RUSTON — The week before the underground steam pipe explosion in New York, city officials there contacted Louisiana Tech University's Trenchless Technology Center, interested in how to replace deteriorating utility lines without stopping daily street activity.
The July 18 blast killed a woman and injured at least 44.
In the final day of a three-day gathering, about 50 industry representatives from all over the country are seeing today what Tech has to offer in terms of trenchless technology.
Carlos Montes, a Louisiana Tech University graduate student in material science, is presenting geopolymer research today to the industry professionals who are on campus to learn how to produce, for example, better quality piping.He is one of 20 Tech students putting ideas in front of nationwide firms.
The industries represented this week invested about 60 percent of the TTC's $1 million research facility on Tech's South Campus. There, students and faculty can enhance research on how to install and repair underground utilities without digging trenches.
Construction wrapped up this summer on the new facility that was officially dedicated on Wednesday.
"We as a society face serious infrastructure problems," said Stan Napper, dean of Tech's College of Engineering and Science. "Our researchers want to stay on top of this technology."
Napper stood next to a 20-by-20-foot by 11-foot-deep soil test chamber — funded through a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant — that will be used to simulate overhead traffic, ground movements and installation techniques on newly developed utility piping.
The TTC conducts municipal forums each year with city engineers in Denver, Portland and Atlanta, among other cities, to discuss how to deal with aging utility lines.
The Industry Advisory Board, representing various underground utilities industries, helps the TTC decide what kind of research is needed most.
One of the representatives, Joseph Barsoom, compared underground utility repair to a surgical procedure.
"You don't just cut open the human body," said Barsoom, senior principal engineer with New York-based infrastructure consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff. "You make a small incision and fix all you can remotely."
Representing a leading engineering and construction management company, Barsoom expressed interest in each Tech student's presentation.
Joseph Berchmans, a 27-year-old mechanical engineering master's student, gave an analysis on
Thursday of how to eliminate the problem of corrosive underground piping.
One of the board's industries, Canada-based thermoplastic piping designer IPEX, is designing the pipe joint design that Berchmans is studying.
"This allows a platform to understand how our designs can be used in the real world. This benefits both us and them," Berchmans said.
May 17th, 2008
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