Reclamation Civil Engineers Win Outstanding Paper Award

Written by: Fred Brown

Blake Armstrong (left) and Bobby Rinehart were winners of the outstanding paper at the 2018 United States Society of Dams Conference.When Bobby Rinehart and Blake Armstrong from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Concrete, Geotechnical & Structural Laboratory in the Technical Service Center were invited to present their research paper at the 2018 United States Society of Dams Conference, they had no idea what was in store for them.

The 38th Annual Conference & Exhibition focused on the importance of environmentally sustainable water projects within diverse and sometimes fragile ecosystems. The papers and abstracts presented during the conference were selected in response to a Call for Papers.

Rinehart and Armstrong’s paper "Soil Strength Measurement Over a Range of Strains for Embankment Dam Deformation Modeling," was one of more than 190 papers presented during the conference.

"The paper was about our approach to characterize soil strength across a wide range of strains," Rinehart said. "Soil strength is very sensitive to how much strain has been accumulated, and the soil beneath an embankment dam can experience a very wide range of strains, especially during an earthquake. To accurately model how an embankment might respond to an earthquake, it is important to provide accurate strengths properties across the appropriate range of strains."

"The overall conclusion from this work is that several tests are required to define strength parameters across a wide range of strains," said Armstrong. "Soil is a very complicated material, and it takes the combined analysis of a variety of tests - both in the field and the lab - to gain a full understanding of how it responds to loading."

Little did Rinehart and Armstrong know that their paper would be selected as the 2018 Outstanding Paper of the Conference Award.

"It is a real honor for our paper to have been recognized with the Outstanding Paper Award," Rinehart said. "Being recognized by a panel of your peers is humbling, but it really serves to highlight the very high-level work that Reclamation's materials characterization personnel do daily. Anyone that works in our group could have just as easily been presented with this honor."

"It feels great to have our paper recognized by our peers. We have put in some hard work to develop and conduct this type of testing," said Armstrong. "I also must add that this is what we all like to do, so to be noticed is just the icing on the cake."

Conducting the research and writing this paper was a team effort. A team Rinehart says he’s happy to be a part of. "One of the best things about working at Reclamation is the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that exists," said Rinehart. "Working so closely with Armstrong in the lab running tests as well as in the office analyzing results and writing reports and papers is a blast!"

While they are excited to be receive this award, they both admitted that there is still more work to be done. "The work continues! Our laboratory stays very busy with projects as well as fitting in research," Armstrong said. "At the moment we have projects from a seismic stability analysis in Oregon to a sedimentation studies in New Mexico, not to mention continuing research on soil strength behavior over a wide range of strains and loading conditions."

To learn more about Reclamation's Science and Technology Program please visit https://www.usbr.gov/research/st/index.html.

Published on June 19, 2018