CCE student teams won first place in two competitions at the Geotechnical and Structural Engineering Congress held February 14-17, 2016 in Phoenix, Ariz.

Mentored by faculty member Ben Mason, the GeoVideo student team of Youssef Bougataya, David Bailey, Rachel Adams, and Sharoo Shrestha placed first for their video, “Soil Structure Interaction During Earthquakes.” The GeoVideo competition received 10 entries with six invited to present at the congress.

“During earthquake shaking, buildings interact with the soil they sit atop, and the soil interacts with the buildings it supports, which is a phenomenon called seismic soil-structure interaction. During many seismic design scenarios, the potential effects of seismic soil-structure interaction, regardless of whether the effects are beneficial, neutral, or detrimental, are ignored,” said Mason. “The students did an excellent job communicating why seismic soil-structure interaction effects are important using a table top demonstration. I look forward to showing their video during my classes.”

In the GeoPrediction competition, the CCE team of Bougataya and Nathan Jones won first place out of nine presenting teams and 18 international submissions. For the competition, teams were required to predict the deflection profile of a 90-foot-deep, tied-back excavation in downtown Seattle, constructed in 2004. In scoring, the prediction and documentation in the report was worth 75 percent and the presentation of the work was worth 25 percent. The team was advised by CCE faculty member Armin W. Stuedlein and three geotechnical practitioners and professors scored the presentations. Each team had 5 to 10 minutes to present their work and answered technical questions for 5 minutes following presentations. Arizona State University took second place and Middle East Technical University of Ankara, Turkey placed third.

“The students faced tough competition, but worked diligently to study the difficult geology of Seattle and how the history of glaciation impacted the strength and stiffness of the soil being excavated,” said Stuedlein. “According to the lead designer of the deep excavation, OSU’s team produced a better lateral displacement profile than their own models, calibrated with 40 years of experience in that geology!”

The congress was unique this year in that the Geo-Institute (G-I) and Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) came together to create the first-of-its-kind congress by combining both institutes’ annual conferences into one event.

Congratulations to the teams on an excellent job well done!