SNU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Yi Sang-ri Wins First Place at the Student Paper Competition of the American Society of Civil Engineers


▲ Yi Sang-ri (SNU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) Takes a Photo After Winning First Place (2^nd from the Left)

 
On 19^th, SNU College of Engineering (Dean Cha Kook-Heon) announced that Yi Sang-ri (MS-PhD) of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has ranked first in the EMI (Engineering Mechanics Institute) Student Paper Competition in Probabilistic Methods of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from May 29^th to June 1^st.
 
The EMI Conference is one of the top international academic conferences in the field of engineering mechanics where over a 1000 participants engage in around 150 different conference sessions annually. The EMI Student Paper Competition is held to encourage the involvement of younger professionals in academic world and promote further growth as engineers. Among all those who have submitted their research papers, 5 that passed the preliminaries had the opportunity to present their works at the finals. After the presentation, the two winners were finalized.
 
SNU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Structural and System Reliability Group (SSRG), led by Professor Song Junho, has submitted a total of 6 papers. Out of the 6, Yi Sang-ri (MS-PhD) and Byun Ji-Eun (MS-PhD)’s articles have been nominated to the finals where Lee won first place with her research titled “Nonlinear Stochastic Dynamic Analysis for PBEE Using Gaussian Mixture Based Equivalent Linearization Method.”
 
This so-called “Gaussian Mixture Based Equivalent Linearization Method (GM-ELM)” is a seismic analysis method developed at SNU SRRG, which interprets structural system with complex, non-linear mechanical behavior by substituting it with several virtual linear structures.
 
Lee’s research embodies her application of the GM-ELM, which significantly enhanced the effectiveness and accuracy of failure probability deduction, to estimate structures’ seismic fragility. Lee exceled in precisely computing the failure probability of non-linear structures due to strong earthquakes that tend to have low occurrence probability but severe socio-economic aftershocks.
 
Lee states, “This competition was definitely a valuable experience for me to compete with fellow students from top universities. It was also an opportunity to demonstrate the research competitiveness of SNU College of Engineering. I especially send gratitude toward my advisor. It is my ambition to improve the suggested seismic fragility analysis method so that it can be applied to the planning and reliability assessment of actual structures.”