       Â
       SEI Maryland
đź“… Date & Time: Apr 23, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM (ET)
đź”— Access Link: [A link will be sent the day before the event]
🔑 Login: Details will be provided via email prior to the event
For more information, visit: TBD
Speaker:Â
Mo Ehsani, Ph.D., P.E., S.E.
President, QuakeWrap Inc. and
Centennial Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Arizona
Â
Dr. Ehsani received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan before joining the department of Civil Engineering at the University of Arizona in 1982. He pioneered the field of repair and retrofit of civil structures with Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials in the 1980s and has published these findings in numerous professional journals such as ACI, ASCE, Earthquake Spectra, etc. Dr. Ehsani is a Fellow and Life Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (FASCE) and a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute (FACI). He has served as President of the Structural Engineers Association of Arizona, and he is a registered professional engineer in twenty states. He is also a Licensed Engineering Contractor in AZ and CA. Professor Ehsani has been featured on major media such as CNN, National Public Radio, the History Channel, and Engineering News Record for his expertise on strengthening of structures, particularly related to earthquakes, terrorist attacks and other potential structural disasters. He has over 20 patents and received the 2014 Arizona Technology Leader of The Year Award and the 2021 AZ Governor’s Innovator of the Year Award. Many of these developments have been supported through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from various government agencies, such as NSF, USDA, EPA, USDOT. In 2010, Dr. Ehsani left the University of Arizona as a Professor Emeritus to devote his full attention to QuakeWrap, Inc., a company he had founded in 1994 that specializes in repair and retrofit of structures with FRP. Along with its sister construction company, these companies offers turnkey design/build solutions to their international clients. Numerous award-winning projects and creative solutions/products developed to address the clients’ needs attest to the unique capabilities of this company. In September 2014, QuakeWrap was inducted into the U.S. Congressional Records as “...a small business that has grown by being a leader in state- of-the-art technology and by embracing exporting as key to its growth strategy.”
Description
Innovative FRP Solutions for Repair and Strengthening of the Aging Infrastructure
By now, most engineers are familiar with the original concept of repair and retrofit of structures with Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) products that the speaker introduced more than 3 decades ago. In that technique known as “wet layup”, fabrics of carbon or glass are saturated with epoxy, and they are bonded to the surface of the structure; by the next day the materials become 2-3 times stronger than steel. The materials are lightweight, and they do not corrode, thus providing a lasting repair. They offer unique solutions for both strengthening of buildings and bridges and repair of corrosion-damaged structures. This presentation will review the old technology and present the latest solutions developed by the speaker in recent years; the topics and case studies presented will include:
1. A brief overview of the wet layup system, basic design principles and how these products are used to repair and strengthen beams, slabs, and columns, including a few parking garages.
2. PileMedic® FRP Laminates for repair of concrete, timber and steel piles and columns --- These laminates offer great advantages compared to the wet layup system especially for underwater repair of piles; this is the only such system that has been tested and approved by the US Army Corps of Engineers for the military’s use worldwide. Case studies will also be presented.
3. Sheet Pile Repair (SPiRe®) is made using the sandwich construction technique; these custom-made lightweight and stiff panels offer unique solutions in many projects for repair of large pier walls, bridge abutments, decks, slabs, corroded bulkheads. Currently, the Port of Melbourne, Australia is repairing 1.2km of its seawall with SPiRe®.
4. SPiRe®+ A newly developed version of SPiRe® that includes built-in reinforcing bars for rapid repair of beams and decks (in bridges and ports), corroded slabs, abutment walls, seawalls, building new retaining walls, etc.
5. StifPipe® is another sandwich construction product that allows us to build customized pipes of any shape and size. These pipes are used to repair deteriorated culverts and pipes using the slip-lining technique. In a record setting project, 16-ft diameter StifPipe® segments were used on an infrastructure project in Michigan in 2023.
6. ESeaWall, an easily installed durable wall to protect communities from flooding caused by rising sea levels.
Contact Information
Meriton Gollopeni
(315)679-9677
tony.gollopeni@exp.com