Prof. Amit Kanvinde and his PhD student Aditya Jhunjhunwala received 2024 Raymond C. Reese Research Prize

The American Society of Civil Engineers has awarded the 2024 Raymond C. Reese Research Prize to Amit Kanvinde, Professor at UC Davis’s Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Aditya Jhunjhunwala, his PhD student. The Raymond C. Reese Research Prize, created in 1970, is given to authors of an article that “describes a notable achievement in research related to structural engineering and which indicates how the research can be used,” according to the ASCE website.

Aditya Jhunjhunwala and Amit Kanvinde received this award for developing a fracture-mechanics based methodology to assess the earthquake fracture risk of welded column splice connections in aging and vulnerable steel buildings that were constructed before modern code provisions were enacted. This methodology (implemented in a user-friendly toolbox) enables professional engineers to effectively evaluate trade-offs between life-safety of these buildings versus the highly disruptive retrofit or replacement of these splice connections.

Their paper – “Fracture Mechanics–Based Fragility Assessment of Pre-Northridge Welded Column Splices” – was published in the June 2023 edition of the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering.