrations
produced by the skin of a spacecraft
when pressurized air escapes in a
turbulent rush. Taking measure-
ments from two locations allows researchers to use triangulation to pinpoint the leak.
• Carbon nanotubes
The tubes are strong, light and
potentially useful for electronic and
mechanical applications. But they’re
tiny, just a few atoms across. They’re
very smooth, too. So it’s a challenge
for researchers to work with them,
let alone put them to good use.
Vladimir Tsukruk, a professor of
materials science and engineering, is
working to wrap the tubes with a
long-chain polymer. That should
help researchers handle and align
carbon nanotubes. And that could
allow carbon nanotubes to be used
as sensors on spacecraft. Such sensors could be used to examine the
gases in a spacecraft’s air. He said
carbon nanotube sensors would be
much smaller and much lighter than
existing technologies.
• New space materials
NASA is designing a new composite material that will be used to
construct some of the structures on
the next generation of space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope. The new composite is a polymer reinforced with two types of
carbon fiber.
David Hsu, a senior scientist at
the Center for Nondestructive
Evaluation, is using ultrasonic technology to test the composite so re-
searchers have a better grasp of its
properties. He’s also testing the composite after it was exposed to temperatures down to minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit. He is using ultrasound technology to study micro
cracking caused by the thermal tests.
• High-tech nature
Nanotechnology is pushing
technology smaller and smaller. And
that makes it harder and harder to
produce 3-D materials for
nanotechnology applications. How
do you make holes, crevices and
rims on structures only a few millionths of a meter across?
Mufit Akinc, professor and
chairman of materials science and
engineering, is working with the
tiny silica shells created by microscopic, single-celled algae called diatoms. He’s using chemical vapors to
turn the silica shells – which come
in thousands of shapes – into compounds such as titania and barium
titanate. He said the compounds and
their fancy shapes have potential for
use in micro devices and sensors.
Other Iowa State projects for
NASA include development of new
magnetic sensors for spacecraft,
study of new materials for advanced
sensors, improvements in X-ray
techniques for early detection of
cracking in spacecraft and development of computer simulation tools
to assist NASA with ultrasonic inspections.
Prof. Akinc said the NASA
projects provide some interesting
work for Iowa State scientists.
Yes, he said, “It’s also fun to
work on these things.” ##
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March 2006
Page 11
Bury+Partners recently announced the following promotions
in their Fairfax Office:
Tom Pickering, P.E., Director of
Engineering for the firm’s Fairfax office, has been named a principal in
the firm. Mr. Pickering has a B.S.
degree in Civil Engineering from the
University of Massachusetts at
North Dartmouth. He has over 20
years of experience in civil engineering, with particular expertise in the
retail and land development sectors.
Bury+Partners is also pleased to
announce the naming of George
Clausen, L.S.I.T, D.P.E., as an Associate in the firm. He has worked in
the Northern Virginia area for over
20 years on numerous civil and survey projects. An experienced senior
project manager, he oversees multiple projects for clients in both the
public and private sectors.
Whitman, Requardt and Associates, LLP (WR&A) is pleased to announce the following promotions:
William J. Spyhalski, P.E. has
been promoted to the level of Associate with the
firm. He is responsible for the
management and
technical leadership of the Richmond
office
bridge and structure design staff.
Mr. Spyhalski has
Spyhalski
over 21 years of
experience in repair, rehabilitation,
widening and new bridge design.
He received his M. S. degree in Civil
Engineering from Northwestern
University and his B. S. degree in
Civil Engineering from the University of Kentucky.
J. Andrew Landrum, P.E. has
been promoted to the level of AssoPage 12
ciate with the firm. He manages the
firm’s office in Newport News. Mr.
Landrum has
over 30 years of
experience on a
wide range of
civil and environmental engineering projects. He
received his undergraduate and
masters degrees
Landrum
from Old Dominion University.
WR&A is pleased to welcome
Karl Kratzer as the Environmental
Manager to the
Richmond office.
Mr.
Kratzer
brings over 20
years of NEPA
compliance and
documentation of
environmental
impacts as they
relate to transporKratzer
tation facilities
and commercial developments. He
received his B. S. degree in Biology
from Mary Washington College.
The Engineering Groupe, Inc.,
congratulates Billy Flynn and Ben
Broker on their recent certifications
as Licensed Land Surveyors in the
Commonwealth of Virginia.
Mr. Flynn, who works out of the
company’s Woodbridge Headquarters office as a Project Manager, has
been with The Engineering Groupe,
Inc. since its inception 15 years ago.
With over 17 years of practical experience in the fields of surveying
and engineering, his technical expertise encompasses surveying, road
design, water design, sanitary sewer
design, site grading, stormwater
management, erosion & sediment
control and the use of computerMarch 2006
aided design and drafting systems,
including AUTOCAD.
Mr. Broker, also based out of the
Woodbridge Headquarters office
working as a Senior Survey
Computor, has over 21 years of surveying experience. He has been associated with The Engineering
Groupe for the past seven years.
The Engineering Groupe would
also like to welcome Mike Webb,
P.E., who recently joined the company as a Project Manager. Mr. Webb
brings 30 years experience in land
development and municipal utility
infrastructure including specifications and estimates for roadway improvements, storm drains, water
systems, water wells, pump stations,
water storage tanks, and sewer systems to the firm . He graduated from
Virginia Tech with a B.S. degree in
Civil Engineering and has been registered as a Professional Engineer in
the state of Virginia since 1981.
Hayes, Seay, Mattern and
Mattern, Inc. (HSMM) announces
that David G.
Weatherly, P.E.,
electrical department head, and
Georgana
L.
Turner, electrical
design technician,
have
become
Lighting Certified
through the NaWeatherly
tional Council on
Qualifications for the Lighting Professions, a non-profit organization
founded in 1991
to serve and protect the well-being of the public
through effective
and
efficient
lighting practice.
Mr. Weatherly
and Ms. Turner
successfully comTurner
pleted the LC
program and exam, which demonstrates to clients an acquired knowledge, understanding, and ability to
apply lighting principles and techniques successfully.
Larry McKee, P.E., senior electrical engineer with HSMM, has become Lighting Certified through the
National Council on Qualifications
for the Lighting Professions. Mr.
McKee successfully completed the
LC program and
exam.
HSMM announces that Joseph
E.
Caldwell, CPD
recently received
certification as a
Professional Engineer in the
McKee
Commonwealth
of Virginia. Mr. Caldwell, assistant
mechanical department head,
earned his B.S.
degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Old Dominion University and received
his
Certified
Plumbing Designer certificaCaldwell
tion in 2004. During his 10-year association with
HSMM’s Roanoke regional office, he
has designed plumbing and fire protection systems for a wide range of
new and renovation projects.
HSMM announces the assignment of John H. Spyhalski, P.E.,
DBIA as Market
Director for the
Industry and
Technology market segment. His
in-depth knowledge of the fastpaced approach
to design-build
processes, along
Spyhalski
with over 20
years experience, make him
uniquely qualified to lead the market segment. Mr. Spyhalski has a B.S.
degree in Civil
Engineering from
the University of
Kentucky.
Mr. Spyhalski
succeeds Fred L.
(Ted) Petoskey,
Jr., P.E., DBIA,
who is retiring
from HSMM after
Petoskey
20 years of service and 40 years in the engineering
profession. He specialized in the
March 2006
Page 13
planning, design, and construction
of industrial and high technology facilities; he most recently served as
Corporate Director of Design-Build.
Mr. Petoskey, a senior vice president
and director of the firm, joined the
firm in 1985.
HSMM also announces the new
assignment of Kristine S. Barker,
CID as Interiors
Studio Lead for
its Virginia Beach
office.
Ms.
Barker’s responsibilities include
providing leadership for client development and
service activities,
Barker
as well as advancing the technical expertise of the
studio to engage and impact marketplace, practice, and business initiatives. A graduate of Auburn University, she earned a Bachelor of Interior Design degree.
Dewberry has announced several promotions of senior staff located in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area:
Raymond Holdener, P.E., a senior associate with Dewberry affiliate TOLK, Inc. in Fairfax, has recently been named vice president.
Mr. Holdener has been with the firm
for more than 20 years, and has extensive experience in the design and
project management of mechanical,
electrical, plumbing, and fire/lifesafety systems.
Rick Ritner, P.E., a mechanical
engineer with TOLK, Inc., has been
named vice president. Mr. Ritner has
more than 25 years experience as a
professional engineer and contractor. He has been responsible for the
design and management of mechanical, electrical, plumbing and
fire/life safety systems for numerous new construction projects as
well as renovation and tenant improvement projects.
Kevin McNiff, P.E., LEED™ AP,
a project manager with TOLK, Inc.,
has recently been named senior associate. Mr. McNiff has more than 13
years experience in the commercial
engineering field and has been responsible for both the management
and design of millions of square feet
Page 14
of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.
