PECASE: Micro-Scale Based Reliability Analysis of Mechanical and Flow-Related Behavior of Heterogeneous Materials for Macro-Scale Infrastructure and Geotechnical Applications

9875516弗吉尼亚大学劳里·L·格雷厄姆职业生涯：宏观基础设施和岩土应用中非均质材料力学和流动相关行为的微观可靠性分析随着我国基础设施的老化，基于土壤和混凝土等岩土材料的现有系统的安全问题引起了关注。充分开展对这类系统的适当可靠性分析，将有助于在工程设计和维护活动中实现安全与成本的合理平衡。这种可靠性分析的一个重要部分是评估土壤和混凝土固有的随机性的影响。这一职业发展计划描述了旨在改善这些材料的行为描述的综合研究和教育活动，从而促进土木工程应用的基于可靠性的设计和分析。该研究计划包括五个阶段，从实验获得的微结构到混凝土和土壤中的局部应力和土壤中的局部地下水速度等临界响应的可靠性分析，提供了一个合理而有效的过程。利用“移动窗口GMC”和随机场理论，在微观尺度和宏观尺度对这些材料的研究之间建立了一种亟需的联系。这一研究具有在岩土工程和混凝土工程领域推广的潜力，也可以应用于其他工程领域(如微电子学、材料过程建模)。概率分析和基于可靠性的设计所提供的优势将通过一项教育计划得到进一步推广，以便在开发应用于一系列土木工程课程的概率模块的基础上，改进将概率和统计学纳入工程课程。此外，将研究中开发的可视化技术融入教育活动将加强复杂课程材料的呈现。一般而言，教育计划致力于培养学生(包括全日制学生和继续教育学生)，通过强调跨学科准备，使他们对自己解决复杂问题的能力充满信心。

9875516 Lori L. Graham University of Virginia CAREER: Micro-Scale Based Reliability Analysis of Mechanical and Flow-Related Behavior of Heterogeneous Materials for Macro-Scale Infrastructure and Geotechnical Applications Abstract With the aging of our nation's infrastructure comes safety concerns about existing systems based on geomaterials such as soil and concrete. The full development of proper reliability analyses of such systems will contribute to a rationally prescribed balance of safety and cost in engineering design and maintenance activities. An important part of this reliability analysis is to assess the effects of the randomness that is inherent in soil and concrete. This career development plan describes integrated research and educational activities aimed at improving the behavioral descriptions for these materials, thereby promoting reliability-based design and analysis for civil engineering applications. The research plan consists of five phases that provide a logical and efficient progression from experimentally obtained microstructures to reliability analysis of such critical responses as local stresses in concrete and soils and local groundwater velocity in soils. Use of "moving-window GMC" and stochastic field theory establishes a much-needed link between micro-scale and macro-scale research on these materials. This research has potential to be extended within the fields of geotechnical and concrete engineering, as well as to be applied in other engineering fields (e.g., microelectronics, materials process modeling). The advantages provided by probabilistic analysis and reliability-based design will be further promoted through an education plan to improve the incorporation of probability and statistics into the engineering curriculum, based on the development of probability modules to be applied to a range of civil engineering courses. Further, incorporation into educational activities of the visualization techniques developed in research will enhance presentation of complex course materials. In general, the education plan addresses the development of students (both full-time and in continuing education) who are confident in their abilities to solve complex problems by placing an emphasis on cross-disciplinary preparation.