Illustration by Heather Miller

The last great earthquake to strike the Pacific Northwest occurred on January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. Parts of the coastline dropped three to six feet in an instant. It set off landslides throughout the Oregon Coast Range. Some of them are still moving. If you could hear soil, rocks and trees creep inch-by-inch downhill, some of those sounds would echo that massive jolt. At sea, it generated tsunamis that reshaped the Northwest coastline, traveled across the Pacific and swept through bays and coastal communities in Japan.

Scientists know that this scenario has happened repeatedly in the last 10,000 years and will do so again. Oregon State University geologist Chris Goldfinger calculates the chance of a major quake at 40 percent in the next 50 years off the southern Oregon coast. The frequency decreases as you move north, but the nearly 800-mile Cascadia subduction zone, where these quakes originate, could rupture anywhere. The last one wiped out villages. The next one will threaten cities and bring a regional economy to its knees.

Nevertheless, for most of us, the threat seems as likely as getting hit by lightning. We know it could happen, but we don’t take it seriously. It feels remote. “The paradigm shift among the citizens of the Northwest has not yet taken place,” says Bob Yeats, emeritus professor of geology at Oregon State and author of Living with Earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.

As recently as 30 years ago, most scientists didn’t think a major quake could happen here. But, says Yeats in an upcoming book, evidence from coastal marshes, seafloor canyons, GPS monitoring stations and native traditions tell a compelling story: The western edge of North America is locked against another part of the Earth’s crust, the Juan de Fuca Plate, which is diving beneath us. Like wrestlers in mortal combat, they occasionally break their hold on each other and lurch into a new position. Geologists have given such events a name right out of Saturday night wrestling — “megathrust.” When it happens, the landscape vibrates like a bass drum. Seismic waves pulse through the crust for three minutes or more. Some types of soil liquefy and spread out. Bridge and building foundations get pushed out of alignment. Other soils could amplify the shaking from below, subjecting buildings, especially high-rises, to even more violent motion.

Lifelines

Scott Ashford has seen the consequences of these quakes in Chile, Japan and New Zealand: buildings and bridges tilted and broken like toys, beachfront tourist towns reduced to rubble, pipelines squeezed out of the ground like toothpaste out of a tube, businesses closed or forced to relocate.

“Many of Oregon’s lifeline providers have shared research needs, whether it’s to improve our ground motion predictions, to assess liquefaction potential of Oregon soils or to develop retrofit technologies for our legacy systems.”

— Matthew L. Garrett, Director, Oregon Department of Transportation

The Oregon State Kearney Professor of Engineering is determined to soften the blow when Oregon’s turn arrives. In 2010, after viewing damage from a megathrust quake in Chile, Ashford developed the idea for the Cascadia Lifelines Program, a consortium of Oregon businesses, government agencies and universities. The goal is to save lives and to shorten the time it will take for the state and the nation to recover.

At the Port of Ishikari on Japan’s Hokkaido Island in 2007, Scott Ashford and colleagues from the Port and Airport Research Institute developed cost-effective liquefaction mitigation measures for airport runways. Their efforts helped to minimize airport damage in the 2011 Japan earthquake. Here, they are conducting scans with a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system to monitor soil liquefaction induced by controlled explosions. Support came from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey. See “Oregon 9.0,” Page 8. (Photo: Rob Kayen, U.S. Geological Survey)

“If you look at the effect on the people and at recovery, a key part of our resilience is lifelines,” Ashford says. “Electric power, natural gas, transportation systems, telecommunications, drinking water, sewer. And critical facilities like the Port of Portland and the Portland International Airport. All of these lifeline providers have common challenges to prepare for this next earthquake. None by itself has the financial ability to fund the research necessary. My vision is to pursue research of common interest to develop cost-effective solutions to mitigate the Cascadia earthquake.”

Members of the consortium already include the Oregon Department of Transportation, Portland General Electric, NW Natural (Northwest Natural Gas), the Port of Portland, the Portland Water Bureau and the Bonneville Power Administration. Ashford is lining up others as well. Among their concerns are building standards, landslides, communications and recovery strategies. But first up on their research agenda is an Oregon State study of soil liquefaction, the phenomenon that compounds the damage caused by seismic shaking.

Soil Sleuths

Soils are often named for the places where they’re found. California’s state soil is called San Joaquin. In Washington, Tokul soil is named after a community in King County. Oregon’s state soil is Jory, named for a hill in Marion County where a family of that name settled in 1852. For geotechnical engineers, another local soil poses a potential risk in a megathrust earthquake: Willamette silt.

Ben Mason

With a texture midway between sand and clay, this remnant of the ancient Missoula Floods underlies much of the Willamette Valley. From McMinnville nearly to Eugene, bridge piers, roads (I-5, U.S. Highway 99) and pipelines run through or on top of Willamette silt. It carries railroad tracks and electric transmission lines. Large parts of Salem sit on it, as do Albany, Corvallis and Sweet Home. It is up to 130 feet deep in some places.

“We don’t really know anything about how Willamette silt responds to earthquakes,” says Ben Mason, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Oregon State. What he does know is that, as soils go, it doesn’t take much water for it to change from being dry and crumbly to taking on the properties of a liquid. “It has a low plasticity index. What that means is that it can liquefy during an earthquake,” he says. At least theoretically.

To find out for sure, Mason has collected Willamette silt from the Oregon State campus. Last winter, he and a colleague, Li Zheng from the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute in China (Li wants to know how earthen dams will perform during an earthquake), placed soil samples the size of hockey pucks in a device that simulates conditions deep underground. They subjected the samples to repeated, precisely controlled cycles of shaking. As a piston shook the sample, simulating seismic waves, sensors measured changes in volume and in water pressure inside the soil.

As the shaking continued, “the water pressure builds up, builds up and builds up and eventually the soil will act like a liquid,” says Mason. “And that’s when we say liquefaction happens.” In effect, he explains, soil structure breaks down, water oozes from pores where it had been bound and the soil turns into a mass with the consistency of pea soup.

We can see liquefaction in action when we walk on a beach, Mason adds. “If you run, you cause these minor liquefaction events. It’s a very dynamic load hitting the sand.” Water is forced out from between the grains and pools briefly on the surface. In contrast, water underground has nowhere to go. As Mason’s experiments show, pressure rises. The question is: Will it get high enough to trigger liquefaction? If it does and the soil happens to be on a slope, it can spread out, jeopardizing any structure that is in the way, such as a bridge pier, building foundation or pipeline.

Mason’s experiments are the first to be supported by Cascadia Lifelines Program funding. His lab is one of the few on the West Coast with the ability to subject soils to a wide range of precisely controlled earthquakes. His “cyclic simple shear” device can be programmed to mimic seismic waves with varying duration and strength. With accurate information about Willamette silt, engineers will be able to design structures that can minimize the damage from the possibility of soil movement caused by liquefaction. Engineering firms are already contacting him to test soil samples for project design purposes.

Buildings and Bridges

Andre Barbosa

Most schools, city halls, bridges, commercial buildings and other structures in Oregon were built before the possibility of big earthquakes was taken seriously. “We don’t know how these buildings will perform (in an earthquake),” says Andre Barbosa, an Oregon State structural engineer. “We have a very rough idea. We know by year and type of construction, whether this or that building may behave well or not so well. But we don’t really know.”