Eric Parlet, P.E., an electrical engineer with TOLK, Inc., has been
named senior associate. Mr. Parlet
has more than 20 years experience
in electrical engineering for a variety of corporate, commercial, institutional, and government facilities.
Richard A. Riviere, a senior construction inspector in Fairfax, has
been named senior associate. Mr.
Riviere has more than 21 years of
construction administration experience and has worked on several of
the Washington region’s largest
transportation infrastructure improvement initiatives.
Grant M. Smith, P.E., CFM, an
associate and department manager
with Dewberry’s Federal Programs
operating unit in Fairfax, has been
named senior associate. A certified
floodplain manager, Mr. Smith is a
professional engineer with more
than 30 years experience. Since joining Dewberry, he has assumed significant responsibility on FEMA contracts, to include managing delivery
of Digital Flood Insurance Rate
Maps (DFIRMs) in support of
FEMA’s flood insurance program.
Timothy A. Blak, PLS, CFM, a
project manager and remote sensing
specialist in the Fairfax, VA, office
has been named associate. Mr. Blak
has more than 18 years experience
in the geomatics industry.
Catherine R. Bohn, CFM, a
project manager and senior GIS specialist in the Fairfax office has been
named associate. With more than 12
years experience, Ms. Bohn has extensive knowledge in providing onsite GIS support and training to federal, state, and local clients.
Denice Bracey, a contracts manager in the Fairfax office with more
than 20 years experience, has been
named associate.
David Frank, CLA, project manager for land development services
in the Winchester office, has been
named associate. Mr. Frank has more
than 12 years experience in land development design.
Iraj Golshan, P.E., a senior structural engineer in the Fairfax office
has been named associate. Mr.
Golshan’s career in engineering has
March 2006
spanned more than 40 years and includes the design of major building
and civil infrastructure projects.
Mark Heinrich, P.E., a mechanical engineer with TOLK, Inc., has
recently been named associate. Mr.
Heinrich has 10 years experience in
the design of mechanical systems for
base building, tenant, and renovation projects.
Steven K. Kuntz, P.E., a transportation engineer in the Fairfax office, has been named associate. Mr.
Kuntz has eight years experience
and has played a key role on several
infrastructure initiatives in the
Washington metropolitan area.
Laurel E. McGinley, P.E., a
project manager in the Fairfax office
has been named associate. Ms.
McGinley has 10 years experience in
the geotechnical and environmental
engineering and emergency management profession.
Jason R. McNamara, a senior
project manager with Dewberry’s
Emergency Management, Disaster
and Mitigation Services division in
Fairfax, has been named associate.
Mr. McNamara has more than 12
years experience in homeland security and emergency management
prevention, preparedness, response,
and recovery.
Brian M. Tanner, P.E., CEM,
GEB, LEED™ AP, a project manager
with TOLK Inc., has been named associate. Mr. Tanner has more than 10
years experience with both the design and project management aspects of mechanical, electrical, and
plumbing systems.
Dewberry has announced the
following promotions of senior staff
in its Richmond, VA office:
David Maxwell, P.E., associate
and branch manager, has been
named senior associate. Mr. Maxwell has more than 12 years experience, and manages an office that specializes in municipal water/wastewater, transportation, and land development engineering.
Robert “Skip” Notte, P.E., a
project manager with almost a decade of experience, has been named
associate. Mr. Notte specializes in
the design and management of water and wastewater facilities and
land development projects.
perience. As director of engineering,
he will oversee the design and management efforts
for numerous urban in-fill development and public works projects
serving various
local jurisdictions. He has an
M.S. degree in
Construction EnDelgado
gineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and a
B.S. degree in Civil Engineering
from Syracuse University.
Hankins and Anderson, Inc., recently announced the promotion of
Larney Clark to Electrical Department Production Manager. In his
new position, he will be responsible
for assigning staff, coordination of
administrative aspects, and management of quality control for the electrical portions of all projects.
Zannino Engineering, Inc. is
pleased to announce that Mark E.
McLain, P.E. has recently returned
from military duty in Iraq. Mr.
Bruce W . Husselbee, P.E., has
been named director of engineering
for
Hampton
Roads Sanitation
District (HRSD).
Before his promotion to this senior
leadership position, he served
for nine years as
project manager
in the utility's DeHusselbee
sign and Construction Division. Mr. Husselbee's
experience also includes 12 years in
the consulting engineering field. He
holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering and an M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering both from
George Washington University. He
is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in
coastal engineering at Old Dominion University.
Bowman Consulting is pleased
to announce the promotion of Scott
Delgado, P.E. to director of engineering in its Alexandria office. Mr.
Delgado joined the firm in 2005 and
he has over 14 years engineering ex-
McLain has been with the company
for over 11 years and currently
serves as a Senior
Engineer. He received his B.S.
and M.S. degrees
in Civil Engineering from Virginia
Tech and has also
received training
from the U.S.
Army Corps of
McLain
Engineers.
Mike McCabe has recently
joined the staff at Prime Air Products Company, a
Richmond-based
manufacturers’
re p re s e n t a t i v e
firm, as a Sales
Representative.
Mr.
McCabe
brings over 30
years experience
in the HVAC inMcCabe
dustry to the
firm. Most recently, he was a Regional Sales Manager for a custom
air handling unit manufacturer. ##
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Page 15
Potential Improvment In Auto
Suspension Systems Demonstrated
Researchers have successfully
demonstrated that their method can
be used to show precisely how a
part's performance is changed by
damage and also how its changing
performance affects other parts in
the suspension.
Findings were detailed in a paper presented recently during the
International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. The
conference is sponsored by the
American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME).
The approach represents a potential change in how automotive
suspension systems will be designed in the future, said Douglas
E. Adams, an associate professor of
mechanical engineering who is
leading the research.
"The way it's done now is that
each of the parts making up the suspension are manufactured to be as
rugged as possible," Prof. Adams
said. "Usually, different suppliers
provide the different components,
and what they do as good suppliers
is optimize the strength and durability of their component.
"The problem with this approach
is that some of the parts are over-engineered and heavier than they need
to be because they are designed to
withstand greater forces than they
will encounter once they are integrated into the system. This results
in a heavy suspension system that
doesn't handle very well, and higher
fuel and steel consumption than you
would like.
"A better, more integrated approach that automakers are now
pursuing is to test the entire suspension by analyzing parts, not as isolated units but as interconnected
components. That way, we will learn
more precisely how individual parts
interact with each other, and we will
be able to design parts that are just
as light and rugged as they need to
be but not too heavy or rugged."
The integrated approach is particularly important for the design of
Page 16
suspension systems because one
damaged part can cause heavier
strain on surrounding parts. If engineers know which parts are most
prone to damage, those parts can be
Muhammad Haroon, a Purdue mechanical engineering doctoral student, works on
sensors installed in a car suspension system at the university's Ray W. Herrick
Laboratories. (Purdue News Service photo/
David Umberger)
built heavier and other parts can be
made lighter, reducing the overall
weight and improving the performance of the suspension.
A suspension system consists of
parts such as bolts, rubber bushings,
coil springs, steering mechanisms
and tie rods. The method developed
at Purdue senses naturally occurring
vibration patterns to detect damage
to components. Sensors called "triaxial accelerometers" are attached to
suspension components and are
used to collect data as vibration
passes through the components. The
data are fed to a computer, where
complex software programs interpret the information to analyze each
part's performance.
Such "fault-identification" methods may not only provide information for designing better suspensions
but also might be used for future
"structural health monitoring" systems in cars that automatically detect damaged parts and estimate
how long they will last.
When perfected, such a "systems
approach" could provide a competitive edge to companies that make
March 2006
suspension parts. The work is
funded by ArvinMeritor Inc., which
makes suspension components at its
plant in Columbus, IN. The research
also is supported by the Center for
Advanced Manufacturing, located
in Purdue's Discovery Park, the
university's hub for interdisciplinary
research.
"We want to develop instrumentation, sensing methods and technologies and also ways to process
data that industry can use to conduct durability tests on so-called integrated suspensions," Prof. Adams
said. "The company that designs an
integrated suspension system that
is lighter and lasts longer than the
component-wise suspension will
have a competitive advantage over
other companies."
The research paper, written by
mechanical engineering doctoral
student Muhammad Haroon and
Prof. Adams, focuses on bolts connecting the various components in
the suspension system of a luxury
sedan. In research conducted at the
university's Ray W. Herrick Laboratories, the engineers showed that
their system was able to detect damaged bolts, precisely determine how
a bolt's performance was affected by
the damage and how its changing
performance affected other parts in
the suspension system.
"What we've shown in this particular paper is that we can detect
very small changes in a part's performance when it is damaged, and
we've also been able to quantify the
changes, which is really significant,"
Prof. Adams said. "We quantify the
changes by turning data into information using a software algorithm
that utilizes an embedded sensitivity model, which we developed.
