posted on January 17, 2014
Researchers in the research group of Professor Catherine French (Civil Engineering) are featured in a news story about the sensors built into the 35W bridge in Minneapolis. Professor Carol Shield (Civil Engineering), who is the co-Principal Investigator of the group, and civil engineering graduate student Brock Hedegaard both appear in the video on the tv station Kare11’s website. The bridge, which replaced the one that collapsed in August 2007, contains state-of-the-art sensors that provide data about the behavior of the bridge.
The research group uses MSI to develop and run finite-element models of structures. The results of their model of the bridge are compared to the measured data, which will allow engineers to better predict how bridges will react to temperature, loading, and other stresses. This work was featured in the 2009 Annual Research Highlights.