News

PhD student Amiran Janashvili and Dr. Ziccarelli recently gave oral presentations at the Engineering Mechanics Institute 2025 Conference in Anaheim, California on May 29, 2025. The topic of both presentations was the fracture behavior of structural steel under seismic loading conditions, a key area of focus for our research group. Amiran’s presentation was titled “Effects of Strain Aging on the Fracture Initiation in Structural Steel Subjected to Cyclic Loading” and Dr. Ziccarelli’s was titled “Investigation of Ductile Crack Trajectories in Structural Steel with an Adaptive Cohesive Zone Model.”

It was a pleasure listening to and meeting with other researchers in this area. More work to come in the future!

Dr. Ziccarelli presented gave an oral presentation at the 2025 NCDOT Bridge Maintenance Engineer Workshop at NC State University on May 5, 2025. The presentation outlined the group’s research project studying corrosion of steel piles at bridges throughout the state, which is a joint effort with Dr. Moe Pourghaz and Mr. Tarek Aziz, both of CCEE. It was great to have an opportunity to share the project with the field engineers who see the effects of corrosion on a regular basis, and to receive their thoughts and feedback!

PhD student Eman Abdullah was awarded the Vinnakota Award, presented by the Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC), at the 2025 Annual Stability Conference. The award is given for the best student-authored paper presented at the conference. Eman’s paper was titled “Analytical Investigation of Plate Buckling Capacity Under Inelastic Cyclic Loading”. Congratulations, Eman!

Dr. Ziccarelli was also presented with the Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award from AISC. The award was presented at the keynote session of NASCC: The Steel Conference on Wednesday, April 2nd.

Thank you to AISC and SSRC!

PhD students Amiran Janashvili and Eman Abdullah gave oral presentations on their research at the 2025 Structural Engineering & Mechanics (SEM) Graduate Research Symposium. The symposium took place at Duke Energy Hall at NC State University on February 14th. Amiran’s presentation was titled “Effects of Strain Aging on the Fracture Initiation in Structural Steel Subjected to Cyclic Loading” and Eman’s presentation was titled “Analytical Investigation of Plate Buckling Capacity Under Inelastic Cyclic Loading.”