CEE Ph.D. Candidate Sheila Ariana Receives Prestigious Ammann Fellowship from American Society of Civil Engineers
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The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has awarded Ph.D. Candidate Sheila Ariana of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department its 2024-2025 O. H. Ammann Fellowship in Structural Engineering, which provides $4,500 to support her research, is extremely selective, and carries with it a renowned reputation. The O. H. Ammann Research Fellowship is awarded to the recipients for the creation of new knowledge in structural design and construction. Ariana’s ASCE research will create sustainable new building materials to help prepare for a negative-carbon future. See ASCE award announcement.
Ariana’s ASCE research is part of a much larger project titled “Century-Scale Carbon Sequestration in Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) Composite Bolted-Steel Buildings” under the leadership of Professors Sanjay Arwade and Kara Peterman of the CEE department. This project, funded by the United States Department of Energy, is a concerted effort involving 18 universities, companies, and laboratories to lay the groundwork for a carbon-negative future by using steel and cross-laminated timber as eco-friendly construction materials.
Ariana is also a member of Peterman’s Basic Infrastructure Research Group, which investigates cold-formed and hot-rolled steel-system behavior, seismic response of those systems, and the stability of thin-walled steel members.
In her own ASCE research, Ariana will investigate novel “layups” – referring to the strategic arrangement of materials in a composite structure – of CLT wall/floor systems to identify those resulting in the highest performance relevant to the sustainability, serviceability, and maximum structural strength.
“In general,” says Ariana, “my contribution is to design, test, and validate novel layups for CLT-steel hybrid diaphragms.”
Ariana says her research aims to seek and propose a solution to overcome the traditional structural limitations of timber and its imperfect mechanical performance. In the first phase of the project, Ariana will fabricate novel CLT panels and conduct experimental tests to assess their bending strength.
In the second phase, Ariana says she will assemble full-scale CLT-steel composite diaphragms and test them in a unique cantilever rig at UMass Amherst to determine the wall/floor composite structural behavior, thereby developing state-of-the-art methods for design improvement of the CLT elements.
Ariana’s ASCE research will effectively complement her current work, thus enabling her to fill the knowledge gap between industry practice and structural-engineering research.
As Ariana explains, “My goal is to conduct high-quality research, ensuring that the layups I develop are constructible, economical, and structurally efficient, which will be ready for immediate application. These results will serve as a foundation for the development of carbon-negative systems, aiming towards widespread adoption of emerging building technology in the near future.”
Beyond serving as a Ph.D. candidate and a graduate research assistant in structural engineering within the CEE department, Ariana received the “Future Leader” Scholarship Award from the ASCE - SEI Futures Fund in 2024 and was one recipient of the Student Scholarship Award at the Structures Congress 2023.
UMass Amherst has also awarded Ariana various merit-based fellowships, including CEE’s “Department Fellowship” and the “Boyle Fellowship.” Additionally, she has published several journal and conference papers and presented her work at conferences such as the Steel Conference, the Structural Stability Research Council, the Structures Congress, and the Cold-Formed Steel Research Consortium.
In addition, Ariana serves as a volunteer mentor in the ASCE mentor-match program and is the president of the graduate-student chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute on campus. (June 2024)