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Leveraging DoD Relationships and Interests to Improve Undergraduate Education and Enhance the Structural Engineering Profession

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Military and Veterans Division Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Military and Veterans

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37456

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37456

Download Count

414

Paper Authors

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Zachary Jordan Bunn United States Military Academy

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Civil Engineering student at the United States Military Academy

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Julia Lyn Wyatt United States Military Academy

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Civil engineering student at the United States Military Academy

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Joshua N. Burns United States Military Academy Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6995-2032

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Civil Engineering student at the United States Military Academy.

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Brian Riser United States Military Academy Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9568-1026

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Major Brian Riser was commissioned as an Engineer Officer from the United States Military Academy in 2009. Since then, he has served in a variety of Engineer positions with leadership responsibilities, from route clearance operations in Afghanistan to management of humanitarian assistance projects throughout Asia with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. From 2019 to present, Major Riser has served as an Instructor in the Department of Civil & Mechanical Engineering at the United States Military Academy. His current Department roles include course director of CE350 (Infrastructure Engineering), Officer-in-Charge of the Department’s Civil & Military Engineering Club, and junior faculty member of the USMA Faculty Council. His research interests include analysis of material behaviors under shock and impact.

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Kevin P. Arnett P.E. United States Military Academy

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LTC Kevin Arnett is a fifth year Assistant Professor at the US Military Academy. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from USMA in 2001, his M.S. Civil Engineering from U.C. Berkeley in 2011, and his PhD in Structural Engineering from UCSD in 2019. He teaches structural analysis and design of steel structures, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in California and Missouri.

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Michael Gerhardt Oesterle Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center

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Michael Oesterle is a research structural engineer and the division director for the Capital Improvements Explosion Effects and Consequences (EE&C) Division at the Naval Facilities Command Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (EXWC) in Port Hueneme, California. The EE&C Division at EXWC seve as subject matter experts for the design and analysis of DoD facilities against blast and impact generated by accidental explosions. Dr. Oesterle has been involved with many blast and impact experimental projects, including confined blast testing of hardened structures for the DoD. He has also conducted several research studies using advanced finite element models to analyze and design hardened facilities for the DoD Explosives Safety Board, Air Force Research Laboratories, and NAVFAC. Dr. Oesterle is also the technical lead for the layered hardening effort under the Hardened Installation Protection for Persistent Operations (HIPPO) II program and for the development of the DoD’s automated site planning tool, Explosives Safety Siting Software. Dr. Oesterle received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2009.

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Abstract

DoD organizations such as the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), the Air Force Civil Engineering Center, and the US Army Corps of Engineers provide design and analysis of structures to resist blast effects from accidental explosions and terrorist or foreign threats. Current code provisions for designing structures under accidental blast conditions and dynamic loading are given in UFC 3-340-02 (Change 2, 1 September 2014). The field of structural blast safety is uniquely and acutely more relevant to DOD agencies due to the nature of both malicious and accidental risks. Obviously, terrorist incidents address one component, but the requirement to safely store munitions on DOD installations sparked the formation of the DOD Explosives Safety Board in 1928 after the major accidental explosion at the Naval Ammunition Depot, Lake Denmark, New Jersey. The requirements persist, as all services face the challenges posed by explosives safety. Beginning in the fall of 2019, researchers at the NAVFAC Expeditionary and Engineering Warfare Center (EXWC) in Port Hueneme, CA and faculty at the US Military Academy in New York began partnering in search of mutually beneficial research and education opportunities. This paper presents a unique research project and capstone experience at the undergraduate level that will benefit DOD research, active duty service members, and undergraduate civil engineering students from June 2020 through May of 2021. Three civil engineering students embarked on a project-based study to support NAVFAC EXWC in their role as subject matter experts in protective construction for explosives safety for multiple military construction (MILCON) projects on Navy installations. Cadet work has extended learning on reinforced concrete, delved into new blast engineering design knowledge, incorporated the generation Mathcad-based engineering tools, and investigated performance-based alternatives to support rotation limits for one-way structural members identified in the UFC 3-340-02. The project has provided a wealth of opportunities to prepare cadets for graduate level experiences and learn new content, while the analysis and results from this capstone project will arm DoD engineers with new tools for design. This paper reports on the results of this effort leveraging DoD expertise and research with undergraduate experiential learning. The authors will demonstrate that the synergies associated with the DoD interests substantively improved the student capstone experience, resulting in enhanced achievement of broader ABET student outcomes, while simultaneously providing useful tools and better trained engineers to the profession.

Bunn, Z. J., & Wyatt, J. L., & Burns, J. N., & Riser, B., & Arnett, K. P., & Oesterle, M. G. (2021, July), Leveraging DoD Relationships and Interests to Improve Undergraduate Education and Enhance the Structural Engineering Profession Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37456

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