CAREER: Soil Penetration through Bioinspired Stress State Manipulation

这项学院早期职业发展(CARAPE)赠款将促进对几种适应性和高能效土壤渗透过程的应用的了解和评估，以启发民用基础设施设计和建设的新范例。当前和未来的环境和经济挑战，包括人口的持续增长和自然资源的枯竭，产生了对可持续和适应性基础设施的强烈需求。我们基础设施的许多方面都依赖于土壤渗透过程，从项目工地的土壤特性到建筑。该项目将提高我们对几种昆虫、软体动物和鱼类所使用的土壤挖掘和渗透策略的了解，以开发在基础和锚固系统、隧道施工、土壤特性以及场地和结构监测中应用的创新解决方案。综合的教育、多样性和推广目标是提高认识和扩大对生物灵感作为可持续工程解决方案发展哲学的整体理解，并帮助培养一支包括西班牙裔和拉丁裔学生在内的劳动力队伍，用于生物启发的地球技术领域。该项目的主要研究目标是确定和量化使土壤在生物系统中有效渗透的机制，并有效地将这些机制升级到与民用基础设施相关的物理规模。生物适应包括黄蜂、蜜蜂、蚊子和沙枪底物穿透、土壤和海洋蠕虫的移动、盲肠和文蛤的洞穴以及根的生长。该项目将整合生物灵感设计、实验室实验、离散元素建模模拟和离心机模型。研究促进生物激发土壤渗透的基本力学过程，包括土壤拱化、主应力旋转、应力状态改变的区域之间的相互作用、荷载传递及其对形状的依赖、以及孔隙流体加压引起的软化。教育和外展工作将通过青年公民科学活动面向初中生和高中生，并通过课堂和实验室培训面向本科生和研究生。这一教育和推广计划旨在增加西班牙裔和拉丁裔学生在生物启发的岩土技术领域的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will advance understanding and evaluate the application of several adaptive and energy-efficient soil penetration processes to inspire a new paradigm for design and construction of civil infrastructure. Current and future environmental and economic challenges, including the continued growing population and the depletion of natural resources, create a strong demand for sustainable and adaptive infrastructure. Many aspects of our infrastructure rely on soil penetration processes, from the characterization of soils at project sites to construction. This project will improve our understanding of the soil burrowing and penetration strategies used by several insects, mollusks, and fishes to develop innovative solutions for applications in foundation and anchorage systems, tunneling, soil characterization, and monitoring of sites and structures. The integrated educational, diversity, and outreach goals are to raise awareness and broaden the overall understanding of bioinspiration as a philosophy for development of sustainable engineering solutions and to help develop a workforce that is inclusive of Hispanic and Latinx students for the field of bioinspired geotechnics.The principal research goals of this project are to identify and quantify the mechanisms that enable efficient soil penetration in biological systems and to effectively upscale these mechanisms to physical scales relevant to civil infrastructure. Biological adaptations involved in wasp, honeybee, mosquito, and sand lance substrate penetration, earth and marine worm locomotion, caecilian and clam burrowing, and root growth will be explored. This project will integrate bioinspired design, laboratory experiments, discrete element modeling simulations, and centrifuge models. The fundamental mechanical processes that facilitate bioinspired soil penetration will be investigated, including soil arching, principal stress rotation, interactions between zones with altered stress states, load transfer and its dependency on shape, and softening caused by pore fluid pressurization. The education and outreach efforts will be targeted towards middle school and high school students through youth citizen science activities and towards undergraduate and graduate students through training in the classroom and the laboratory. This educational and outreach plan will aim to increase participation of Hispanic and Latinx students in the bioinspired geotechnics field.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.