91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó engineering faculty are leading a $7.2 million multidisciplinary research initiative on soil blast modeling and simulation for the U.S. Department of Defense. ÌýThe research, which starts this month, is aimed at creating a more accurate representation of the impact of buried landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on light-armored military vehicles so that the vehicles can be better designed to withstand such blasts. ÌýThe award is administered by the Office of Naval 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó as part of the defense department’s competitive Multi-University 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó Initiative or MURI program, which supports basic science and engineering research at U.S.universities related to long-term national security needs. ÌýMURI awards are provided to accelerate progress in cutting-edge research areas by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards than other DOD research programs. ÌýThe grant will provide $4.2 million to CU-91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó and $3 million to co-investigators at four other institutions. The other schools involved are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Tennessee Knoxville; and the University of Utah. ÌýRichard Regueiro, assistant professor in CU-91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the principal investigator. CU-91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó professors Ronald Pak, John McCartney and Stein Sture of civil engineering, and Oleg Vasilyev of mechanical engineering, also are involved. ÌýThe research initiative will involve experiments using CU-91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó’s large 400-g ton geotechnical centrifuge coupled with computational modeling. The objective is to develop and validate a model that accurately represents explosive blasts of varying charges, depths and soil types. ÌýCU-91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó’s proposal was one of 27 MURI awards made to academic institutions in different topical areas in 2011. The proposals, which are being funded with a total of $191 million over five years, were selected from a field of 332 proposals, including 17 on the topic of soil blast modeling and simulation.