Sri Sritharan, the Grace Miller Wilson and T.A. Wilson Endowed Engineering Professor at Iowa State University, partnered with an industry colleague to win a top international award for advancing prestressed concrete design in seismic regions.
The Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) Journal honored Sritharan and Ataur Rahman (PhDCE’08), a senior structural engineer at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation Engineering Office, with the 2015 Martin P. Korn Award. The award recognizes their paper published in the PCI journal as top contribution to design and research of precast and prestressed concrete. Sritharan and Rahman were officially honored Oct. 16 at the 2015 PCI Fall Committee Days and Membership Conference in Louisville, Ky.
Their PCI Journal article promotes the use of direct displacement-based approach for designing precast, post-tensioned concrete jointed wall systems for low- to mid-rise buildings in seismic regions. Research suggests that these jointed wall systems can be designed to withstand seismic excitation with minimal structural damage, allowing a building to be more resilient.
This research is based on Rahman’s doctoral dissertation, which Rahman presented in 2008 and formed under Sritharan’s guidance. “Doctoral-level research prepared me well to address complex structural engineering problems,” Rahman said. “The student-professor relationship has continued beyond Iowa State as we continue to submit research articles.”