After the Quake

As an epidemiologist, Jeff Bethel understands the vital role of public health in saving lives after a natural disaster. Most at risk, he says, are vulnerable populations — migrant laborers and people who live alone or have chronic illnesses.

Read more…

Because seismic stresses were not even recognized in the state’s building codes until 1974, our infrastructure and architectural heritage are highly vulnerable. According to the Oregon Resilience Plan, a report produced by the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) in 2013, nearly half of 2,193 schools assessed in the state have a high to very high potential for collapse. More than a third of the 2,567 bridges in the state highway system were built with no seismic considerations. All nine of Portland’s bridges over the Willamette were built before seismic codes were in force, although some have been strengthened.

But estimating vulnerability is only the start, says Barbosa, who specializes in structural performance in earthquakes. Engineers also need to evaluate strategies for retrofitting old structures and improving standards for new construction. Toward that end, Barbosa conducts experiments on building and bridge components in the Oregon State structures lab, which boasts the second-largest “strong floor” on the West Coast. It allows researchers to simulate earthquake forces up to 1 million pounds on frames up to two stories high. In a project for the Oregon Department of Transportation, Barbosa is evaluating the performance of high-strength reinforcing steel (aka “rebar”) to resist long-duration shaking.

That fills an important need in the Northwest where subduction zone earthquakes are likely to last three to five minutes or more. In contrast, crustal earthquakes, such as those along the famed San Andreas Fault in California, typically last 30 seconds or less. The difference adds up to higher demands on buildings, especially where the frequency of the seismic waves matches a structure’s internal characteristics.

“The main objective of our modern building codes is life safety,” Barbosa adds. “We design structures so that people can evacuate in case of strong shaking. The structure can vibrate back and forth, but it is designed not to collapse. That’s the life safety design approach.”

In addition to living in earthquake country, Barbosa has a personal connection to such events. He grew up in Lisbon, Portugal, which suffered a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in 1755. Geologists now estimate that it approached the strength of the 1700 megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. Since then, Portugal and the Northwest have experienced thousands of smaller quakes centered in local faults, but there have been no large events of the kind seen recently in Chile and Japan. “The problems we have in Portugal are the same as we have here in Oregon,” he says. “The return period for large earthquakes is very long. People just don’t remember.”

Nevertheless, Oregon is taking a leadership role in planning. Elsewhere, agencies and regions (the San Francisco Bay Area) have developed a holistic approach to resilience, but Oregon is the first to do so at the state level. “Through OSSPAC,” says Barbosa, “Oregon is doing something that is amazing.”

Sliding Slopes

When Michael Olsen pulls up a map of the Oregon Coast Range on his computer, he sees wide swaths of red dots. Each one represents landslide-prone areas identified through the highly accurate lens of a remote sensing technology known as LIDAR (“light detection and ranging”). The Oregon State civil engineer and Hoffman Faculty Scholar specializes in the emerging field of geomatics, which is land surveying on steroids. Geomatics practitioners analyze landscapes by combining remote sensing data (from the ground, the air or planetary orbit) and large spatial datasets for soils, vegetation, precipitation, streams and other features.

Michael Olsen

In the Coast Range, Olsen and his graduate students are assembling LIDAR data and layering it with what engineers know about the terrain. Working with the Oregon Department of Transportation, their goal is to estimate the likelihood of earthquake-triggered landslides near highways that link the I-5 corridor with coastal communities.

These mountains might be beautiful, but Olsen’s picture isn’t pretty. “The Coast Range consists of very loose soils that are of very poor quality. They don’t have a lot of strength to them,” he says. In an emergency, “barriers along these lifeline corridors would be a big problem. Even a small landslide can close down a road for a day or two.”

And it doesn’t take much to start Coast Range soils moving. Based on the locations of previous slides and knowledge of soil types, it appears that slopes as low as 10 to 15 percent are vulnerable to sliding. “That isn’t that much. It’s pretty scary that it’s that low,” Olsen says.

Landslides are hardly a new phenomenon in Oregon, but they are more common in some years than in others. The winter storms of 1996-97 generated an estimated 9,500 landslides, mostly in western Oregon. Scientists at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) have calculated that, while economic losses exceed $10 million in a typical year, they exceeded $100 million that winter.

Although all Coast Range roads pass through slide-prone terrain, some may be less vulnerable and easier to re-open than others. Such information, says Olsen, will help ODOT prioritize roads for earthquake recovery purposes.

A Statewide Effort

By coordinating these and other research investments, Cascadia Lifelines meets an important need for state agencies and utility companies and fills a critical niche in statewide preparedness efforts. Spurred by the state Legislature, scientists, utility companies and agencies are evaluating risks and identifying solutions to mitigate the most significant impacts of the next megathrust earthquake. Schools and other public buildings have been assessed, and retrofits have begun. Roadways are being ranked for vulnerability to landslides and bridge failures. On the coast, evacuation routes are being marked to help coastal residents and visitors escape the tsunami zone.

“Given the nature and wide-ranging impact of seismic activity, it is appropriate that a consortium of organizations engaged in building, operating and maintaining critical infrastructure in Oregon could work together to identify and address concerns about improving seismic resilience.”

— Grant Yoshihara, Vice President, NW Natural

In 2011, Oregon’s Earthquake Commission (aka the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission or OSSPAC) assembled experts to lay out the risks and recommend a series of steps for the next 50 years. It released a final report — The Oregon Resilience Plan — last February. “The broad picture of what needs to be done is pretty straightforward,” says Ian Madin, chief scientist for DOGAMI and an Oregon State alum who helped to lead the planning. “We need to strengthen our infrastructure so that it physically resists the effects of the earthquake, so that it is either undamaged or easily repairable.”

Engineers know how to design earthquake-resilient structures, say Madin and Ashford. They can “harden” foundation soils to resist liquefaction and construct bridges and buildings that can survive shaking. Such measures carry a stiff price tag, but the return on investment can be positive. For example, says Ashford, after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake preparedness steps saved $10 for $1 spent.

Power to Recover

Scott Ashford

Ultimately, recovery is about more than engineering. It is about assistance for a traumatized citizenry, strategies for keeping small businesses afloat, security to prevent looting, radio systems that will work after cell-phone towers and land lines go down and policies that allow restoration projects to be fast-tracked. In Chile, Ashford adds, electricity was crucial for recovery efforts. Water pumps in rural areas, for example, couldn’t even be tested until power was restored.

In New Zealand, homeowners insure against earthquakes as well as fire. The government helped businesses get back on their feet by creating a temporary mall out of shipping containers. Grants kept paychecks flowing to employees who otherwise would have qualified for unemployment. Some businesses provided food and fuel to employees’ families so that workers could focus on the job of rebuilding without worrying if their loved-ones were safe.

Individuals need to prepare as well. “I’m a big believer in personal responsibility,” says Ashford. He has installed an electrical generator port on his home, keeps extra medication on hand and fills his truck’s fuel tank when it hits half empty. “Every family needs to be prepared to be on their own for a few days. Every community needs to be prepared to be on its own. If you are expecting the government to come in immediately with assistance, it may take many days or weeks for that help to arrive.”