"The reason it's important to
quantify the change is that, if we
know one part is experiencing a failure mechanism of a certain type and
another component is experiencing
increasing strain as a result of the
damaged part, we can figure out
which parts need to be heaviest and
which can be lighter."
The researchers hope to complete work to develop the method in
less than two years, at which time it
could be ready for commercial use. ##
Testing Of WorldRecord Magnet
Completed
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has
ended its year with another achievement of international
importance as engineers and technicians recently completed testing of a world-record magnet.
With the completion of a new, 35-tesla magnet, the
highest-field “resistive” magnet in the world is now
located at the Tallahassee facility. The state-of-the-art
magnet, which incorporates “Florida-Bitter” technology
invented at the laboratory, was designed and built onsite and is immediately available for research.
The 35-tesla magnet is an upgrade of an existing 30tesla magnet and surpasses the previous record of 33
tesla, also held by the laboratory. “Tesla” is a measurement of the strength of a magnetic field; 1 tesla is equal
to 20,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. Typical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines in hospitals
provide fields in the range of 1 to 3 tesla. Put another
way, the increase from 30 to 35 teslas in the new magnet
represents a 17-percent jump, or an increase equal to
the magnetic force of two MRI machines.
“With the advances that magnet lab engineers and
technicians have made in magnet technology, it would
be easy to become nonchalant about the significance of
these world records,” said Gregory S. Boebinger, director of the facility. “But each increase in field represents
world-class engineering and a quarter-of-a-million-dollar investment to provide new and unique opportunities for scientific discovery.”
Mark D. Bird, project leader on the 35-tesla upgrade,
said that as engineers learn more about existing materials and as new materials become available, the lab is
able to upgrade its existing magnets.
“We continuously strive to improve the performance of our magnets both by pushing the fields higher
and by increasing the quality of the fields,” said Mr.
Bird. “Our next new magnet will focus not just on high
field, but uniform field as well.”
And higher and more stable fields are exactly what
the laboratory’s users, who come from all corners of
the world, demand. The magnet laboratory is funded
by the state of Florida and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide the international research community with the highest magnetic fields possible to conduct research in all areas of science. Use of the magnets
is free as long as researchers agree to share the results
of their work.
The majority of the magnets and instrumentation
used at the magnet laboratory are developed by the
laboratory staff and operated by in-house researchers
who collaborate with the hundreds of scientists who
visit the facility each year. The 35-tesla magnet, which
has a 32 mm, or 1.25-inch, experimental space, is intended to be used primarily for physics and materials
science research.
Magnetism is a critical component of many scientific discoveries in addition to a surprising number of
modern technologies, including computer memory and
disk drives. High-field magnets now occupy a place beside lasers and microscopes as essential research tools
for probing the mysteries of nature. Long used by the
physics community to understand the fundamental
nature of matter and electronic structures, magnetic
fields now are used by biologists, chemists and even
pharmacists to better understand complex molecules
and tissues, and in fact are responsible for the development of the MRI technology that has changed the face
of modern medicine.
Funded by the National Science Foundation and the
State of Florida, The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is operated by a consortium consisting of Florida
State University, the University of Florida and Los
Alamos National Laboratory. The Tallahassee facility
houses both resistive — so-called “powered” — magnets that use both electricity and cooled water to operate and superconducting magnets that, once brought to
full field, require little or no electrical power to run. In
July 2005, the lab commissioned a world-record, 900megahertz, wide-bore nuclear magnetic resonance magnet, which is expected to yield important discoveries in
the fields of chemical and biomedical research. ##
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Custom UL Panel Fabrication
Ron Vest, Manager
A Division of
Chewning & Wilmer, Inc.
Electrical Contractors
Founded 1924
Virginia State License #6
Bill Powell, President/CEO • John Williams, Executive Vice-President
Art Nelson, Vice-President & Secretary
Robert Zahn, Vice-President & Treasurer
Jay Atkinson, Director • Carson Rogers, Director
Jed Wilson, P.E.
Telephone (804) 231-7373
Fax (804) 231-1330
March 2006
2508 Mechanicsville Turnpike
Richmond, VA 23223
Page 17
Agency Celebrates 100 Years
Of Excellence In Transportation
Transportation in Virginia began
its long and colorful history with the
first footsteps of those intrepid adventurers disembarking from three
small ships anchored at a place
which would later become known as
the Jamestown settlement.
Over the course of the next 300
years, growth in all directions within
the Commonwealth would incorporate the use of horses, wagons, boats,
and trains in the movement of
people and goods. As the early wilderness areas were transformed into
homesteads, and shortly, towns and
cities began to dot the landscape,
Virginia’s leaders began to realize
that a more comprehensive, better
planned and coordinated approach
to transportation was needed.
The arrival of the 20th century
brought with it the age of the automobile. And while Virginians were
quick to embrace the new technology, the infrastructure to accommodate these new horseless carriages
was woefully inadequate.
By 1906, the General Assembly
had decided to do something about
the new momentum toward motoring and on March 6, established the
first state Highway Commission.
The first highway project began
in August 1906 in Washington
County between Meadow View and
Graham’s Bridge. The 20-foot-wide
road was to have macadam 12-14
feet in width and generally six inches
in depth.
Other milestones during those
early years of organization and operation include:
— projects begun in December
1906 to facilitate the 1907 Jamestown
Exposition, including a road connecting
Williamsburg
with
Jamestown Island;
— issuance of the first vehicle license in 1906 (by 1910 Virginians
had registered 2,470 vehicles);
— passage of the State Convict
Road Force Act in 1906;
— passage of the first appropriaPage 18
tion for road construction in 1908, for
$250,000 annually “out of any
money in the state treasury not otherwise appropriated;”
— in 1916, passage of the Federal
Road Act, forcing states to organize
highway departments which would
plan a state system of highways coordinated with a national system;
— In 1918, Virginia passed the
State Highway Act, establishing a
state highway system of 4,002 miles,
which would be the state’s responsibility to build and maintain;
— in 1927, the Department of
Highways was established as a state
agency;
— in 1956, Congress called for
the construction of a 42,500-mile interstate highway system of which
the distance planned for Virginia
equated in length to a superhighway
from Richmond to Des Moines,
Iowa;
— in 1967, Virginia became the
third state in the nation to enter into
an agreement with the Federal Highway Administration on standards
for control of outdoor advertising
signs along interstate and federalaid primary highways; and
— in 1974, the agency was renamed the Department of Highways
and Transportation.
Throughout its first 75 years, the
newly named Department of Highways and Transportation had weathered many challenges. The 1980s
brought inflationary construction
costs compounded by diminishing
construction revenues. Maintenance
expenses for Virginia’s highway infrastructure also spiraled upward,
and highway-user tax receipts failed
to meet expectations.
Early in the decade, the department was forced to lay off approximately 120 employees because of
funding shortfalls.
Lawmakers tried to deal with
declining revenues for road construction by increasing gasoline
taxes and user fees. In the mid-1980s,
March 2006
Gov. Gerald Baliles appointed the
Commission on Transportation in
the 21st century (COT 21). The
commission’s recommendations for
new funding sources resulted in a
half-cent being added to the sales
tax, with proceeds dedicated to
transportation funding. Other user
fees also were increased.
These initiatives meant a doubling, and in some areas, tripling, of
the highway construction program.
The department took multiple measures to meet the challenge, cutting
the time it took to complete highway
projects by 20 percent, and doing it
with fewer people per dollars spent.
Other innovations followed.
Special tax districts were approved
to allow localities to raise funds for
accelerated road construction. Private companies were given the opportunity to build and operate forprofit toll roads; the Dulles
Greenway resulted.
One of the events indicating a
more multimodal approach to transportation planning was another
change of the department’s name.
No longer would the department’s
name mention highways, but rather
it would reflect a much broader approach to keeping Virginians moving. The new name, legislated in
1986, was the Virginia Department
of Transportation. The age of VDOT
had begun.
In late 1991, 976 employees took
advantage of VDOT’s “early retirement” program, leaving the agency
to streamline operations and do
more with less. In 1995, another
1,227 employees chose to separate
from state service under the
Workforce Transition Act. The act
was designed to reduce the size and
scope of state government, encouraging agencies to find more efficient
ways to do business.
A strong focus on operating
Virginia’s highways more efficiently
directed VDOT throughout the
1990s. Continuous implementation
of new technologies, especially Intelligent Transportation Systems
(ITS), made Virginia a leader among
the states in racing toward the future. By bringing ITS under the marketing umbrella of “Smart Travel,”
VDOT enabled millions of motorists
to benefit from an array of technolo- new program takes the guesswork
gies being applied to roadways, ve- out of cost estimating and allows for
better decisions in the earlier phases
hicles and traffic management.
