3D laser scanning has been used extensively in engineering reconnaissance surveys to capture perishable data in an efficient, reliable, and precise manner. Many insights on damage can be obtained from the data through various methods of post-processing; however, many of these techniques are often labor intensive. This delay reduces the...
Earthquake rupture scenarios are important tools for understanding the nature of plate movement and patterns in seismic activity. The creation and assessment of these rupture scenarios rely heavily on geologic reasoning and principles applied to earthquake event data. This reliance introduces a certain amount of subjectivity to the rupture scenario...
The south central Chilean margin is one of the most seismically active subduction zones on Earth, generating some of the largest earthquakes on the planet, including the largest ever recorded in 1960 near Valdivia, Chile (Mw 9.5). Using the 15 km streamer and 6600 in3 tuned seismic airgun array aboard...
The nature of upper plate deformation along the Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) is poorly understood. Systematic covariation among topographic relief, geodetically determined uplift rates, decadal to millennial erosion rates, and the frequency of episodic tremor and slip (ETS) along the Cascadia forearc suggest a genetic association between forearc topography and...
Membrane based heat pumps systems have attracted the attention of many research groups as a potentially more environmentally friendly alternative to vapor compression systems that are being used for space cooling in 90\% of the buildings in the United States. Several prototypes systems have been developed, with reported claims of...
Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants have the potential to reduce the reliance on nonrenewable energies such as coal and natural gas and provide 24 hour, renewable electricity. A CSP system consists of a large field of heliostats that concentrate the sunlight on a centralized receiver, in this receiver a working...
Students in undergraduate engineering programs typically do not synthesize content learned from disparate course work until the end of their final terms of college. As an example, in undergraduate civil engineering programs, transportation engineering concepts (e.g., geometric alignment, asphalt design procedures) and geotechnical engineering concepts (e.g., shear strength of soils,...
New materials with superior mechanical properties, such as increased strength and hardness, have been developed to allow for new and improved products. However, the mechanical properties that make these materials useful also makes them difficult to process using conventional methods. New machining processes need to be developed to generate products...
The large wind resource off the United States West Coast has the potential to generate wind power for millions of homes, yet the high cost of energy for offshore wind power compared to traditional sources has slowed the development of offshore wind farms in the US. The four studies presented...
Nearly all soils are comprised of mixtures of coarse and fine particles. Behavior under mechanical and thermal loading of soil is strongly influenced (and in some cases, governed) by the ratio of coarse to fine particles. A better understanding of the fundamental behavior of soil mixtures will provide insight to...