DFI and the ASCE Pittsburgh Section, Geo-Institute will host a joint meeting on Thursday, April 17 for featuring a special guest lecturer.  Click here to download the event flyer.

Jean-Louis Briaud, P.E., Ph.D., immediate past president of ISSMGE (International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering), and professor of civil engineering and Holder of the Buchanan Chair at Texas A&M University will deliver a lecture titled, "Impact Load Tests For Embassy Protection Against Terrorists."

Dr. Briaud's expertise is in foundation engineering and more generally geotechnical engineering.  Read his complete bio here.  The lecture will discuss the need of embassies and other critical facilities to be protected against the possible use of trucks with explosives impacting building walls. Perimeter barriers are one of the defense systems against such threat. These barriers are anchored in the soil through deep foundation piles designed to resist a significant impact force applied over a very short period of time. In order to solve this problem and make recommendations for design, a series of experiments and simulations have been conducted. The experiments consisted of sending 7 ton trucks at 100 km/h against instrumented posts and recording the behavior of the soil-post system. The simulations consisted of reproducing the same cases in 4 dimensional finite element analyses (x, y, z, t). Dr. Briaud will present movies of the crash tests and simulations, discuss the mechanics of the problem and explain the recommended design procedure.

Tickets are $45 for professional members and non-members and $10 for students.

Attendance at this technical presentation qualifies participants for 1.0 PDH.

Register online or by contacting Kent Lindamood @ 724-746-073 or kent.lindamood@gmail.com by April 11.

Any reservations made and not honored will be invoiced. Cancellations must be received by the RSVP deadline in order to receive a refund.