Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials


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NEWS

New Research in Origami Metamaterials Promises Wide Implications

Larissa Novelino, a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, has long black hair and is wearing a black shirt and a black mask ovrer her nose and mouth. She is standing next to a table showing several metamaterial prototypes at different scales. They are different colors and range in size from smallest to largest.

The simplicity and elegance of origami, an ancient Japanese art form, has motivated researchers to explore its application in the world of materials. New research from an interdisciplinary team, including Northwestern University’s Horacio Espinosa and Sridhar Krishnaswamy and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Glaucio Paulino, aims to advance the creation and understanding of such folded structures for applications ranging from soft robotics to medical devices to energy harvesters.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Schreiber Named SMART Scholar

PhD Student Trent Schreiber has received a SMART Scholarship from the U.S. Department of Defense. The Science Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship is a scholarship-for-service program established to enhance the Department of Defense workforce with talented, innovative and brilliant scientists, engineers and researchers.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Sherman Uses Emerging Technologies to Repair and Preserve Bridges

Most of us take for granted the roads and bridges we travel every day. What we don’t know is that almost four in 10 bridges are 50 years or older. Many of the nation’s bridges are approaching the end of their design life, and 614,387 bridges in the U.S. earned a grade of C+ on the American Society for Civil Engineering’s 2017 Infrastructure Report Card.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Faculty Research: Hyperbolic Paraboloid Origami Harnesses Bistability to Enable New Applications

Glaucio Paulino, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, demonstrates hyperbolic paraboloid origami

While perhaps not as iconic as the paper crane, the hypar origami with its sweeping opposing arcs and saddle shape has long been popular for artists working in the paper folding tradition.

Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo are looking at the shape with an eye toward leveraging its structural properties, hoping to find ways to harness its bistability to build multifunctional devices or metamaterials.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Dashing the dream of ideal ‘invisibility’ cloaks for stress waves

Roman arenas have survived in many earthquake-prone regions. Did the Romans inadvertently build seismic wave cloaks when they designed colosseums? Some researchers believe they did due to the arenas' resemblance to modern experimental elastodynamic cloaking devices. (Photo: Paolo Costa Baldi via Wikimedia Commons)

Whether Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, which perfectly steers light waves around objects to make them invisible, will ever become reality remains to be seen, but perfecting a more crucial cloak is impossible, a new study says. It would have perfectly steered stress waves in the ground, like those emanating from a blast, around objects like buildings to make them “untouchable.”

Friday, June 7, 2019

New tool will give large concrete structures what amounts to an ultrasound, finding tiny cracks before they grow

A researcher measures the width of a crack in a reinforced concrete column after testing the strength of the column. A new project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency will develop a field-deployable tool to detect cracks far smaller than this — and inside rather than outside — thick reinforced concrete structures. (Photo: Chris Kiser)

Imagine giving large concrete structures something similar to an ultrasound and getting images so detailed you can see cracks just a tenth of a millimeter long. That level of detail just isn’t possible now. Yet such capability could revolutionize how engineers assess the health of thick reinforced concrete infrastructure like dams and power plants and bridges.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

New origami can morph from one pattern to another, unlocking possibilities for new structures and materials

A new type of origami can morph from one pattern into a different one, or even a hybrid of two patterns, instantly altering many of its structural characteristics. (Photo: Allison Carter)

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new type of origami that can morph from one pattern into a different one, or even a hybrid of two patterns, instantly altering many of its structural characteristics.

Friday, April 19, 2019

Johnston, Zhang produce two of Georgia Tech’s best Ph.D. dissertations this year

Former Ph.D. students Shelly Zhang and Eric Johnston, who have won the Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis award for 2019.

Sigma Xi has recognized the work of two recently graduated civil and environmental engineering doctoral students as some of the best of the year at Georgia Tech.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Jacobs’ nondestructive evaluation work earns lifetime achievement honor

Professor and Associate Dean Laurence Jacobs, left, accepts a lifetime achievement award in nondestructive evaluation from Tribikram Kundu at the SPIE Smart Structures and Nondestructive Evaluation Symposium in early March. (Photo Courtesy: Laurence Jacobs and SPIE)

An international organization dedicated to advancing light-based research and technology has given Laurence Jacobs a lifetime achievement award for his work on nondestructive evaluation.

Friday, March 15, 2019

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School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Phone: 404-894-2201
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