In 2010, he began a graduate program in mechanical engineering at Oregon State University. He wanted to work on innovative, high-risk projects that solve problems and push technology in new directions. So for his thesis, he aimed to reduce injury risk for chainsaw users. The problem is called “kickback” and happens when the tip of a fast-moving chain accidentally hits an object and lurches toward the user’s face. Chainsaw injuries now send about 36,000 Americans to the emergency room every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Arnold combined a miniature gyroscope with other sensors to create a brake that would stop the chain more rapidly than the mechanical devices used on most saws today.

When baby Claire entered the world, she shifted priorities for Drew and his wife Ashleigh. Education became more than progress toward a degree and an engineering career. It became a stepping stone toward a secure future for their daughter.

Personal and professional lives overlap. Take two other examples from this issue of Terra. Ruth Milston-Clements is on-call 24/7 for the care of laboratory fish. The phone might wake her from a deep sleep or interrupt dinner for her family. Scott Ashford, an earthquake engineer, understands what will happen when the next major quake hits the Northwest. He worries about the safety of his own family as well as the future of communities across the region.

Drew Arnold now works as a product engineer for one of Oregon’s most respected manufacturers, Blount International in Portland. His job is demanding, but the Arnold family also enjoys company-sponsored Easter egg hunts, barbecues and other activities. Moreover, through the Oregon State University Advantage program, Blount sharpens its competitive edge with research by Oregon State engineers. The company’s long-term success rides on the shoulders of such partnerships and on the babies who are our future.

Illustration by Leslie Herman

Like the auto industry, trucking companies are looking for new ways to cut fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. A partnership between Oregon State University and Daimler Trucks North America is making inroads by developing an 18-wheeler that combines high strength for heavy payloads and increased fuel efficiency for sustainable performance.

Part of the Super Truck program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and Daimler, this effort already has yielded promising early results: a prototype carbon-fiber chassis rail and an innovative design for cruise control. The partnership began in 2009 when Daimler contacted John Parmigiani, a research assistant professor in Oregon State’s School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (MIME), seeking ideas. Daimler is the leading commercial truck manufacturer in North America.

Parmigiani led a research project to replace the rails, key chassis components that run from front to back, with lighter materials. By using carbon fiber — the same material used for rocket nose cones — instead of steel, Daimler achieved significant weight reduction.

“Carbon fiber is a great material to use. The weight difference is amazing.”

— John Parmigiani

The partnership with Oregon State was a positive experience, says Derek Rotz, a senior manager in advanced engineering for Daimler — so positive, in fact, that the company hired Brian Benson, one of the graduate students who worked on the project.

“We learned a lot about the design,” Rotz adds. “There still needs to be more work done before we put the carbon fiber rails into mass production, because they are more expensive.”

The next step will be to integrate the rails into a production prototype. Headquartered in Portland, Daimler Trucks North America manufactured 141,000 vehicles in 2012. Its brands include Freightliner, Western Star, Freightliner Custom Chassis, Thomas Built Buses and Detroit.

In a separate project, MIME professor Kagan Tumer used “intelligent systems” to create an adaptive cruise control that improves fuel efficiency.

_____________________

THE OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY ADVANTAGE delivers bottom-line benefits for business through access to career-ready graduates and world-class research. To discover what the Venture Accelerator and the Industry Partnership Program can do for your business, contact Ron Adams, Executive Associate Vice President for Research, Oregon State University, A312 Kerr Administration Building, Corvallis, OR 97331, 541-737-7722.

If transportation planners and environmental protection agencies could join hands early in the process, costly delays could be avoided and sensitive ecosystems could be better protected. Enter a powerful new tool designed by researchers at the Institute for Natural Resources based at Oregon State. Using the Integrated Ecological Framework, planners can address the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act from Day One instead of bumping up against them when the project is already moving ahead.

“Particularly for wetlands and endangered species, regulatory conflicts and delays largely result from transportation planners and regulators having insufficient, incomplete or poor-quality data,” say OSU researchers Lisa Gaines, interim director for the institute, and Jimmy Kagan. “This new tool will help speed up transportation projects while beefing up environmental stewardship.”

Further testing and refinement of the tool is under way with continued support from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, which is looking ahead to rolling the framework out nationally.

With a wave of the hand and click of the fingers, Jason Muhlestein controls a computer in the College of Engineering. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

Tired of doing the scroll, click and drag with a mouse? A team of Oregon State University student engineers has developed a more natural way to use computers. Their “wireless hand sensor” may not only help reduce hand and wrist injuries associated with repetitive motion but may have applications in robotics, medicine and computer gaming.

Mushfiqur Sarker, Jason Muhlestein and Anton Bilbaeno attached their sensor to a glove equipped with communications capability and conductive fabric. By moving the hand left and right or up and down, users can move objects on a computer screen. Moreover, by touching the glove’s thumb to a spot on one of the fingers, they can perform operations such as opening or closing files or navigating through a digital map.

The students won the Industry Award at the annual Oregon State engineering expo last spring. In July, they took second place (and a $7,500 award) in a national analog design contest sponsored by Texas Instruments, one of the world’s largest microprocessor manufacturers. They estimate the cost of the wireless glove at just under $50.

“It allows you to control a computer from a distance,” says Muhlestein. “It could be fit to other devices, such as a ‘smart’ TV, an air conditioner equipped with wireless capability or sundry devices in the home.”

Remote control is familiar to gamers (Nintendo’s popular Wii computer game uses a “Wiimote”), and new devices such as Leap Motion (leapmotion.com) recognize hand gestures. The students saw room for improvement. “We didn’t like the fact that you have to hold it (the Wiimote),” says Muhlestein. “Our device eliminates all of that. We also don’t need any extra hardware. Everything is on your hand.”

The heart of the invention consists of two components: an accelerometer to measure the velocity of hand movements and a gyroscope to track rotation. They comprise an “inertial measurement unit” that is attached to the back of the glove, leaving the thumb and fingers free.

In manufacturing, the glove could give technicians a natural way to control robotic arms. It could also assist surgeons in performing operations remotely.

“The wireless hand sensor project was exceptional because it approached the project from a real usability standpoint,” says Donald Heer, who taught the capstone design course in which the students were enrolled. “They thought about the user, the technology and marketability. This very broad approach really let them shine as one of the best examples of Electrical and Computer Engineering senior design.”

For the time being, further development has taken a back seat to other priorities. Sarker is now pursuing a Ph.D. in “smart grid” technologies at the University of Washington. Muhlestein has entered the master’s program at Oregon State, working in analog-to-digital signal conversion with professor Un-Ku Moon. Bilbaeno is employed by Allion Engineering Services in Portland.

If it were commercialized, their invention could compete with another innovation that traces its roots to Oregon State. Alumnus Douglas Englebart invented the computer mouse in 1964.

Chris Higgins, Oregon State engineer (Photo: Frank Miller)

Growing greenery on roofs brings many benefits. Buildings stay cooler, saving energy. Roofs last longer, saving money and materials. Birds and insects find new habitat, helping ecosystems. And green roofs make urban spaces more aesthetically and spiritually pleasing, as well as reducing heat-island effects for city dwellers.

But there are some costs that need to be considered, too. “Eco-roofs carry higher gravity loads and must support more moisture for longer periods than traditional roofs,” says Oregon State structural engineer Chris Higgins. “That changes the probabilities that need to be considered during design. In order to extract all the benefits of eco-roofs, we need to ensure their structural safety. That requires research.”

