Research team's paper earns PCI Journal's George D. Nasser Award

A team of researchers from Civil and Environmental Engineering, comprised of faculty and former graduate students, was chosen to receive the PCI Journal's George D. Nasser Award for their paper, "Flexural Design of Precast, Prestressed Ultra-High-Performance Concrete Members."

The team members are:

• Chungwook Sim, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
• Maher Tadros, distinguished emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering and the founding principal of e.Construct USA LLC.
• David Gee, a structural engineer with e.Construct specializing in UHPC and bridge design and a former graduate research assistant.
• Micheal Assad, a structural engineer at Kiewit, specializing in UHPC and bridge engineering and is a former graduate research assistant and graduate teaching assistant.

The authors proposed flexural design guidelines for precast, prestressed concrete members made with concrete mixtures developed by precasters to meet the minimum specific qualifying characteristics for PCI ultra-high-performance concrete (PCI-UHPC). The paper examines numerous aspects of UHPC design and evaluation and includes a fully worked-out example of a 250-foot span decked I-beam of optimized shape.

The award was presented at the 2021 PCI Committee Days in Rosemont, Illinois, on Sept. 22.

The Nasser Award was established in 2004 by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) to honor Nasser's more than 30 years of leadership as editor-in-chief of the PCI Journal. It is given to a young author or authors for the best design, research or state-of-the-art paper on precast concrete appearing in PCI Journal during a single year. Sim's paper was published in the November-December 2020 issue of PCI Journal.