SCE Professor of Civil Engineering Dr. Ganesh Thiagarajan’s National Science Foundation (NSF) award (# CMMI 0748085, PI: Ganesh Thiagarajan) funded a Blast Blind Simulation Contest that attracted 40 worldwide entries.

Using the experimental results Dr. Thiagarajan obtained when conducting blast resistance tests on reinforced slabs for his NSF study, the contest invited students, researchers and industry professionals around the world to use software simulations to predict the study’s results. Of the entries received, 25% were from students, 40% were from academic researchers and 35% were from industry professionals. UMKC SCE civil engineering masters students Gunjan Shetye and Mayuri Patil assisted Dr. Thiagarajan in his NSF-funded research experiments and with the contest.

The contest was sponsored in collaboration with the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Committees 447 (Finite Element of Reinforced Concrete Structures) and 370 (Blast and Impact Load Effects), and UMKC School of Computing and Engineering. UMKC SCE Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Dr. Ceki Halmen served on the contest’s organizing committee as did Eric Williamson, Ph.D., P.E., Chair of ACI 370, Stanley Woodson, Ph.D., P.E. ERDC, Vicksburg, MS, Harold Spraque, P.E., Structural Engineer, Parsons, MO and Jon Shull, P.E., Structural Engineering, Black and Veatch, KS.

The contest was divided as four categories based on Material strength and mode of analysis. They were the Normal Strength Concrete-Finite Element Method (NSC-FEM), Normal Strength Concrete-Single Degree of Freedom (NSC-SDOF), High Strength Concrete-Finite Element Method (HSC-FEM) and High Strength Concrete-Single Degree of Freedom (HSC-SDOF) Method. The predictions were compared with respective experimental results and were judged based on percentage error in Peak Deflection, time of Peak Deflection and Residual Deflection.

The winners were recently announced (see below) and SCE congratulates them all.