Photo courtesy of City of Portland

One big question: Are green roofs safe during earthquakes? Led by Higgins, engineers in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State are undertaking the first comprehensive study of the seismic performance of eco-roofs with funding from the National Science Foundation. Using a full-scale simulated eco-roof, they will investigate drainage characteristics, load distribution of water-saturated soils, long-term service performance and the behavior of different planting materials during lateral shaking. Their findings will guide the development of standards for eco-roofs in seismic zones.

Jonathan Hurst, right, was recognized by Popular Mechanics magazine with one of ten Breakthrough Innovator awards for 2012.

An era of walking robots that can help people with physical disabilities, take on dangerous missions or aid in disaster response is about to begin. One of the leaders in this emerging field, Oregon State University engineer Jonathan Hurst, was recognized in October by Popular Mechanics with one of its “Breakthrough Innovator” awards of 2012.

The science in this field is rapidly expanding, said Hurst, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State, who received the award along with his colleague, Jessy Grizzle, at the University of Michigan. Ten awards were made to scientists and engineers around the nation.

The researchers have built two walking robots, MABEL and the next generation model, ATRIAS. In each case, the technology is based on a fundamental understanding of how animals walk and run, using minimal energy to accomplish a maximum of locomotion and sensory response.

Hurst said walking robots are about where the automotive industry was 150 years ago, full of promise, with a number of new inventions and about ready to take off.

“In the next 20 years you are going to see legged robots all over the place, doing all kinds of jobs,” Hurst said. “The sky is the limit.”

Beginning with funding from the National Science Foundation for MABEL, and continuing with $4.7 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Oregon State and Michigan experts worked from principles of animal locomotion. The mechanical system closely interacts with the software control system, such as fiberglass springs working together with computer control to create efficient and stable walking and running gaits.

“So far much of what we’ve done has been with computer simulations, as we spent the past three years designing and building ATRIAS,” Hurst said. “The simulations are working, and our robot was walking three days after it was built. Now we’re going to demonstrate the control ideas on the real machines.”

Robots that ultimately can walk and maneuver over uneven terrain have a range of possibilities, Hurst added. One would be helping to power prosthetic limbs for people, or use an exo-skeleton to assist people with muscular weakness. But there could also be applications in the military, in disaster response, or any type of dangerous situation.

For something that humans usually learn to do by the time they are a year old, walking is still a mystery to most scientists. The complexity of sensory and mechanical input from nerves, vision, muscles and tendons has challenged the most sophisticated concepts in robotics.

MABEL, however, is able to run a nine-minute mile and step off a ledge. ATRIAS is even lighter, faster, and has three-dimensional motion capabilities. Some of these advances have been possible, Hurst said, because the Oregon State and Michigan researchers took a step back to better understand the fundamental forces at work before even trying to build something.

Most robots today work in a very static or highly controlled environment, but humans live in a mobile, unpredictable world, and with further advances robots may soon be able to join it.

FUNDING
National Science Foundation
Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI)
Hewlett Packard
Corning

RESEARCH PARTNERS
Federal labs and agencies
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Universities
Oregon State University
University of Oregon
Eastern Oregon University
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
Washington University
Rutgers
Clemson
Central Washington University

Business and Industry
Hewlett Packard
Corning
Intel
Boeing
Sigma-Aldrich
IBM
General Electric
Inpria
Amorphyx

“Your TV-picture screen in 1964 may be so thin that it can be hung like a painting on the wall or mounted like a vanity mirror in a table model.” Popular Mechanics, January 1954

Popular Mechanics’ prediction took considerably more than 10 years to come true, but today’s flat-panel screens have gone well beyond that early vision. Some of them are nearly as big as a living room wall. They bring us unimaginably sharp detail, from the spots on butterfly wings to the grimace on a linebacker’s face.

This technology — whether hooked up to your cable feed, DVD player, wi-fi or computer — is also becoming integral to daily life. It increasingly provides the platforms on which we shop, share photos, read books, keep up with friends, play games, manage finances and work. In 2011, the global flat-panel screen industry shipped more than $120 billion worth of products, enough to cover nearly 16,000 football fields.

Doug Keszler, center, works with graduate students Deok-Hie Park and Shawn Decker on a pulsed electron deposition chamber on the Oregon State campus. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

However, our love of flashy high-res has a dark side. Manufacturing the semiconductors behind these electronic systems produces waste, lots of it. “The electronics and solar industries build devices where the materials input is very high relative to what ends up in the product. There’s tremendous amounts of waste and very high energy input,” says Doug Keszler, Oregon State University chemist.

Keszler and a team of scientists and engineers at Oregon State and the University of Oregon are leading a national consortium bent on greening the flat-panel display industry. In their future, windows, mirrors, walls and counters could display messages and harvest solar energy. “We’re trying to turn this industry into a truly zero-waste proposition while improving performance,” says Keszler, a principal scientist in the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry (CSMC). “We’d like to do electronics the size of a wall. The question is: How do you do that efficiently without producing even more waste?”

Startups Provide Jobs

Scientists use a spectroscopic ellipsometer to analyze atomic structure in thin films. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

The CSMC has already produced significant results: a metal-insulator-metal diode (a kind of electronic switch) that outperforms the fastest silicon-based semiconductors; water-based manufacturing techniques that reduce waste and improve productivity; high-resolution fabrication processes that forge thinner electronic components. With research roots going back more than a decade at OSU and UO, the center has spun off two startup companies, generated more than a dozen U.S. patents and developed an educational partnership to inspire more Oregon high school students to attend college. It also helps graduates to create their own careers. In cooperation with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, CSMC students join business leaders in the chemical and electronics industries to identify commercial opportunities stemming from research.

“About two-thirds of all Ph.D. graduates in the physical sciences now find their first job in a startup company,” says Keszler. “There is very little education to prepare students for that career path. We train them to recognize market value in their research, so they can work effectively with entrepreneurs and business development people.”

Two startups have already hired the center’s graduates. Amorphyx (www.amorphyx.com) is commercializing a new electronics manufacturing process that limits the production of unwanted industrial byproducts. Moreover, it trims a six-part process to two steps, offering the possibility of tripling production capacity in an existing facility.

In collaboration with another spinoff, Inpria (www.inpria.com), the center has broken a barrier in high-resolution circuitry, going below the 20-nanometer scale and enabling computer chips to accommodate more functions at higher speeds.

New materials and water-based manufacturing process may be key to reducing waste in the semiconductor industry, says Doug Keszler. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

These achievements reflect gains reported by Oregon State engineer John Wager, physicist Janet Tate, graduate student Randy Hoffman and other researchers as early as 2003. They noted that transparent thin-film transistors made of zinc oxide could lead to new kinds of liquid-crystal displays, the dominant type of flat-panel screen. In 2006, HP licensed the technology and has been developing applications in collaboration with OSU.

At UO in 2003, researchers in Darren Johnson’s chemistry lab discovered a solution-based process for making nanoclusters, leading to the possibility that new semiconductors could be made without hazardous chemicals. Jason Gatlin, the UO graduate student who discovered the process, instigated a new UO-OSU collaboration when he shared his findings at a conference sponsored by the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute.

