 |
|
April 24, 2006 Vol. 77, no.
14S
 |
| LEVEE
FAILURE?
CEE seniors (from left) Siu-Ting Mak , Luyin Zhu and Lilian Leung
pose near the aging Sacramento River levee system, which they’re
investigating for a class project. (Photo provided by Siu-Ting
Mak)
|
“These
levees might be a problem”
CEE seniors analyze Sacramento River levees after potential quake
CEE professor Robert Bea calls his senior capstone class “CEE
180: Construction, Maintenance, and Design of Civil and Environmental
Engineered Systems,” but it might as well be “Welcome to
the Real World.” Teams of students work to solve contemporary
Bay Area problems and deliver a polished project within 15 weeks. A
consultant who won’t call you back? Indifferent government officials?
Project bigger than you realized? In this class, students learn to
execute projects outside the controlled world of academia.
Take CEE senior Siu-Ting Mak. His team’s original project was
investigating the redevelopment of Treasure Island. But three weeks
into the semester, the team discovered that it was too much to handle
in 15 weeks. So Mak and CEE seniors Luyin Zhu and Lilian Leung dumped
all their research for a new project: the susceptibility of the Sacramento
River levee system in a large earthquake. With time already lost, the
three scrambled to learn the 100-year history of the levees, built
of clean sand by farmers to protect their land against flooding. Now,
the structures, which protect million-dollar river homes as well as
farmland, are aging, weak and sinking. The three students, advised
by CEE professor and levee expert Ray Seed and other experienced consultants,
walked a portion of the levees in February to see the situation firsthand.
Then they used data from the United States Geological Survey to complete
a preliminary analysis.
“We’ve built a computer model that shows which parts of
the levee are most susceptible during an earthquake,” says Zhu. “We
created a spreadsheet that looks at each 10-foot layer of the levee,
and then we ran calculations to see which layer will liquefy. We concluded
that these levees might be a problem. It’s not good.”
The team members think the levees could be improved by building another
levee adjacent. The new levee would feature a densified foundation
that’s
already been vibrated so it won’t liquefy in an earthquake. The
cost would be enormous, the team admits, but so would the loss of property,
even life, in an earthquake.
Along the way, the team has learned good communications skills, and
how to find reliable data and websites and write meeting agendas. “Everything
is teamwork,” says Mak. The group has set up a project website
so members can work together remotely. They even hold regular working
lunches.
Overall, the project has been an eye opener, members say. “I’ve
learned how much responsibility we have as engineers,” says Mak. “What
we do truly affects people’s lives,” Leung adds.
For more information about the course, go to www.ce.berkeley.edu/~bea/course_ce180_290e.html.
|
|
