Research underway by Western Michigan University's Center of Excellence for Structural Durability may play an integral role in the future of infrastructure—not just in the U.S. but around the globe.
"I think Western's prepared us well for meeting the demand that's going to be out there in our field," says Emily Lange, a senior civil engineering student from Whittemore, Michigan.
Led by Dr. Upul Attanayake, professor of civil engineering, Lange is one of several students working with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) on a project to rebuild the 2nd Avenue bridge over Interstate 94 in Detroit.
It is the first network arch bridge in the world that will be partially completed off-site and moved into place using self-propelled modular transporters.
"The unique structural configuration and the use of innovative accelerated bridge construction techniques make this one of the most significant projects in bridge engineering," says Attanayake.
Western students are designing the instrumentation system that uses sensors to monitor different phases of bridge construction, installing that system and investigating how the unique concrete being used in the project will respond to vehicle loads and the construction sequence as well as the environment.
"Once they finish construction, we will establish the baseline, because their concrete mix is very unique; it's not been used previously, so we don't know how it's going to behave," Attanayake says. "(The engineers) make a lot of assumptions during design, so now we want to validate how closely these assumptions represent the reality and what the real condition is at the end of construction. Then they can decide on the magnitude of load that they can put on the bridge and what kind of maintenance they need to do based on the sensor data."
Doctoral student Harsha Amunugama has been working on the project since it began in 2019, primarily designing and installing the sensor system to monitor the stress on the structure throughout the construction process and in-service.
"Some of the applications I'm working on right now I can apply once I go back to my home country," says Amunugama, who is from Sri Lanka. He worked on some large hydraulic dam projects before coming to Western but feels this work will uniquely position him to advance work in his field when he returns home. "This is a very rare project to be part of."
"It's great exposure, being able to see actual structures and look at actual problems while working on real-life projects. It's really interesting," adds Kanchani Basnayake, also a doctoral student from Sri Lanka, who came from a research background. She is studying the creep and shrinkage behavior of the concrete mix being used for the structure and its influence on how the structure is going to behave as a system.
Source: Western Michigan University