In 1985, the first Smart Traffic of a project.
Another tracking tool, the Right
Center opened in Northern Virginia
of Way and Utilities
allowing VDOT to
Management Sysmonitor traffic with
tem (RUMS), was in
video cameras,
place by 2002. It has
pavement sensors
been so successful
and to alert motorat helping keep
ists of traffic condiright of way and
tions via electronic
utilities activities on
message signs. A
schedule that other
“Smart Road,” the
state agencies are
first roadbed in the
buying the rights to
nation built specifiuse VDOT’s softcally to test intelliware.
gent transportation
In the new milsystems, opened in
lennium, VDOT
Blacksburg in 2000.
also tackled the task
By the beginof getting its finanning of the new millennium, VDOT “Smart Road” opened in cial house in order.
A critical compowas faced with the Blackstone, VA during 2000.
nent was improving
daunting task of
meeting demands for increased cash management. Now VDOT runs
highway capacities while recon- a cash flow analysis to make certain
structing major interstates, renewing cash is available before project plans
aging bridges and providing are approved.
Reorganization also played a key
smoother riding surfaces while simultaneously reducing the impact role in the agency’s transformation.
of such work on the motoring pub- Key to the improvements was accellic. All of this needed to be done in erating efforts to push as much dethe midst of stricter environmental cision-making authority as possible
controls and permitting processes. into the field.
To help alert motorists of congesAlso, public involvement became increasingly emphasized in all phases tion due to construction and traffic
incidents, Virginia became one of the
of project planning.
By April 2002, the agency had a first states to launch 511, a traffic and
new Commissioner and a clearly travel information phone number.
stated mission: to safely deliver The voice-activated service initially
projects on time and on budget. covered only the I-81 corridor. Three
Commissioner Philip A. Shucet years later, the system went statecalled for accountability and the wide. As traffic congestion increases
tools to track it. By August of that
year, VDOT employees had developed the Web-based Dashboard – an
early warning system for project
managers to see in an instant which
jobs are at risk of falling behind
schedule or going over budget. Using the red yellow and green lights
of a traffic signal, the Dashboard also
measures VDOT’s success by showing which projects are on track, and
it serves as a tool to help managers
do the best job possible.
Also developed in house,
VDOT’s Project Cost Estimating System was adopted agencywide. The
March 2006
and construction budgets decrease,
VDOT had to find innovative ways
to get roads built.
In September 2002, VDOT
opened its first Public-Private Transportation Act (PPTA) project – the
Pocahontas Parkway near Richmond. Route 288 also in the Richmond area followed in 2004. Four
others are due for completion by
spring 2007.
As VDOT reaches its 100th birthday, major construction projects are
nearing completion including the
Hampton Road area’s Coliseum
Central project, due to finish in August 2006; the Northern Virginia
area’s Springfield Interchange Improvement Project by late 2007, and
the new Virginia/Maryland/D.C.
Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project due
to finish on time and on budget in
2011. In the years to come, it is clear
that transportation funding will remain a major issue in keeping up
with demand, and in keeping Virginia moving toward the next 100
years of transportation excellence. ##
(Editor’s Note: The information and
photographs presented in this article
were made available through the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Specifically recognized for her invaluable assistance is Ms. Lynda J. South,
director of public affairs. VDOT’s 100year history is encapsulated in a book
called “A History of Roads.” A commemorative edition is planned for 2006.
An overview is also available on their
website at www.vdot.virginia.gov/
infoservice/100years/history.asp)
Page 19
Roundabouts Offer Advantages
In Traffic Management
When traffic engineers plan the
roads that eventually will accommodate traffic in new developments,
the plans usually involve intersections with stop signs or signal lights.
But the barren site of a future intersection might be an opportunity to
consider another option for traffic
management, the modern roundabout. These have been built by the
tens of thousands worldwide. The
main benefits have been to improve
traffic flow and reduce injury
crashes by as much as 75 percent
compared with intersections controlled by stop lights or signs. But
only about 1,000 roundabouts have
been built in the United States.
“Transportation engineers, like
everybody else, generally go with
what they’re used to, and what
they’re used to on U.S. roads is constructing standard four-way intersections equipped with stop signs or
signal lights. Doing this means missing the benefits of roundabouts, so
we’d like to encourage officials to
consider roundabouts earlier and
more often in the roadway planning
process,” explains Richard Retting,
the Institute’s senior transportation
engineer and author of two new
studies that suggest how to overcome traditional impediments to
building roundabouts.
One impediment is logistical: It
can be costly and disruptive to tear
up an existing intersection and replace it with a roundabout. The easiest way around this is to construct
the roundabout to begin with, before
an intersection with a traffic light or
stop sign is installed. Another
roundabout opportunity is when an
intersection with a signal light is
scheduled for major modification.
Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety researchers studied 10 intersections where roundabouts could
have been constructed but weren’t.
Instead local officials either outfitted
the new intersections with traffic signals or retained the signal lights at
intersections that were undergoing
major modifications. The researchers measured traffic volumes, monitored the number of crashes that occurred, and estimated vehicle delays
and fuel consumption at the intersections with the signals. Results
were compared with estimates of
what could have been expected with
roundabouts instead.
A key finding is that vehicle delays at the 10 intersections would
have been reduced by 62-74 percent,
saving 325,000 hours of motorists’
time annually. Fuel consumption
would have gone down by about
235,000 gallons per year, and there
would have been commensurate reductions in vehicle emissions.
The safety benefits also are considerable. Previous research indi-
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Page 20
March 2006
cates that roundabouts reduce
crashes by 37 percent overall — injury crashes by 75 percent — compared with intersections that have
signals. Applying these risk reductions to 5 of the 10 intersections for
which crash data were available, researchers estimated there would
have been 62 fewer crashes over 5
years. There would have been 41
fewer injury crashes.
“If only 10 percent of the 250,000
intersections with signals in the
United States were modified as
roundabouts, the national safety and
fuel saving benefits would be enormous,” Mr. Retting points out, “and
you can reap these benefits without
as many logistical challenges if you
‘think roundabout’ from the very beginning of a roadway project, for
example when new housing or
shopping developments create the
need for roadway construction.
Then it can be less expensive to construct a roundabout than to install
traffic lights. Plus the developers
may be required to fund the roundabout construction as a condition of
zoning approval.
Initial opinion may be an impediment: Study after study, including the Institute’s most recent one in
northern Virginia, clearly indicates
the benefits of roundabouts in reducing both crashes and traffic congestion. Yet roundabouts frequently run
into opposition, especially before
they’re constructed.
Institute researchers conducted
telephone surveys of residents in
three communities in New Hampshire, New York, and Washington
State where intersections with stop
signs or traffic lights were being replaced with roundabouts in 2004.
The opinion surveys were conducted before the roundabouts were
built and twice more, about six
weeks after construction and then
about a year later.
Fifty-four percent of the survey
participants initially said they opposed roundabouts. One-third said
they were strongly opposed. These
proportions changed considerably
right after construction, as motorists
began getting used to the
roundabouts. Then only 36 percent
said they were opposed, and the
proportion in favor increased from
36 to 50 percent.
“It might not sound like much
of a victory to find out that half of
the respondents expressed their approval for roundabouts. But the first
follow-up surveys were conducted
soon after motorists began navigating this new form of traffic control.
Roundabouts weren’t yet routine,”
Mr. Retting explains. Opinion surveys conducted more recently indicate a growing approval by motorists. More respondents now say they
like the roundabouts, while fewer
say they disapprove.
Previous before-and-after surveys have revealed similar turnarounds in public opinion. This is because many motorists find out,
through their own experience, that
vehicles generally flow more
smoothly through roundabouts than
through intersections controlled by
traffic signals. Delays are reduced.
In many cases there’s no need to stop
at a roundabout, just slow down.
Message for transportation officials: “What these two studies teach
us is simple. Just build them. Go
ahead and construct a roundabout
where it’s appropriate, and do it, if
possible, when a roadway is first engineered,” Mr. Retting advises. Especially in suburban areas where
population growth and housing development are escalating and new
roads are planned, officials would
do well to consider roundabouts.
“Don’t let initial opposition get
in the way,” Mr. Retting adds.
“Many U.S. motorists aren’t familiar with roundabouts yet, so they’re
wary of them. But once the
roundabouts are built, the traffic
flow and safety benefits turn people
around, even people who weren’t
enthusiastic from the get-go.” ##
cess that makes hydrogen an affordable energy alternative.”
