Group Dinner (November 2024)
The SRG gathered for a special dinner to bid farewell to Florian and to welcome our new members — Gyubeom, Temitope, and Jimmy. It was a delightful evening filled with good company and great conversation!
News
Engagement with Community Organizations in Wildfire Preparedness Activities
Active engagement with community organizations in wildfire preparedness activities is an important goal for our Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) project “Designing Smart, Sustainable Risk Reduction in Hazard-Prone Communities: Modeling Risk Across Scales of Time and Space”, funded by the National Science Foundation. In keeping with this goal, our SCC team participated in two recent events. The first was Ember Stomp, a county-wide event on… Read More »Engagement with Community Organizations in Wildfire Preparedness Activities
Vienna Workshop of Geothermal-based Optimization Energy System (GOES) Project
The 4th workshop of GOES project was held from Sep. 25 to Sep. 27, 2024, in Vienna. Soga Research Group remotely present their contribution of integrating the shallow geothermal into the building energy simulation and optimization. Primary works include introducing g-function into mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and coupling the Modelica building library with Dealii finite element tool. The new centralized energy plant system… Read More »Vienna Workshop of Geothermal-based Optimization Energy System (GOES) Project
DFOS Monitoring System for Learning from the Ground Up (LeGUp) Project
A geothermal network comprising borehole fields was built in Framingham, MA, to supply district heating and cooling. Through this project, LeGUp aims to explore the decarbonization potential of utilizing shallow geothermal as a sustainable energy source. Soga Research Group designed the network monitoring systems for those three borehole fields, and together with HEET team, installed the fiber optic cables and ROTDR interrogators at all three… Read More »DFOS Monitoring System for Learning from the Ground Up (LeGUp) Project
Distributed Thermal Response Test (DTRT) in the New Campus Borehole
UC Berkely is planning a new clean electrified heating and cooling plant utilizing shallow geothermal to cut down greenhouse gas emissions. As part of this initiative, a new borehole with the depth of 400 ft was drilled and installed during the week of May 20, 2024, at the Hearst North Field on Berkeley campus, which will host the new plant. From Aug. 16 to Aug.… Read More »Distributed Thermal Response Test (DTRT) in the New Campus Borehole
Presentation at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE2024)
Michael Virtucio gave an presentation at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held on June 30 to July 5, 2024 in Milan, Italy. His presentation entitled “Assessing Transportation Resilience Using an Image-Based Bridge Model & Semi-Dynamic Traffic Model” was included under the High-Resolution Simulation of Regional Earthquake Risk and Recovery Technical Session in the conference program. An abstract of the work is included below:… Read More »Presentation at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE2024)
Implementation of DFOS for Cast-In-Steel-Shell Concrete Piles
The Soga Research Group/Center for Smart Infrastructure, in partnership with Caltrans, progressed with the instrumentation and field implementation of four Cast-in-Steel-Shell (CISS) concrete piles to better understand the geotechnical capacity of soil plugs of large diameter piles. Instrumentation, installation, and testing of four piles took place between June-July 2024. Fiber optic, piezometer, and strain gauge data was collected during various stages of the process including… Read More »Implementation of DFOS for Cast-In-Steel-Shell Concrete Piles
Guest Lecture for USACE Course on Seismic Analysis of Embankment Dams
Lauren Talbot, a PhD Candidate in the Soga Research Group, was invited as a guest lecturer for the USACE Prospect Course 247 on seismic analysis of embankment dams. Her presentation was titled “Applying the Material Point Method [MPM] to Model the Runout Phase of a Seismic Analysis”. Lauren discussed MPM and the potential applications in current and future state of practice. To demonstrate this, she… Read More »Guest Lecture for USACE Course on Seismic Analysis of Embankment Dams
PHMSA Project: Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing for Pipeline Safety Against Fault Movement and Landslides
The Soga Research Group secured funding from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to assess the feasibility of a Distributed Fiber Optic Strain Measurement System for long-term monitoring of buried gas pipelines at risk of ground deformation due to faults and landslides. The project concluded with a final report submitted to PHMSA in August 2024. Six key tasks were completed, including design, laboratory… Read More »PHMSA Project: Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing for Pipeline Safety Against Fault Movement and Landslides
New MPM paper in the Journal of Computational Physics
Researchers in our group recently published an article in the Journal of Computational Physics on material point method (MPM). The work is led by our affiliated researcher, Nanda Chandra, who was also a recent graduate from the group. The article entitled “Mixed material point method formulation, stabilization, and validation for a unified analysis of free-surface and seepage flow” proposed an extension work of the previous… Read More »New MPM paper in the Journal of Computational Physics