“We’re pushing the boundaries of science and seeing things no one has ever seen before,” says Keszler. “There’s a lot of joy in the intellectual exchanges in such a diverse group.”

To attract more young scientists to their journey, CSMC students will begin working with Hermiston High School teacher Lisa Frye and her chemistry classes this fall. They will provide support, advanced instruction and resources to inspire high-school students to consider careers in science.

“What we’re after over the next 10 years,” says Keszler, “is to put the (industrial) ecosystem together that allows you to print electronics on flexible glass. They will be high performance, durable, and include applications such as solar collectors.”

We’ve come a long way from the futuristic idea of hanging TV screens like paintings on the walls of our homes.

Don Pettit prepared for departure from the ISS on July 1. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

When he’s on Earth, Don Pettit dreams about space. But when he’s in space, he dreams about walking on Earth.  “Dreams may have something to do with humans never being satisfied, which is why we go exploring in the first place,” he says.

If there’s a gene for the urge to explore new worlds, Pettit has it. The Oregon State University alum (chemical engineering, ’78) has launched into orbit three times. He’s logged 370 days in space, placing him fourth among NASA astronauts.

Pettit has conducted experiments, spent more than 13 hours in a spacesuit outside the ISS and created a series of science videos to show how water, static electricity and other things we take for granted on Earth behave in a weightless environment.

After six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the native of Silverton, Ore., returned to Earth on July 1. He’d go back, as he says, in a nanosecond. Moreover, he’d gladly load up his family to colonize the moon or Mars — as long as they could return home safely.

In previous trips to the International Space Station, Pettit rode aboard the space shuttle, shown here when it was docked with the ISS. (Photo: Don Pettit)

He knows all too well that getting back can be harrowing. During his latest trip, Pettit landed in the Kazakhstan desert in what he calls “a series of explosions followed by a car crash.” After that, it took several weeks to adjust to living in Earth’s gravity again.

On July 20, he talked with reporters about the commercialization of space flight, why space flight is important and why he decided to grow a zucchini in the corner.

In case you were wondering, he says a space station smells like a cross between a machine shop and a science lab, although the odors of roast beef may drift in at dinner time. See the video above on the right or click here.

Zachary Dunn, a student in ecological engineering, coordinated a trip by OSU students to Kenya. (Photo: Lee Sherman)

How far would you go to help someone get a glass of clean water? Zachary Dunn knows exactly how far he’d go: 9,000 miles. And that’s just one trip, one way. By summer’s end, Dunn and fellow Oregon State University students had traveled almost 36,000 miles — greater than the Earth’s circumference — to help bring drinkable water to Lela, a tiny farming community in Kenya.

So why would engineering students fly halfway around the planet from bucolic Oregon to struggling East Africa, not once but twice? Why would Dunn say that contracting malaria on his first trip was a “small price to pay”? Why would he shrug off a State Department travel warning about terrorism and piracy in the region?

“In Lela, women and children walk up to three miles a day carrying 40-pound buckets of water,” explains Dunn, who grew up in Albany, Oregon. “I’ve seen kids as young as five with buckets on their heads. It’s a feat. They don’t complain. But the loss to productivity and education is huge.”

It’s not despite the chasm between the Kenyan village (where waterborne disease is common) and his Oregon hometown (where pure water flows from faucets and fountains at the twist of a wrist) but because of it that Dunn joined the OSU project in 2010 to survey water sources, test water quality and commission a groundwater survey. He and a student team headed back to Lela in July to help spearhead drilling a well and installing a rainwater catchment system.

“We all have a common fate,” says Dunn. “These kinds of projects can help shape the future of the world. It benefits all of us. It’s a win-win.”

During the dry season, women and children in Lela walk about three miles to get clean drinking water in a nearby town. (Photo: EWB-USA, Oregon State University)

That all-embracing, planetary vision is what led to Dunn’s participation in OSU’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA), which is dedicated to the vision of a world in which all communities have the capacity to meet their basic human needs. And it’s that vision that steered him to the Ecological Engineering program for his undergraduate work. The program, he says, is based on “systems theory,” the notion that everything is connected and, thus, solutions must be holistic.

“I’m interested in redefining the relationship between humans and the planet,” says Dunn, who describes himself as a “born tinkerer,” always tilting toward problem solving even in childhood.

The Lela Women’s Water Committee linked up with EWB-USA when they were looking for a partner on their quest for a better life. “We only partner with communities that have identified a need and have asked for help,” says Dunn, who will start graduate studies in public policy this fall.

The other EWB-USA requirement: The project must be sustainable. “A huge number of wells in Africa are in disrepair,” Dunn notes. “Many communities do not have the capacity to maintain them.”

That’s why EWB-OSU’s team of six (five students and one professional mentor) recommended a hand pump for Lela’s new well. Other power-source options, such as diesel or solar, cost too much to maintain or are targets for theft. With guidance from faculty and a groundwater expert from engineering firm CH2M Hill, the students have researched everything from the compressive strength of concrete (for the foundations under rainwater storage tanks) to the reliability and availability of pumps.

Zach Dunn celebrated with members of the women's water committee in Lela, Kenya, after completing a water project for the community. (Photo: Justin Smith)

In Kenya, Dunn and his team stay in a “simba,” a house made of wood and mud with a corrugated metal roof, on the land owned by village elder Charles Olang’o. The elder’s son Paul is the translator for the Oregon State engineers. A fast friendship has formed among the Kenyans and the students.

“We have a really special bond with Lela,” Dunn says. “Charles calls me his son; Paul calls me his brother. They are very gracious people.”

_______________________

Read updates and see photos of the Oregon State students’ work in Kenya.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Xihou Yin, president, AGAE Technologies (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

AGAE Technologies

Surfactants enhance cleaning, dispersion and emulsification in paints, household cleaners and other products. However, many are known to be toxic. Based on research in the Oregon State College of Pharmacy, AGAE Technologies has developed a biological method for producing surfactants that are environmentally benign and biodegradable. Based on licensed OSU technology, the new product is known as a “rhamnolipid” and is produced by a strain of the common bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Scott Gilbert, left, chief technology officer, and Todd Miller, president of Microflow CVO (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Microflow CVO

The problem seems simple: mix two liquids with consistently uniform results. Manufacturers usually perform this step in vats where batches of liquids are stirred and then processed. Through research in OSU’s Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, Microflow CVO has developed stainless-steel micromixers that achieve high-quality mixtures by pushing liquids through channels slightly larger than a human hair. The dime-sized devices can be scaled and adapted to manufacturing needs in the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and personal-care product industries.

Applied Exergy
Renewable energy sources tend to be intermittent: They produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows. Based on research in the OSU College of Engineering and the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, Applied Exergy is developing methods for storing energy as “low-grade heat,” temperatures from 40 to 80 degrees Centigrade. The technology has multiple applications: energy recovery from steam plumes, integration with carbon capture systems and energy storage for use during peak demand.

The computer models Chris Patton wrote for Oregon State’s Formula SAE team helped create a faster, more efficient car. (Photo: Robert Story)

But Patton, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Oregon State University, had a powerful tool at his disposal: the ability to simulate the impact of that move.

The results were surprising — and positive.

