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The View From the Whirled
Led by Tarek Abdoun, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, the researchers carefully constructed the model to simulate — precisely — the levee structure of the 17th Street Canal amid the conditions of Hurricane Katrina. In doing so, they used Rensselaer’s 150 g-ton centrifuge, one of only four in the United States, which enables researchers to test gigantic structures under extreme conditions, using scale models.
The experiment itself, which took eight to 10 days to build and run, required extreme care in every phase. “It took two months for us to finalize the design,” Abdoun said. “Then, as soon as you start testing the model, you can’t stop in the middle — and you must maintain the soil at the proper moisture, or else your readings will not reflect actual field conditions.”
The failure of the model led to the team’s preliminary findings: that the 17th Street levee may have slid on a layer of weak clay just beneath the peat that underlies the earthen structure. Abdoun presented the findings to peer review groups from the American Society of Civil Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
Whatever the research eventually finds, the implications reach far beyond New Orleans. “We have thousands of miles of levees in the United States,” Zimmie noted, “and every state has some levees. This work benefits the entire country.”
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