The new membranes, which
were developed in the lab of
Chemical Engineering Professor
Benny Freeman in Austin and
A team of engineers and scien- hydrogen as alternative motor fuel tested there and at RTI, take advantists at The University of Texas at has been the cost of purifying it,” tage of plasticization by gases such
Austin and RTI International de- said Raghubir Gupta, Ph.D., direc- as carbon dioxide and water vapor
to enhance their separaveloped new polymer
tion performance. Tradimembranes for productionally, plasticization
ing hydrogen that brings
was viewed as a detrian energy-efficient, lowmental effect on memcost hydrogen purificabrane selectivity.
tion process a step closer
These efficient memto reality, an important
branes also can be used to
stride toward making hypurify other gases, such
drogen a viable energy alas natural gas and valueternative.
added chemical products
The study, funded by
of carbon dioxide and
the U.S. Department of
other polar gases.
Energy with additional
The research is part of
funding from the Nathe president’s 2003 Hytional Science Foundadrogen Fuel Initiative that
tion, appears in a recent
dedicated $1.2 billion to
issue of Science.
America’s
The research team de- Lora Toy, Ph.D., RTI scientist and co-author on the paper reverse
veloped a family of mo- displays the newly developed copolymer membrane that steadily growing depenlecularly engineered, po- forms the basis of a purification process that could make dence on foreign oil by
lar, rubbery copolymer hydrogen a more affordable energy alternative. Photo cour- developing the technology needed to make hymembranes that selec- tesy of Jimmy Crawford, RTI International photographer.
drogen cost-competitive
tively remove larger
gases such as carbon dioxide and tor of energy research and develop- with gasoline by 2010.
Because hydrogen is pollution
hydrogen sulfide from the smaller ment at RTI and co-author on the pahydrogen. These reverse-selective per. “Because of the high production free and can be produced from
materials purify hydrogen more ef- volume of hydrogen, even a small abundant domestic energy reficiently than currently existing improvement in purification effi- sources including fossil fuel,
methods, producing hydrogen at ciency could substantially reduce nuclear power and renewable enhigh pressures without requiring costs. These next-generation mem- ergy, it has been considered a leadbranes could be a huge step in forming choice in the search for alterexpensive recompression.
“One of the major barriers to ing the basis of a purification pro- native energy sources. ##
Polymer Membranes Could
Lower Production Costs
March 2006
Page 21
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tel: 804.779.3527 • fax: 804.779.3032
[email protected]. • www.vaeng.com
Page 22
March 2006
Innovations May Help Improve
Prostate Cancer Treatment
A trio of innovations may soon
enable physicians to plan prostate
cancer patients' treatment in real
time and to implant cancer-killing
radiation "seeds" more accurately
and efficiently.
Directionally emitting radioactive sources, a device for placing
needles and seeds, and a super-fast
treatment-planning method were
developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) engineering physics professor Douglass
Henderson and medical physics associate professor Bruce Thomadsen.
Together, this suite of inventions
could mean on-the-spot treatment
reoptimization - the holy grail of
prostate cancer seed placement.
To eradicate diseased tissue,
physicians implant up to 100 radioactive seeds in the prostate. Like a
tiny grain of rice, each seed is cylindrically shaped and emits radiation
in all directions-increasing its likelihood of zapping healthy tissue, too.
So, borrowing a concept from
nuclear materials handling,
Henderson and Thomadsen designed directional seeds-sources
with vertical shielding along one
side. "I think nobody's done it before
because they look at these sources,
which are only eight-tenths of a millimeter in outer diameter, and they
say there isn't enough space to put
shielding," says Prof. Thomadsen.
"We found you can compress things
and you can do it."
As a result, they can implant
seeds, particularly at the boundaries
between healthy and diseased tissue, that steer radiation where it's
needed most.
With graduate student Liong
Lin, the two developed prototypes
and conducted successful radiation
simulations. Now they are working
with a leading brachytherapy products company to develop experimental prototypes. To keep the seeds
from rotating once they're implanted, the group also hopes to
modify their design to incorporate
a wedge-shaped anchor along one
vertical side.
"It only has to hold the source
about three days, and after that time,
tissues start sticking to it," says Prof.
Thomadsen.
Radioactive "seeds", just a few millimeters in diameter, deliver cancer-killing
radiation when physicians implant them
strategically within diseased tissue.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Fritz/ University of Wisconsin-Madison 2005.
Implanting the seeds accurately
is no small feat. With a hole-studded
grid mounted over the patient as a
guide, physicians use a hollow
needle to insert the seeds manually.
They rely on real-time ultrasound
images of the prostate to ensure
proper seed location and depth. But
both the confines of the grid and the
ultrasound itself limit the process,
meaning that the radioactive seeds
may not make it to the correct locations, says Prof. Thomadsen. So he
and his graduate students abandoned the grid and built a robot that
could deliver seeds more precisely
than a physician could by hand.
"There's an additional impetus
that came along when we started
working on the directional sources,"
says Prof. Thomadsen. "In order to
get sources in the patient in the right
orientation, it would be very hard for
a physician to get the angles precisely."
Graduate student Michael
Meltsner built a prototype robot and
has perfected it by programming it
to implant seeds into oranges. "It's a
March 2006
really basic prototype, and he's at the
point where we have to test to make
sure that, in the simple form we
have, it's going to perform exactly
how we want," says Prof.
Thomadsen.
By next year, when the system is
complete, it will provide countless
angles for inserting seeds and will
enable physicians to properly orient
seeds that contain shielding.
To plan the seed placement for
maximum effectiveness, physicians
currently map an ultrasound view
of the prostate on a 3-D grid, use optimization software to calculate several sets of possible seed locations,
and determine which configuration
will work best. But current optimization methods are iterative methods-that is, they calculate a solution,
make a change, calculate a new solution, make a change, and so on.
Inspired by a reactor physics
technique called adjoint, or "backward" transport, Henderson,
Thomadsen and their graduate students developed a method that
could reduce the time of this treatment-planning step from as long as
40 minutes to just a few seconds.
"The adjoint function plays a big role
in the selection of the seed position,"
says Prof. Henderson.
Ultimately, these advances could
represent a major leap in precise
prostate cancer treatment, says Prof.
Thomadsen. "A plan would tell you
where to put the seeds," he says.
"And each time you put in a seed, it
would recalculate where to put the
next seed based on where you actually put the first one."
For patients, he says, that level
of interactivity means less hassle and
more peace of mind. "The patient
wouldn't have to come in days early
for a pre-scan," he says. "They could
just come in for the procedure. Everything could happen right then, in
live time."
Funding for the projects came
from the Department of Energy
Nuclear Engineering Education Research program, the UW-Madison
Graduate School, and the Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation
(WARF). Thomadsen, Henderson
and colleagues are patenting the innovations through WARF. ##
Page 23
Four Steps To Managing Anyone
Motivation and Communication to Get the Job Done
by Mimi Donaldson
Managing means getting results
through people. We do this in
many different settings from
workplace to household. If you
are alive, you have already been
a manager. You’ve managed delivery people, repair people, pets, children,
in-laws, spouses and
more. One myth is that
you need to throw money
at people to motivate hard
work and loyalty. Not entirely true. Management
has less to do with charisma than with consistency. Managers depend
on effective interpersonal
communication skills to
get things done.
praise along the way.
Set the climate. Be sure you’re in
a place conducive to concentration at a time when the person
can concentrate. Listen to your
Step 1: Tell the person clearly
what you except them to do. Often a great deal easier said than
done. In management training
environments, this is called “delegation.” My definition of “delegate” is to empower and motivate a person to accomplish results for which you are ultimately
responsible. Delegation includes
these guidelines: choose a person
capable of doing the job; explain
the result you want; give the authority to get it done; monitor the
activity; give recognition or
Page 24
Cite resources available: Point out
where there are other references,
if any, on the task. Resources include people who have
done the task or parts of it
before.
Invite questions. Even if it
feels as if you don’t have
time to do this, it’s worth
it. Better to spend the time
up front than be unhappily
surprised later. Invite
questions with openended prompting such as,
“What questions do you
have?” not “You don’t
have any questions, do
you?”
Empower And Motivate
Many of you are called
“boss.” To avoid “boss”
becoming another fourletter word, follow these
four steps:
printed in an instruction or procedures manual. You still need to
go over these steps, however
briefly, with the capable person
to assure yourself of the person’s
understanding. If the steps are
not already written out, have the
person take notes as you speak.
This increases understanding.
Get the person to summarize what they will do to
get the job done. This takes
some courage on your
part; you risk being answered with a defensive
words as you set the tone. Over
the years, I’ve heard many a har- “Do you think I’m stupid?” I use
ried manager unwittingly say, this sentence: “Call me compul“Now this is a simple, mindless sive — I need to have you sumtask … that’s why I’m giving it marize how you will get this
done.” When you take responsito you.” Not very motivating.
bility, you reduce defensiveness
Give the big picture. Describe the in the other person.
overall objectives. People need to
see where their part fits into the Agree on a date for follow-up.
whole to feel part of the loftier How soon this should actually
happen will depend on the comgoal.
plexity and value of task. You
Describe steps of the task. This is may need time and practice to dethe meat of the delegation discus- velop the fine art of follow-up
sion. Sometimes these are already without hovering.