“We would tell design judges at the competition that we were doing this, and they wouldn’t believe us. We would have to measure it in front of them,“ he says. “They’d tell us our car would be slow and undriveable. And then we’d go out and be the fastest car in competition.”

Being the fastest is one of the reasons why Oregon State’s Formula SAE team, in partnership with a student team at DHBW-Ravensburg in Germany, has been so successful. In May 2012, the team won for the third consecutive year in the U.S. championships in Michigan. In 2011 the team won Formula Student Germany, which is widely considered to be the premier competition in the world.

The trick for Oregon State’s team, at least in part, has been computer simulation. During his seven years with Formula SAE (sponsored by SAE International, formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers), Patton has set the team apart by expanding the range of parameters used in designing its car. The flexibility of Patton’s modeling structure is one of the key parts of his dissertation.

“We can basically program the car in a computer and make comparisons between different cars without having to build them,” Patton says. “I can say, ‘You want to add this parameter? And this parameter? Sure, just add it in.’”

By “program,” Patton means he writes scripts in the programming language MATLAB that represent all the characteristics the team needs to consider when designing a car — whether to turn the rear wheels outward or to make the body of the car narrower or wider.

He starts with processing tire data collected by the transportation research company Calspan and the Formula SAE Tire Testing Consortium. To the uninitiated, it might seem like the raw power of the engine is what drives the car’s motion. But tires, Patton says, are the foundation for the cars the team builds.

“Tires are where all of the motion of the car comes from,” he says. “All of the forces that dominate the movement of the car come from the tires.”

Tire data give him information about how the tires behave when they’re in motion. For example, he gets measurements for friction against pavement, tire pressure and temperature, and how tires behave when the driver applies the brakes.
Having a detailed sense of what the tires will do ultimately gives the team a much better idea of how to design other elements of the car, and it helps them understand how those elements will behave in competition.

“I’m pretty confident that no other teams are doing the modeling at the level we’re doing it. There might be some that are close, but I don’t think it’s very common. I would say that’s something unique to us,” Patton says.

_________________________________

Note: See Relentless, a video about Oregon State’s SAE Formula racing team.

The company opened its doors in May 2011 and today employs five people. AGAE licensed the patented technology from OSU and has conducted its own research on cost-effective, high-yield processes for manufacturing a compound known as a rhamnolipid biosurfactant.

Xihou Yin, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Surfactants, also known as “surface active agents,” are commonly used in personal and household products, paints and manufacturing processes to enhance cleaning, wetting, dispersion and emulsification. Synthesized by the newly discovered NY3 strain of the common bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, AGAE Technologies’ rhamnolipid biosurfactants “are nontoxic, environmentally benign and completely biodegradable,” said company CEO Harrison Parks.

Biosurfactants are a novel group of microbial compounds, which are made by living cells. “The increasing use of biosurfactants is being driven by technology breakthroughs, environmental awareness and tightening of regulations regarding chemical surfactants,” Parks added.

101 Active Licenses

AGAE is one of the latest companies to commercialize OSU research. In 2011, the university increased licensing revenues by 63 percent with 101 “active” technology licenses from mass spectrometry to mold and yeast inhibitors. “We are taking steps to help accelerate innovation through our partnerships with start ups like AGAE, as well as with established companies,” said Ron Adams, OSU executive associate vice president for research. “AGAE’s rapid move to sales is an example of the results of our effort.”

Xihou Yin, president and founder of AGAE Technologies and senior research faculty member in the OSU College of Pharmacy, has received customer inquiries from North America and Europe. “We are now able to meet their demand with laboratory research-grade rhamnolipids, and we are developing commercial-grade products of various purity specifications for pharmaceuticals, environmental bioremediation, personal care and several other application segments.”

Rhamnolipids contain L-rhamnose and β-hydroxyl fatty acids, with amphiphilic properties (both hydrophilic and hydrophobic). Based on Yin’s research, AGAE Technologies is now producing a product known as R-95 (HPLC/MS-grade) rhamnolipids, allowing the company to become the only known supplier of pure rhamnolipid compounds to the world market.

Cutting Costs

“Rhamnolipids were discovered about 60 years ago,” Yin said. “The real bottleneck to replacing synthetic chemicals with biosurfactants like rhamnolipids is the high cost of production. We are applying the latest genome sequencing technologies to strain improvement for NY3 and creating a nonpathogenic, high-yield rhamnolipid producer. Using renewable low-cost sources of ingredients, we are optimistic about further increasing the yields, reducing costs by scaling up production and promoting the global applications of these very eco-friendly biosurfactant molecules.”

Parks noted that the company already has a list of potential customers interested in applying the compounds to their products. “The industry expanse is quite broad, from pharmaceutical and cosmetics-grade customers to biopesticide, soil enhancement, bioremediation and oil spill/tank cleaning companies,” he added. “And it is international. All of our customers are asking AGAE for evaluation quantities and are interested in exploring our potential to become a strategic supplier.”

In addition to Parks, who has over 25 years of international technology sales and marketing experience, AGAE also has hired Martha Cone to oversee technical operations and to manage customer technical engagement.

Such networks would offer continuous, real-time health diagnosis, experts say, to reduce the onset of degenerative diseases, save lives and cut health care costs. The ideal monitoring device would be small, worn on the body, low cost, and perhaps draw its energy from something as minor as body heat. But it would be able to transmit vast amounts of health information in real time and help to prevent or treat disease.

Illustration by Teresa Hall

Sounds great in theory, but it’s not easy. If it were, the X Prize Foundation wouldn’t be trying to develop a Tricorder X Prize — inspired by the remarkable instrument of Star Trek fame — that would give $10 million to whomever can create a mobile wireless sensor and give billions of people around the world better access to low-cost, reliable medical monitoring and diagnostics.

“This type of sensing would scale down to the size of a bandage that you could wear around you,” says Chiang, an expert in wireless medical electronics and assistant professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

“The sensor might provide and transmit data on heart health, bone density, blood pressure or insulin status. Ideally, you could not only monitor health issues but also help prevent problems before they happen. Maybe detect arrhythmias, for instance, and anticipate heart attacks. Or, monitor the indoor location of an elderly person or the early onset of cognitive decline. Finally, it needs to be non-invasive and able to provide huge amounts of data while consuming little energy.”

Several startup companies such as Corventis and iRhythm have already entered the cardiac monitoring market.

In the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, Chiang and his team reported that one of the key obstacles is the energy required to run the device. A type of technology called “ultrawideband” might have that capability if the receiver getting the data were within a “line of sight” and signals were not interrupted by passing through a human body. But even non-line of sight transmission might be possible using ultrawideband if lower transmission rates were required, they found. Collaborating on the research was Huaping Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and clinical researchers at the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology at the Oregon Health & Science University.

Patrick Chiang (Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering)

“The challenges are quite complex, but the potential benefit is huge and of increasing importance with an aging population,” Chiang says. “This is definitely possible. I could see some of the first systems being commercialized within the next three years.”

Chiang’s collaborators on projects to develop non-invasive wireless monitoring devices include colleagues at OSU’s Center for Healthy Aging Research, the Linus Pauling Institute and OHSU in Portland. Chiang also collaborates with researchers at Tsinghua and Fudan universities in China.

_______________

Rachel Robertson contributed to this story.

Online: learn more about Patrick Chiang’s research.

