2011-2012 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

civil engineering and engineering mechanics
610 S. W. Mudd, MC 4709
Phone: 212-854-3143
www.civil.columbia.edu
91
Chair
Raimondo Betti
Departmental
Administrator
Elaine MacDonald
Professors
Raimondo Betti
Bruno A. Boley
Patricia J. Culligan
Gautam Dasgupta
George Deodatis
Jacob Fish
Morton B. Friedman
Upmanu Lall, Earth
and Environmental
Engineering
Hoe I. Ling
Richard W. Longman,
Mechanical Engineering
Christian Meyer
Feniosky Peña-Mora
Andrew Smyth
Rene B. Testa
Assistant Professors
Haim Waisman
Huiming Yin
LecturerS in
discipline
Julius Chang
José I. Sánchez
Adjunct Staff
Ali Ashrafi
William Becker
Logan Brant
Aine M. Brazil
Eli B. Gottlieb
William M. Hart
Wilfred Laufs
Samuel A. Leifer
Elisabeth Malsch
Aly M. Mohammad
Nasri Munfakh
Robert D. Mutch
Mysore Nagaraja
Reza Nikain
Gary F. Panariello
Thomas Panayotidi
Tom Papachristos
Daniel Peterson
Bettina Quintas
Robert Ratay
Robert A. Rubin
Vincent Tirolo
Richard L. Tomasetti
Pawel Woelke
Bojidar Yanev
Theodore P. Zoli
Staff Associate
Adrian Brügger
Information
Technology Manager
King-Tung Chan
The Department of Civil Engineering
and Engineering Mechanics
focuses on two broad areas of
instruction and research. The first, the
classical field of civil engineering, deals
with the planning, design, construction,
and maintenance of the built
environment. This includes buildings,
foundations, bridges, transportation
facilities, nuclear and conventional
power plants, hydraulic structures, and
other facilities essential to society. The
second is the science of mechanics and
its applications to various engineering
disciplines. Frequently referred to as
applied mechanics, it includes the study
of the mechanical and other properties
of materials, stress analysis of stationary
and movable structures, the dynamics
and vibrations of complex structures,
aero- and hydrodynamics, and the
mechanics of biological systems.
Mission
The department aims to provide
students with a technical foundation
anchored in theory together with the
breadth needed to follow diverse career
paths, whether in the profession via
advanced study or apprenticeship, or as
a base for other pursuits.
Current Research Activities
Current research activities in the
Department of Civil Engineering and
Engineering Mechanics are centered
in the areas outlined below. A number
of these activities impact directly on
problems of societal importance, such
as rehabilitation of the infrastructure,
mitigation of natural or man-made
disasters, and environmental concerns.
Solid mechanics: mechanical
properties of new and exotic materials,
constitutive equations for geologic
materials, failure of materials and
components, properties of fiberreinforced
cement composites, damage
mechanics.
• Multihazard risk assessment and
mitigation: integrated risk studies
of the civil infrastructure form a
multihazard perspective including
earthquake, wind, flooding, fire,
blast, and terrorism. The engineering,
social, financial, and decision-making
perspectives of the problem are
examined in an integrated manner.
• Probabilistic mechanics: random
processes and fields to model
uncertain loads and material/
soil properties, nonlinear random
vibrations, reliability and safety of
structural systems, computational
stochastic mechanics, stochastic
finite element and boundary element
techniques, Monte Carlo simulation
techniques, random micromechanics.
• Structural control and health
monitoring: topics of research in this
highly cross-disciplinary field include
the development of “smart” systems
for the mitigation and reduction of
structural vibrations, assessment
of the health of structural systems
based on their vibration response
signatures, and the modeling
of nonlinear systems based on
measured dynamic behavior.
Fluid mechanics: solid-laden turbulent
flows, porous surface turbulence,
flow through porous media, numerical
simulation of flow and transport
processes, flow and transport in
fractured rock.
Environmental engineering/water
resources: modeling of flow and
pollutant transport in surface and
subsurface waters, unsaturated
zone hydrology, geoenvironmental
containment systems, analysis of
watershed flows including reservoir
simulation.
engineering 2011–2012