March 2006
Is It On The Test?
and happy, they must put time
and effort into training themStep 2. Give them a reason to do selves and their people in technithe task. This is the fine art of cal skills and communication
motivating. Motivating people is skills.
impossible … they have to motivate themselves. There must be Step 4. Give feedback. All
something in it for them.
people, when accomplishing a
task, want to know how they’re
Remember when you were in doing. Even your “stars.”
third grade, sitting at a little desk
in class, listening to the teacher. There are two types of feedback:
He or she was droning on and on, positive and corrective. Here are
boring you to sleep. Suddenly, an four tips for each:
obnoxious kid in the back row
yelled out, “Hey, teacher, is this Positive feedback:
gonna be on the test?” You were Make it succinct, specific and sinso embarrassed to hear someone cere.
actually ask that question. But
you listened very carefully to the Stick to praise only; don’t use it
answer. If the answer was “no,” as an introduction to another disyour reaction was probably to cussion.
relax — it’s not on the test. But if
the teacher said, “yes,” you Tell them exactly why their acstraightened up, borrowed a pen- complishment is important to
cil, started taking notes — it’s on you and others.
the test. Ever since then, we have
Don’t be surprised if the person
done only what we perceive is on
is embarrassed or suspicious.
our test.
This may mean they’re not accusTo motivate people, you’ve got to tomed to praise and need more
find out what’s on their indi- of it.
vidual test. Then put your priorCorrective feedback:
ity squarely on their test.
Never attack the person. Attack
Put Your Money Where Your
the problem, whether it’s job perMouth Is
formance such as inaccuracy, or
Step 3. Give the person the tools a work habit such as lateness.
and resources they need to do
Keep calm. It’s a problem-solving
the job. This requirement can
mode you are seeking.
range from a desk and pencils to
on-the-job training and enough Be prepared to tell the consetime to get it done. This is the quences if the problem continues
“put-your-money-where-your- — and be prepared to carry them
mouth-is” step. Teamwork out.
among individuals of varied
backgrounds, experience and Don’t be surprised if the person
human interactive skills does not reacts with hostility. Even if
just magically happen. If manag- you’re being calm and objective,
ers want people to be productive some people tend to take this
March 2006
discussion quite personally.
It takes practice and, quite often,
some training and acquiring of
new skills to carry out these four
steps to managing. But stick with
it; managing people and empowering them to accomplish things,
makes a difference in their lives
… and yours.
About the Author
Mimi Donaldson, an accomplished writer, speaker and
trainer, is co-author of the recently published book, “Bless
Your Stress: It Means You’re
Still Alive” (February 2006).
She has more than 25 years of
experience training companies
like General Motors and Proctor & Gamble on stress reduction, life balance, management
and communications. A Masters graduate of Columbia
University, Ms. Donaldson
was previously a Human Resources Trainer for Northrop
Aircraft, Rockwell International and Walt Disney. She is
also co-author of the popular
book, “Negotiating for Dummies.” For more information
on Ms. Donaldson’s speaking
engagements, training opportunities or books, contact her
at 310-577-0229 or visit her
online
at:
www.mimidonaldson.com.
Page 25
today’s engines have gotten so quiet
during landing, airframe noise is
what you hear.”
The tunnel, called “anechoic” because it is designed to minimize echoes, is one of only two at U.S. universities aimed at addressing this
As airline travel continues to in- gines,” said Lou Cattafesta, a UF as- problem. It is larger and faster than
crease, a newly completed wind tun- sociate professor of mechanical and its counterpart at the University of
nel at the University of Florida (UF) aerospace engineering. “We need to Notre Dame. Virginia Tech currently
is refurbishing
its large aerodynamic stability
wind tunnel to
make it suitable
for
airframe
noise studies.
UF’s tunnel
is housed in a
soundproof
room in one of
UF’s mechanical
and aerospace
engineering
buildings. The
room’s walls
and ceiling and
even the door
are covered with
3-foot-long fiberglass wedges
designed to absorb 99 percent
of the sound the
engineers are
Lou Cattafesta stands in the test section of the University of Florida's newly completed anechoic, or concerned with.
anti-echo, wind tunnel. The tunnel is one of only a handful in the country and currently the largest at Anyone inside
a U.S. university designed specifically to reduce noise from jets passing overhead and landing. Engi- the tunnel must
neers will use the $400,000 tunnel to learn how to reduce the noise caused by the flow of air over wings, speak loudly to
flaps and landing gear -- the primary sources of the annoying sound that reaches people on the ground be heard by
when planes are landing. Photo courtesy of Kristen Bartlett/University of Florida.
someone just a
few feet away.
The tunnel itself is composed of
may help reduce the noise of com- understand where the noise is commercial airplanes as they fly over ing from, how it is generated and a reinforced fiberglass inlet sepahomes and neighborhoods.
how we can reduce it. That’s what rated by an open 6-foot-long test secThe tunnel is one of only a hand- this facility is geared toward doing.” tion from an acoustically lined outful in the country and currently the
The wind tunnel, completed last let that collects and diffuses the
largest at a university designed spe- spring after two years, is timely. Air wind.
The chamber is not large enough
cifically to reduce noise from planes travel is increasing worldwide, spurpassing overhead and landing. En- ring the construction and expansion to accommodate full-scale aircraft
gineers will use the $400,000 tunnel of airports and increasing noise-re- parts, so engineers intend to use
to learn how to reduce the noise lated problems, Prof. Cattafesta said. scale models. They will place the
caused by the flow of air over wings, Also, engineers have successfully models, expected to be one-tenth to
flaps and landing gear – the primary reduced jet engine noise to an extent one-fifth the size of the real thing, in
sources of the annoying sound that that it now makes sense to focus at- the chamber, then measure the flow
reaches people on the ground when tention on the noise from other air- and noise they create – a noise intended to be untarnished either by
planes are landing.
craft components.
“During approach for landing,
“With airframe noise, as little as unrelated noise from outside or echo
the dominant noise comes from the 10 years ago, very few people effects inside.
“If I put something in the air
airframe as opposed to the jet en- cared,” Prof. Cattafesta said. “But
Noise Reduction Is Focus
Of Wind Tunnel Designs
Page 26
March 2006
flow, that’s what I want to hear, and
that’s the only thing I want to hear,”
Prof. Cattafesta said.
A 300-horsepower fan pulls air
through the tunnel. The unit is located outside the building on its own
concrete pad and foundation, which
ensures its noise and vibration don’t
contaminate experiments. The fan is
capable of moving air at speeds of
up to 170 mph, the typical speed of
most commercial jets as they approach an airport for landing, Prof.
Cattafesta said.
The soundproof room, built by
Eckel Industries, was completed in
2002. But UF faculty including Mark
Sheplak and Bruce Carroll and
graduate and undergraduate students pitched in to design and build
the tunnel. Otherwise, Prof.
Cattafesta said, it would have been
prohibitively expensive. NASA Langley provided the bulk of the funding for the project.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral students Jose
Mathew and Chris Bahr said the
toughest challenge was the crafting
of 60 airfoils that turn the air flow
90 degrees as it leaves the building.
The team needed to make that turn
to fit the tunnel into the available
space, and the fiberglass and rubberfilled vanes make the process as
streamlined and quiet as possible,
they said.
Prof. Cattafesta said engineers
have long designed airplanes to be
safe, reliable, fuel-efficient comfortable for their occupants. Traditionally, he said, “noise is generally not
something you worry about until
you hear it.”
But thanks to better composite
materials and sophisticated computer design tools, that’s changing,
he said, and the UF tunnel dovetails
with that trend.
“It’s clear that by re-engineering
things better and better we have an
opportunity to reduce the noise,” he
said. “We’re really putting ourselves
in a position where we can experimentally look at these questions.”
Engineers at Purdue University
hope their wind tunnel answers
questions of a different kind. They
have developed a wind tunnel that
is the only one of its kind in the
world capable of running quietly at
"hypersonic" speeds, helping researchers to design advanced aircraft and missiles.
No other wind tunnel runs this
quietly while conducting experiments in airstreams traveling at
Mach 6 - six times the speed of
sound, said Steven Schneider, an
aerospace engineer and professor in
Purdue's School of Aeronautics and
Astronautics.
Researchers will use the $1 million wind tunnel to help design advanced aircraft that travel at hypersonic speeds, or faster than Mach 5,
which is about 4,000 miles per hour
at sea level.
Purdue engineers presented a
paper about the wind tunnel during
a recent American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Aerospace
Sciences Meeting and Exhibit. The
paper was written by Schneider and
graduate research assistants Matthew P. Borg and Thomas J. Juliano.
A team of Purdue engineers led
by Prof. Schneider finished assembling the wind tunnel in 2001.