Illustration by Heather Miller

Chain saws, baseball bats, truck bodies, jet engine parts and bridges. All from America’s industrial heartland, right? Or made in China? Wrong. Companies that produce these and other metal products — from kitchen knives and laboratory incubators to steel fabrication stock — employ thousands of Oregonians. One of the tools in their toolbox is a research partnership with Oregon State and Portland State universities.

Thanks to a program known as the Oregon Metals Initiative (OMI), companies from ATI Wah Chang in Albany to Precision Castparts Corporation in Portland have access to faculty and student talent to solve problems and explore product improvements. Engineers and students have teamed up to answer practical questions that production line workers and managers face daily in their drive to stay ahead of the competition.

“We are an industrial engine for the state,” says John Parmigiani, OSU mechanical engineer and representative to the 10-member OMI Board of Directors. “Historically, there’s been an emphasis on metallurgy, developing alloys for specific applications. But the OMI allows for much broader investigations, and we’ve expanded the research to other areas.”

According to OMI annual reports, among those topics are optimal job tracking systems, safer chain saws, improved pruning blades for home gardeners and the use of high-strength composite materials to reduce vehicle weight. Other projects have focused on self-cleaning chemical processing tanks, more efficient metal grinding operations and new materials for electronic systems. Some projects have resulted in patents for companies, internships for students and full-time jobs for graduates.

In all cases, teams of business employees and university researchers match wits and skills in improving operations and developing products.

Participating companies have included

• In Hillsboro, DeMarini Sports (athletic equipment, include aluminum bats)
• In Portland, Blount Manufacturing (chainsaws); and Daimler Trucks North America; ESCO Corporation of Portland (precision components for aerospace, energy and turbocharger markets)
• In Gresham, The Boeing Company (aircraft parts)
• In McMinnville, Cascade Steel (specialty products made from recycled scrap metal)
• In Oregon City, Benchmade (knives)
• In Cornelius, Sheldon Manufacturing (laboratory ovens and incubators) and Advanced Surfaces and Processes (extended wear surfaces for durability)
• In Corvallis, Hewlett Packard (electronics products including printers and computers)
• In Albany, ATI Wah Chang (specialty metal products for chemical processing, energy and other markets)
• In Reedsport, American Bridge Manufacturing (bridges and other civil infrastructure)

The State Legislature created the program in 1990. Projects are financed by state funds and matching dollars from businesses.

According to a 1998 survey of the state’s metals industry, Oregon hosted more than 1,700 metals manufacturing companies accounting for more than 55,000 jobs. These five recent projects are among those that are helping to shape the Oregon economy.

Company: Daimler Trucks North America, Portland

Project: Effective composites to replace metals
Goal: Reduce vehicle weight to create more fuel-efficient trucks and tractors

Company: Sheldon Manufacturing, Cornelius
Project: Humidity and Temperature Control of Thermal Chambers
Goal: Add features to an incubator and vacuum oven

Company: Hewlett Packard, Corvallis
Project: Materials for high-performance actuator applications
Goal: Develop thin-film piezoelectric material (exerts a force by changing shape in response to an electric current)

Company: Benchmade, Oregon City
Project: Blade steel alloy formation
Goal: Determine how different metal alloys perform in cutting experiments

Company: Blount Manufacturing, Portland
Project: Self-contained cutting-fluid system for concrete- and metal-cutting chain saws
Goal: Increase saw portability by designing an internal bar lubrication and cooling system

OSU researchers Leslie Burns, Brigitte Cluver and Hsiou-Lien Chen watch Newton go through his paces in the OSU design laboratory. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

The OSU Design Network

The network brings together professionals across the industry for informal gatherings and annual events in Portland, like last year’s Recycled Fashion Show — the longest-running fashion show of designs made from recycled materials in the country.

OSU’s Apparel Research Center

The center offers fabric-testing services to small firms and start-ups. At the Textile and Apparel Performance Testing Lab, clients can get measurements on a full array of variables in fabric and clothing construction (yarn count, weight, thickness), aesthetics (wrinkle recovery, drape, stiffness), durability (tear strength, abrasion resistance) and comfort (thermal properties, moisture management).

This fall, the center is expanding into Portland, where it will host a series of research-based workshops for design professionals at the university’s Food Innovation Center on N.W. Naito Parkway. Topics on the agenda include sizing and fabric grading, sourcing and sustainable textiles and materials.

Design Forum/PDX

This partnership among the Portland Development Commission, the City of Portland and the Oregon University System, along with private-sector businesses, is compiling the West Coast’s first materials resource library available to design professionals. OSU’s Leslie Burns serves on the forum’s board of directors.

OSU nanotechnology researchers are leveraging the power of molecular-scale processes to create new products. (Illustration: Santiago Uceda)

“Made in Oregon” means more than lumber, hazelnuts and pears. At the annual Willamette Innovators Night (WiN) on Nov. 10, established manufacturers from Oregon Iron Works to startups such as Trillium FiberFuels and the AirShip Technologies Group will discuss how research and industry partnerships are changing the state’s economic landscape.

“WiN provides a seedbed for ideas and partnerships that create new businesses and help existing businesses remain competitive,” says Mark Van Patten, chair of the WiN planning team and director of the Oregon State University Business Solutions Group.

Presentations begin at 1:45 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center, and a business and research expo will open in the CH2M-HILL Alumni Center at 4:30 p.m. The public is welcome. A schedule is available at http://bit.ly/w090rx.

Chandra Brown, vice president of Oregon Iron Works/United Streetcar, will explore the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and describe the company’s evolution from a streetcar maker to a wave energy pioneer. Brown serves on the Oregon Innovation Council and Oregon Small Business Development Commission as well as the U.S. Manufacturing Council.

Michael Baker, managing partner in The Baker Group and CEO of Applied Exergy and HD Plus, developer of a home kidney dialysis system based on OSU research, will discuss opportunities for technology development in biomedical devices, energy and other industry sectors.

At a breakout session on prototyping, Scott Schroeder of Mega Tech of Oregon and Ben Berry of the Airship Technologies Group will focus on product development. Located in Corvallis, Mega Tech specializes in contract engineering services. Airship Technologies of Lake Oswego is developing a futuristic personal transporter that flies through the air and zips down the highway.

Other sessions will offer new developments in biofuels, product marketing and family business. Participants will have the opportunity to connect directly with elected representatives through chat.gov.

WiN is the Willamette Valley’s largest gathering of businesses, researchers, inventors and policymakers focused on creative collaboration for economic growth. In addition to presentations and industry sessions, the event will feature displays from more than 50 business and research groups, recognition of recent OSU patent awardees, announcement of the Linus Pauling Innovator of the Year Award and the popular Ignite! Corvallis, a series of rapid-fire presentations on creative ideas.

Held in collaboration with the Software Association of Oregon, WiN is sponsored by businesses and research organizations including Hewlett Packard, Oregon State University, Silverman Studios, Samaritan Health Services, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, Peak Internet, Proworks Corp., Coelo Company of Design and the Madison Avenue Collective and other regional businesses and associations.

Oregon State University Professor Scott Ashford measures ground upheaval during a visit to Japan following a major earthquake there. (photo courtesy GEER)

“Our mission is to get word out to the scientific community about what’s happened on the ground,” he says. As a geotechnical engineer, he is particularly interested in soil changes following an earthquake. His findings raise questions about the adequacy of building standards in the United States and abroad.

