Abstract:
In contemporary civil engineering, the confluence of geotechnical, structural, and impact engineering disciplines plays an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the design and crashworthiness evaluation of critical infrastructure systems. This seminar delineates key advances within Impact Geotechnics, a field at the nexus of these intertwined disciplines. By elucidating the interplay between impact loading and geomaterial-structural responses, the presentation highlights the role of computational modeling in designing and assessing the performance of roadside safety and defense structures, with an overarching aim of reducing the number of required full-scale crash tests, which are complex and expensive.
The presentation will cover recent advancements in large-deformation computational modeling techniques for simulating dynamic soil-structure problems during impact events, with applications spanning roadside safety,
physical security, and threat mitigation. The physics dictating the interaction between roadside safety features and surrounding soil under vehicular impacts will be central to the discussions. Emphasis will be placed on research
initiatives evaluating environmental factors, notably soil moisture content, on the impact behavior of roadside safety hardware. An evaluation and investigation of luminaire pole foundation embedment depth will be discussed, particularly in weak soil conditions, utilizing physical impact testing and advanced numerical simulations. Finally, the seminar outlines ongoing research endeavors and future research directions.
About the Candidate: Dr. Tewodros Yosef is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Midwest Roadside
Safety Facility (MwRSF)-University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), working on the design and evaluation of roadside
safety structures and features using computer simulation modeling (i.e., non-linear, dynamic, finite element analysis)
and full-scale crash testing. He completed his Ph.D. in civil engineering at the UNL in 2021, focusing on developing advanced computational modeling techniques for simulating large deformation soil-interaction problems involving
impact loading. He has more than seven years of research experience in roadside safety, impact engineering, and threat mitigation. His research interests include developing, verifying, and validating advanced computational modeling techniques for simulating dynamic soil-structure interaction under extreme demands, such as impact, blast, and ground shock, as well as developing and evaluating new roadside safety products using computer simulation modeling, and component/full-scale crash testing.
More details at: https://unl.zoom.us/j/92336053442?pwd=aUZNUlNMeG1NMm10cVBBK2NIQzI0dz09