"After four years of debugging,
recent tests have shown that it does,
indeed, run quietly at Mach 6," Prof.
Schneider said. "The wind tunnel
airflow has about one-tenth to onethirtieth of the noise in other highspeed wind tunnels."
The quiet operation is critical for
recreating the smooth, or laminar,
flow of air over the surfaces of aircraft, spacecraft or missiles re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Data
from tests with models studied in
the wind tunnel will lead to a better
understanding of when and how the
air flowing over a surface changes
from smooth to turbulent. Engineers
must better understand this transition from smooth to turbulent flow
if they are to design improved aircraft and missiles. One aim is to design aircraft that heat up less from
atmospheric friction as they re-enter
the atmosphere.
"Laminar airflows can have eight
times less heating than turbulent
ones," Prof. Schneider said.
Designs that heat up less would
require less shielding, enabling engineers to build lighter-weight,
lower-cost vehicles.
"Designers are considering a
new re-entry vehicle with a metal
skin," Prof. Schneider said. "This
would eliminate the tile system used
on the space shuttle, which is expensive to maintain."
Another major application will
be to design a generation of aircraft
that will use "scramjets" enabling
travel at more than 7,000 mph, allowing them to leave the atmosphere and fly halfway around the
world in a few hours.
A future fleet of space planes
using scramjets might be far less expensive to operate than the current
space shuttles, making it more affordable to haul payloads into orbit.
Unlike rockets, which must carry
their own supply of liquid oxygen
to combust fuel, scramjets would
scoop oxygen out of the atmosphere.
For scramjets to work properly,
however, a steady, smooth flowing
supply of air must be moving continuously at hypersonic speeds into
the engine's combustion chamber.
Poor control of turbulence near the
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March 2006
Page 27
"Thirty years ago eight seconds
of data would have been useless because you couldn't measure anything in such a short time," he said.
"But nowadays, with all the computers and electronics and sensors, you
can collect an
enormous
amount of
data in eight
seconds."
To obtain
quiet flow,
the throat of
the Mach 6
nozzle must
be polished
to a near-perfect mirror
finish, elimin a t i n g
roughness
that will trip
the flow near
the wall from
laminar to
turbulent.
Then, for the
wind tunnel
to remain
quiet, it must
Steven Schneider, an aerospace engineer and professor in Purdue's School of Aeronautics and Astronau- be entirely
tics, operates the university's one-of-a-kind wind tunnel, which runs quietly at Mach 6, or six times the free of parspeed of sound. Researchers will use the $1 million wind tunnel to help design advanced aircraft that travel ticles. Even a
at hypersonic speeds, or faster than Mach 5, which is about 4,000 miles per hour at sea level. (Purdue News single piece
of sand could
Service photo/David Umberger)
cause turbuscramjet designs would function, Aeronautics and Space Administra- lence inside the wind tunnel, damtion previously operated a wind tun- aging the finish and ruining the
Prof. Schneider said.
"A quiet wind tunnel more nel capable of similar performance, quiet effect.
To help ensure this ultra-clean
but that wind tunnel is not currently
closely simulates flight," he said.
condition, engineers enlisted the
Wind tunnel research also may in operation.
The tunnel is relatively inexpen- help of an undergraduate student
help engineers design more accurate
missiles because the effects of excessive to operate because each "run" is who is a spelunker. The slender stusive heating can nudge missiles off only about eight seconds. First, air dent crawled through a 120-foot secis pumped out of a large tank that is tion of the wind tunnel, wearing a
course.
Quiet wind tunnel operation re- connected to one end of the wind suit like those worn by technicians
quires laminar flow on the walls of tunnel, creating a vacuum inside the in clean rooms, and wiped down the
a tunnel segment called the nozzle. tank. Then a valve is opened be- inside of the stainless-steel pipe. The
Turbulent flow in this segment ra- tween the tank and the wind tunnel, pipe is only 18 inches in diameter.
"It's pretty tight quarters," Prof.
diates noise onto the test model, in- sucking a burst of air through the
terfering with experiments. Some- wind tunnel at high velocity. The Schneider said. "If you are claustrotimes, however, turbulence does oc- short run time requires less expen- phobic, this would not be the right
cur in the nozzle, and the research- sive equipment, unlike the large job for you."
The wind tunnel, which has been
ers study the transition from lami- compressors needed for other wind
nar to turbulence to better under- tunnels that pump air continuously. funded by the Air Force Office of SciModern computer technology entific Research, the Ballistic Missile
stand how to prevent it and also to
and sensors have made the low-cost Defense Organization and the
watch its effects on the model.
Researchers will use the wind wind tunnel possible, Prof. Boeing Co., is named the Boeing/
AFOSR Mach 6 Quiet Tunnel. ##
tunnel to study how the transition Schneider said.
aircraft's surface might disrupt this
crucial air supply, and turbulent
flow over the front of the vehicle
would cause excessive heating.
Engineers need high-quality
data to predict how well certain
Page 28
from smooth to turbulent airflow
affects the current space shuttle's
heat-resistant tiles as the spacecraft
re-enters the atmosphere.
The quiet Mach 6 wind tunnel is
not the first of its kind. The National
March 2006
A JOHNS HOPKINS University archaeological
expedition in Luxor, Egypt, has unearthed a lifesized statue, dating back nearly 3,400 years, of
one of the queens of the powerful king Amenhotep
III. The statue, which dates to between 1391 and
1352 B.C.E., was uncovered recently by the
expedition’s director, Betsy Bryan, Johns Hopkins
professor of Egyptian art and archaeology. Bryan
and a graduate student, Fatma Talaat Ismail, were
clearing a portion of the platform of the temple of
the goddess Mut in Luxor, an area dating to about
700 B.C.E. The statue, which was lying face down
in the ground, appeared to have been used as
building rubble, Bryan said. “The statue, however, when it was removed, revealed itself as a
queen of Amenhotep III, whose name appears repeatedly on the statue’s crown,” Bryan said. She
said she theorizes that perhaps this statue is of
the great Queen Tiy, wife of Amenhotep III and
mother of the so-called heretic king Akhenaten, who came to the throne as Amenhotep IV but later changed his name because
of his rejection of the god Amen in favor of the sun disk Aten. “Tiy was so powerful that, as a widow, she was the recipient of
foreign diplomatic letters sent to her from the king of Babylonia in hopes that she would intercede with her son on behalf of the
foreign interests,” Bryan said. “Some indications, such as her own portraits in art, suggest that Tiy may have ruled briefly
after her husband’s death, but this is uncertain.” Photo courtesy of Jay VanRensselaer/JHU.
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Bits &
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Numerous other news items, updated
weekly, are available at www.vaeng.com
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For years, it was believed that
adult stem cells, under conditions of
reduced oxygen, such as that found
in victims of a heart attack or stroke,
acted as building blocks by constructing new passageways for
blood to bypass damaged tissue.
However, a new study by a team of
University of Virginia (UVA) researchers suggests stem cells act as
construction supervisors, directing
the work of other cells, rather than
doing the heavy lifting themselves.
“Our findings indicate a new understanding of the role played by
adult stem cells,” said Thomas
Skalak, chairman of the Department
of Biomedical Engineering, who
along with his colleague Gary
Owens, professor of molecular
physiology, is leading the research
team. “It’s a shift from a building
role to a signaling role, orchestrating the repair and growth of damaged tissue.”
The research team’s findings
suggest a new tack in the search for
March 2006
DIRECTORY
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Page 29
DIRECTORY
CAMPBELL & PARIS
AIRPORT PLANNING & DESIGN
4215 Lafayette Center Drive, Suite 2
Chantilly, VA 20151
Tel: 703.802.0093 • Fax: 703.802.0181
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CHI ASSOCIATES, INC.
Consulting Engineers
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Office: 540.349.8385 • Fax: 540.349.9588
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Dunlap & Partners Engineers
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therapies for heart disease and peripheral artery disease.
“Our findings point to an alternative to the big pharma strategy of
searching for blockbuster drugs,”
Mr. Skalak said. “Instead, they suggest that a strategy of harnessing the
body's own reparative mechanisms
could be more effective. Blockbuster
drugs have been single molecules
that target a single process, but the
adult stem cells we studied appear
to coordinate several processes in
repair and growth, which single
molecules have not been able to do.”
The research team’s results are
published in a recent issue of the
peer-reviewed journal Circulation
Research.
The study was supported by a
Bioengineering Research Partnership grant and a MD/PhD Training
grant to UVA from the National Institute of Health’s Heart, Lung, and
Blood Institute.
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Transportation • Civil • Environmental
Planning • Design • Geotechnical • Survey
P. O. Box 600 • Blackstone, VA 23824
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Gas Pipelines May Serve as
Wireless Links
Detecting leaks and conducting
maintenance in America’s aging network of natural gas pipelines will
eventually be a job for wireless robots, according to researchers at the
University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR).
