Aug. 30, 2022

Civil Engineering research looks at concrete under sustained loads

For the most part, buildings held up with reinforced concrete columns have the capacity to withstand the test of time. In a few cases, however, construction errors, material deterioration and misuse can lead to overloading, and at some point, that overloading can cause buildings to collapse. Sarah Orton, an associate professor of civil engineering, has spent the past year working with colleagues to understand why. In a recent series of papers, she and collaborators released findings from physical testing and computational modeling of reinforced concrete behavior subjected to sustained loads. These so-called gravity loads are mostly…

Feb. 9, 2022

Engineering team tests blast resistance of sandwich walls

A team of Mizzou Engineers conducted full-scale lab experiments to see how various types of sandwich walls withstand the pressure of an explosion.