In the past year, Ashford has inspected the aftermaths of quakes in Chile, New Zealand and Japan. The work demands humility. Out of respect for people who lived through terrifying events, he warns younger colleagues to avoid expressing excitement over significant findings. “We’re amongst people who have had their lives ruined and are in upheaval,” he says. “Even though it’s exciting to see the things we’ve been doing research on in action, you can’t show any of that. It’s an emotional rollercoaster.”

And it demands a keen eye. Careful measurements of structural damage, landslides, soil liquefaction and shifted fault lines can help engineers to design more resilient structures. The whole point is to save lives and reduce the damage that will occur when the next Big One hits, a goal shared by more than a dozen of Ashford’s colleagues in engineering and geophysical sciences at OSU.

Buildings on Quicksand

Ashford has seen buildings torn in half as if they were made of LEGOs®, bridges demolished or jackknifed on their foundations and utility pipes squeezed out of the ground. One his team’s most significant findings came from the March 11 subduction zone earthquake in Japan, which caused soil liquefaction — wet sands, gravels, silts and fill materials turned into soup as they shake, with all the load-bearing capacity of quicksand — that surprised researchers with its geographic extent and widespread severity.

In order to gather evidence of this phenomenon, Ashford and his team looked for sand boils (small sand volcanoes) and lateral spreads — that is, shallow landslides triggered by liquefaction. Although they arrived only two weeks after the initial quake, cleanup was already taking place, erasing evidence in some locations, which is why GEER teams are sent in quickly after a major event.

“The data are very perishable,” he says. But the more evidence they can gather about how soil has altered during an earthquake, the better engineers will be at predicting the outcomes of future quakes.

Collapsed bridge in Santiago, Chile, after the 2010 earthquake. (Photo courtesy of Scott Ashford)

“We’ve seen localized examples of soil liquefaction as extreme as this before, but the distance and extent of damage in Japan were unusually severe. Entire structures were tilted and sinking into the sediments, even while they remained intact. The shifts in soil destroyed water, sewer and gas pipelines, crippling the utilities and infrastructure these communities need to function. We saw some places that sank as much as four feet.”

Parts of the West Coast of the United States are vulnerable to the phenomenon. They include Portland, parts of the Willamette Valley and other areas of Oregon, Washington and California. Around San Francisco Bay, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey categorizes most of the low-lying lands as having moderate to very high susceptibility to liquefaction.

Some degree of soil liquefaction is common in almost any major earthquake. It can allow structures to shift or sink and significantly magnify the structural damage produced by the shaking itself.

New Construction Standards

But most earthquakes are much shorter than the event in Japan, Ashford adds. The length of the Japanese earthquake, as much as five minutes, may force researchers to reconsider the extent of liquefaction damage possible in situations such as this.

“With such a long-lasting earthquake, we saw how structures that might have been OK after 30 seconds just continued to sink and tilt as the shaking continued for several more minutes,” he says. “And it was clear that younger sediments, and especially areas built on recently filled ground, are much more vulnerable.”

The data provided by analyzing the Japanese earthquake should make it possible to improve the understanding of this soil phenomenon and better prepare for it in the future. Ashford says it was critical for the team to collect the information quickly, before damage was removed in the recovery efforts.

“There’s no doubt that we’ll learn things from what happened in Japan that will help us to mitigate risks in other similar events,” Ashford adds. “Future construction in some places may make more use of techniques known to reduce liquefaction, such as better compaction to make soils dense, or use of reinforcing stone columns.”

The massive subduction zone earthquakes capable of this type of shaking, which are the most powerful in the world, don’t happen everywhere, even in other regions such as Southern California that face seismic risks. But an event almost exactly like that is expected in the Pacific Northwest from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the new findings make it clear that liquefaction will be a critical issue there.

West Coast on Edge

Many parts of that region, from northern California to British Columbia, have younger soils vulnerable to liquefaction — on the coast, near river deposits or in areas with filled ground. These “young” sediments, in geologic terms, may be those deposited within the past 10,000 years or more. In Oregon, for instance, that describes much of downtown Portland, the Portland International Airport, nearby industrial facilities and other cities and parts of the Willamette Valley.

Anything near a river and old flood plains is a suspect, and the Oregon Department of Transportation has already concluded that 1,100 bridges in the state are at risk from an earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Fewer than 15 percent of them have been retrofitted to prevent collapse.

Based on reports by the U.S. and California geological surveys, this San Francisco Bay Area map shows areas with water-saturated sandy and silty materials that are susceptible to liquefaction if shaken hard enough. (Map courtesy of the Association of Bay Area Governments)

“Buildings that are built on soils vulnerable to liquefaction not only tend to sink or tilt during an earthquake, but slide downhill if there’s any slope, like towards a nearby river,” Ashford says. “This is called lateral spreading. In Portland we might expect this sideways sliding of more than four feet in some cases, more than enough to tear apart buildings and buried pipelines.”

Some damage may be reduced or prevented by different construction techniques or retrofitting. But another reasonable goal is to at least anticipate the damage, to know what will probably be destroyed, make contingency plans for what will be needed to implement repairs and design ways to help protect and care for residents until services can be restored.

The survey in Japan identified areas as far away as Tokyo Bay that had liquefaction-induced ground failures. The magnitude of settlement and tilt was “larger than previously observed for such light structures,” the GEER researchers wrote in their report.

Impacts and deformation were erratic, often varying significantly from one street to the next. Port facilities along the coast faced major liquefaction damage. Strong Japanese construction standards helped prevent many buildings from collapse – even as they tilted and sank into the ground.

Collaboration Is Key

The GEER team always pairs up with researchers from the country where they’re working. This not only helps them with cultural and language issues, but allows them to be guided by the hosting country’s scientists as to where it’s appropriate, and safe, to conduct their research. It is also a great way to foster international collaboration.

“You can develop strong personal bonds with someone spending a week together in the car doing an earthquake reconnaissance,” Ashford says. And it is those personal relationships that make the follow-up research collaboration possible.

During his trip to Japan, Ashford had to balance his own emotional reactions to the devastation. A colleague there showed him a video that hadn’t been aired on television. It was a shot of the water level rising on the Japanese coast as witnesses gathered on the shore, unaware of the danger. In a flash, the tsunami waves hit the coast, obliterating everything, and everyone, standing on the shore.

“We both teared up,” Ashford says. “It was very emotional to see that.”

Steve Strauss, OSU Distinguished Professor and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

EXZACT™ provides a versatile and comprehensive toolkit for targeted genome modification, according to the company, and has already been licensed for use in research elsewhere on algae, maize and other plants.

As part of the agreement, Strauss and his team will make modifications to essential genes for flowering and reproduction. Dow AgroSciences is providing its technology as well as access to intellectual property, to validated, high-quality compounds known as zinc-finger reagents and to scientific expertise.

“Tree biotechnology is an exciting new field for agriculture and represents an important opportunity for both traditional industries like lumber and paper and newly emerging bioenergy companies,” says Kay Kuenker, Vice President for New Business at Dow AgroSciences.

————————-

The Society of American Foresters honored Steve Strauss in 2011 with the Barrington-Moore Memorial Award.