“As the existing natural gas
pipeline ages, it is critical that these
pipelines be periodically inspected
for corrosion, cracking, and other
problems that can eventually cause
a failure of the pipeline,” says Dr.
Kelvin Erickson, chair and professor
of electrical and computer engineering at UMR. “For larger transmission lines, passive flow-powered
platforms -- also known as pigs -- are
used to carry an array of inspection
sensors. However, in smaller, lowerpressure distribution mains, ‘pigs’
are inappropriate and so robotic devices are currently under development for the inspection and repair
of these pipelines. Secure, reliable
communication is needed to support
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In a Department of Energyfunded study, a team of UMR faculty found that the 1.2 million miles
of natural gas distribution and transmission pipelines that crisscross the
March 2006
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United States could be used to build
wireless networks. Known as 802.11
or Wi-Fi, wireless networks use radio links instead of cables to communicate between computers.
Initial tests were conducted on a
small pipeline loop at UMR, with
subsequent field testing on a much
longer pipeline loop at the Battelle
Pipeline Simulation Facility near
Columbus, OH.
“We found that we could communicate over a little less than a mile
with a 24-inch pipe,” Dr. Erickson
says. “It did well, even around Ushaped curves.”
The wireless network could support un-tethered inspection technologies, like the RoboScan™ and
Explorer™ robots, for the evaluation
of pipeline conditions. The pipeline
can transmit a radio signal and deliver gas at the same time, Dr.
Erickson says.
“The robots would try to detect
a problem within a pipeline before
it became a problem,” he adds.
“There could be hundreds of these
miniature robots that reside in the
nation’s pipelines, roaming and
looking for deterioration.”
The robots can currently send
back visuals from inside the pipeline
as well as conduct electronic scans
of the pipe. Eventually, the robots
would not only inspect but also repair pipelines, Dr. Erickson says.
“This is even more important in
the northeast, where it’s denser,” Dr.
Erickson says. “Repairing pipelines
there can be difficult because the
pipes are often under buildings. The
robots may one day be able to fix the
problem without having to dig
down to the pipeline.”
Ben Franklin Web Site Offered
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March 2006
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of the lightning rod, double spectacles (bifocals) and the odometer,
many of his innovations and discoveries were groundbreaking.
A vast wealth of material on Ben
Franklin exists on the Internet, but
standard searches do not differentiate between references to the man
and references to countless objects
and entities named in his honor. The
curators of the Web portal have successfully simplified such searches by
managing the results to weed out
distracting references — from high
schools to retailers — unrelated to
Franklin himself.
The curators also manage additional engines that allow users to
search specifically under proverbs,
writings and educational resources
-- and by adding the words "images"
or "pictures" to a search, users can
access related visuals.
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Hoping to reduce the nation's
growing inventory of stored spent
nuclear fuel, a group of nuclear engineering faculty, scientists and students from Big Ten universities, the
University of Chicago and the U.S.
Department of Energy's Argonne
National Laboratory will develop
innovative nuclear fuel cycles that
will recycle and dispose of this highlevel radioactive material.
The group will base its studies
in the Center for Advanced Nuclear
Fuel-Cycles (CANF), a new initiative
housed at Argonne. Co-directors at
Argonne and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will lead the center.
The project is also intended to provide valuable educational experience for the next generation of scientists and engineers.
Nuclear fuel used in current reactors has enormous available energy. As the fuel is used to produce
electricity, only a fraction of this
available energy is actually consumed, generating a small quantity
of high-level radioactive waste
within the solid fuel.
Currently, most spent nuclear
fuel is stored temporarily in secure,
specially designed pools at commercial reactors around the country, or
in leak-tight steel casks housed in
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above-ground concrete vaults.
When space is full, the fuel could
end up at a commercial temporarystorage facility in Utah, or perhaps
at the proposed Yucca Mountain
high-level waste repository.
But these storage options are
short-term approaches to dealing
with the back-end of the nuclear fuel
cycle, says Michael Corradini, a UWMadison professor of engineering
physics and the center's co-director.
"We hope to develop a 'sustainable'
fuel cycle-that is, an efficient, costeffective way to reuse current spent
nuclear fuel and minimize its
byproducts," he says. "Advanced
nuclear fuel cycles can be recycled
as a source of available energy as
demand for uranium increases."
A number of countries, including Japan and France, currently have
programs to reprocess their spent
nuclear fuel using a process known
as PUREX (plutonium and uranium
recovery by extraction). The CANF
team will seek to improve upon
these separation and recycling processes. "The major difference is that
we are looking for ways to successfully extract specific radioactive species for separate uses and separate
disposal," says Prof. Corradini.
DIRECTORY
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WEG provides environmental services
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Dream Jobs
Including Links,
You wouldn’t believe what some
engineers get to do for a living: designing spy planes, updating R2-D2,
and tracking wild animals. Engineering is sometimes seen as stodgy,
yet many engineers find both fun
and excitement in their jobs, in locales ranging from the Kalahari bush
to the California wine country. Ten
engineers who have found their
“dream jobs” are the subject of this
special report in an IEEE Spectrum’s
recent issue.
Some cases in point: Anthony
Eckersall made the Bellagio fountains dance, Rick Townend travels
with the Subaru World Rally Team,
Manni Wong circles the globe designing theme park rides for Disney,
and Martin Cooper restores priceless
art. If you’ve ever watched the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” or
visited Yosemite National Park,
you’ve been affected by the engineers’ work. ##
March 2006
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Power & Heat Systems, LLC . . . . IFC
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Total Insurance Planning . . . . . . . 13
Tri-State Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Page 33
A IIr Associates Publication
ille, Virginia 23111
7401 Flannigan Mill Road • Mechanicsv
Friday, February 10, 2006
David K. Paylor, Director
lity
Virginia Department of Environmental Qua
P. O. Box 10009
Richmond, Virginia 23240-0009
Dear Director Paylor,
Virginia's top environappointment as the new director at DEQ. As
Let me start by saying congratulations on your
troubling report
tion to some key findings contained in a very
atten
your
call
to
d
pelle
com
felt
I
ial,
offic
mental
ect (EIP) and
rt, issued by the Environmental Integrity Proj
repo
the
to
ng
ordi
Acc
.
desk
my
sed
cros
which recently
(EPA) program that puts
rg, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
available at www.environmentalintegrity.o
at all, as evidenced by the
less federal oversight may not be working
with
em
syst
r
hono
an
on
s
uter
poll
U.S.
r
majo
release of more
so-called “Performance Track” reported the
’s
EPA
the
on
ities
facil
13
inal
orig
the
of
fact that 10
pared emissions reported
were before entering the program. EIP com
toxic chemicals to the air or water than they
ormance Track, with
ntory in 2000, the year before they joined Perf
by these companies to the Toxics Release Inve
f wasn't bad
h information is available. If this news by itsel
whic
for
year
t
lates
the
,
2004
in
rted
repo
amounts
to one of the offending
ous distinction of being identified as home
enough, it appears that Virginia has the dubi
facilities.
ental records.
n for companies with exemplary environm
have
a
as
ram
prog
k”
Trac
ance
form
“Per
its
The EPA touts
corporations are promised
“beyond compliance,” Performance Track
In return for a voluntary commitment to go
free advertising, and insider
to be shielded from “routine” inspections,
t
righ
e”
lusiv
“exc
an
es,
ntiv
ince
y
lator
regu
discharge
according to the report, 5 of the 10 plants that
But,
ent.
rnm
gove
in
kers
-ma
sion
deci
or
access to seni
n in 2004 than they did in
releasing 457,000 pounds more toxic pollutio
pollution directly to surface water reported
od. How could this
rted toxic discharges over the four year peri
2000. The Virginia plant nearly tripled its repo
ecting our environhelping Virginia meet its commitment to prot
rds
towa
step
tive
posi
a
as
ed
ider
cons
be
possibly
2010?
ment and cleaning the Chesapeake Bay by
ting with state
nd the “Performance Track” program at a mee
expa
to
s
plan
unce
anno
to
cted
expe
is
The EPA
authority to protect
22, 2006. I would encourage you to use your
environmental commissioners on February
what has been accomtly
an independent and open evaluation of exac
Virginia's environment by demanding that
laws that protect our health
warrant relaxing regulations and sacrificing
lts
resu
e
thos
if
and
ing,
com
forth
be
ed
plish
and our environment.
With Best Regards,
Richard O. Carden, II
neral Manager
Richard O. Carden, II, Publisher/Ge
rnet: www.vaeng.com
aeng.com • Fax: (804) 779-3032 • Inte
s@v
sale
ail:
E-m
•
7
-352
779
)
(804
Tel:
Page 34
March 2006
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March 2006
Page 35
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March 2006

directory - The Virginia Engineer

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