Last week the Transportation Infrastructure Durability Center (TIDC) held their inaugural conference at the University of Maine, where the Regional UTC is based.  TRC Co-Director and TIDC Vermont Lead Mandar Dewoolkar attended, along with other UVM Civil Engineering faculty Ehsan Ghazanfari and Mechanical Engineering faculty Dryver Huston.  The TIDC mission is “to improve the durability and extend the life of transportation infrastructure in the U.S.” 

This center is part of an effort for New England states to work together to solve common problems.  “If there are solutions that Vermont is developing or New Hampshire’s developing we need to know about it,” said TIDC Director Habib Dagher.  “By working together we can save money, work more efficiently and hopefully we have a lot of bright people in all different states, and by putting our heads together at the University of Maine and other Universities as well, we can have a better chance at solving some of these problems.”

Mandar presented on his project titled “Bridge-stream Network Assessments to Identify Sensitive Structural, Hydraulic, and Landscape Parameters for Planning Flood Mitigation.”  Dryver and Ehsan’s presentations were titled, “High Performance Concrete with Post-Tensioning Shrinking Fibers,” and “Enhancing Intelligent Compaction with Passive Wireless Sensors,” respectively.

The center hopes to hold the conference each year at the different universities across New England who are involved in the projects.

For more information and project specifics, visit www.tidc-utc.org.

PUBLISHED 6-13-2019