October 2012, Vol. 67 No. 10
Business
Hanson Engineer Tapped For Concrete Pipe Design Course
Sam A. Arnaout, P.E., senior vice president of engineering with Hanson Engineered Products, was among the four experts selected to lead University of Texas at Arlington’s new course on concrete pipe design.
The first of its kind at the graduate collegiate level, “Structural Design of Concrete Gravity/Pressure Pipes,” offered future engineers a vital look at the performance properties and structural design procedures for concrete pressure pipe, an engineered product used for water/wastewater applications in 90 of North America’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.
“We felt the time was right to introduce this important subject matter to our engineering students, given the key role concrete pipe plays in our national, state and local infrastructure,” said Dr. Ali Abolmaali, Tseng Huang Endowed Professor of Structural Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the university. “It is imperative that today’s engineers understand the fundamentals of concrete pipe and concrete pressure pipe design and installation, as well as the relative merits of competitive pipe products, so they enter the workforce with a solid grounding in today’s drainage and water conveyance systems.”
The course covered a wide range of topics specific to both gravity and pressure pipe, beginning with a historical perspective of pipe manufacturing and installation, and progressing to design theory and methods, software workshops and special topics such as thrust design, bends, curves and max flow velocity. Students were introduced to structural analyses of circular pipes, including the theory behind plates and shells, and received hands-on exposure to today’s production process on tours of local concrete pipe and concrete pressure pipe plants.
Arnaout, who is the Technical Program Co-Chair for the upcoming 2013 ASCE Pipeline Conference and is a member of the board of directors for the Center for Underground Infrastructure Research and Education at UT-Arlington, taught alongside Professor Abolmaali; Josh Beakley, director of Technical Services for the American Concrete Pipe Association and Secretary of the AASHTO Rigid Culvert Liaison Committee; and Joe Lundy, director of Structural Product Design at Hanson Pipe & Precast, Adjunct Research Professor of Civil Engineering at UT-Arlington and recent recipient of the Frank J. Heger Memorial Award, the industry’s top recognition for lifetime contributions to the engineering and technical aspects of concrete pipe. uta.edu/engineering
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