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| Peter J. Bosscher |
| Peter J. Bosscher Professor |
| 2218 Engineering Hall 1415 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706 |
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Tel: 608/262-7245 Fax: 608/262-5199 E-mail: bosscher@engr.wisc.edu |
My research focuses on several areas:
1.laboratory and field instrumentation for measurement and characterization of both geologic and human produced materials, 2.recycling of waste materials in various portions of constructed facilities, 3.characterizing and modeling the interface between soil and structure, 4.determining methods to measure the dynamic load capacity of piles driven with vibratory drivers, and 5.designing hardware and software to enhance the design and construction of civil engineering works.
Subsurface exploration, sampling, and in situ testing are areas vital to proper geotechnical engineering analysis and design. Without sufficient quality data from the field, even the best analysis will be flawed. We constantly are working at improving instrumentation and methods to use to gain knowledge about the materials we are designing with. We own a drill rig and other state-of-the-art field equipment used to characterize the stress-strain behavior, the hydraulic properties, and the distribution of these properties through the soil strata. Additionally, we continue to develop and improve unique, portable, real-time computer-based data acquisition systems to record, process, and store the data coming from laboratory and in situ equipment. We have built a wide variety of data acquisition systems including long-term, solar powered systems to very high speed digital signal processing (DSP) equipment.
Large amounts of waste products from agriculture, industry, and municipalities are generated every day. In construction, large volumes of soil and aggregate are often used as fills, foundation materials, and in structures. We are investigating the addition of some of these waste products to the materials used in construction in order to improve the construction material and at the same time recycle the waste material. We have completed projects to improve marginal soils by including shredded tires in the soil. We are also investigating the effects of adding waste fibers from forest product wastes in materials used in constructed facilities.
Even with the large-scale use of pile foundations, engineers still do not completely understand the mechanism which transfers the load from the pile to the soil. We are studying the soil-structure interface using several techniques including computer vision, parallel computing, and soil-structure testing. The integration of these techniques permits us to design and test numerous hypotheses regarding the load transfer mechanism.
Piles are driven into the ground with either impact or vibratory hammers. Since impact hammers have been used since piles were first used (prior to earliest recorded history), many methods have been designed to predict the load capacity of an impact driven pile based on the number of impacts it takes to drive the pile into the soil. Vibratory hammers are fairly new and thus lack this correlation. Our research is designed to determine that by driving numerous piles of various sizes, shapes, and lengths and measuring the characteristics of the driving.
Computer tools are constantly being updated to decrease size and improve both performance and useability. We are constantly evaluating both available hardware and software in order to design systems that can improve the design and construction of civil engineering works. Current projects include the design of a small pen-based handheld computer to collect data by inspectors at Wisconsin DOT projects. The computer is being designed to perform error checking, data checking, and project inspection assistance.
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Copyright 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: 20-Jun-2006 Content by: bosscher@engr.wisc.edu Thank you for visiting http://www.engr.wisc.edu/cee/faculty/bosscher_peter.html |
