Prodyot (P.K.) Basu

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Emeritus

Intellectual Neighborhoods

Research Focus

Professor Basu has extensive experience in accurate prediction of performance of engineering systems like civil structures, machines, railroad hardware, automobiles, and aircrafts, as well as inspection and evaluation of the structural integrity of civil infrastructure components.

His current research interests include multiscale behavior of composites, rapid repair of damaged structures using composite patches, real-time health monitoring of bridge structures, and accurate modeling and simulation of complex high-performance material systems. Two ongoing sponsored projects are as follows:

ERDC , U.S. Army: This two year research project is concerned with modeling and simulation blast and ballistic impact resistance of structural components made of a novel composite material. In creating the simulation model extensive laboratory tests are being undertaken to accurately characterize the new material. For validating the simulation model actual blast and ballistic impact tests are being undertaken at ERDC facilities.
Tennessee Department of Transportation: The research is concerned with evaluating the effectiveness of patch repair of locally damaged regions of bridge superstructure components. The research is to be undertaken in three phases. The first phase is concerned with laboratory testing of composite patch repair of small scale typical structural components in steel and concrete, and simulation of same on the computer. The next two phases will comprise of application of patch repair technique to prototype bridge superstructure structure and monitor the performance under operating conditions as well as by actual standard truck loading tests.

Biography

Dr. Basu is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He has served on the engineering faculty at Washington University- St. Louis from September 1974 to May 1984 and also as the Associate Director and Acting Director of Center for Computational Mechanics at the same university. Prior to this, from 1964 to 1973, he served on the faculty of Bengal Engineering College affiliated to Calcutta University at that time. Currently, this 150 years old institution is known as Bengal Engineering and Science University with the status of a National Institute of Technology.

He is a Fellow and Life member of ASCE, Senior Member of AIAA, Member of ASME, and has been a member of a number of other national and international professional societies. He holds a Professional Engineering license from the State of Tennessee. For more than 40 years he has served the engineering profession in various capacities.

Over the years he has taught all the department courses related to structural engineering and mechanics as well as geotechnical engineering offered at undergraduate and graduate levels. At the present time he teaches two graduate level courses: Finite Element Analysis and Structural Dynamics and Control.

Currently he is the principal investigator of two sponsored research projects, one with DOD and the other with Tennessee DOT. The multiyear DOD project is concerned with improved blast and projectile impact resistance of structural components using a new composite material which is being developed for the purpose through laboratory testing, field experiments and rigorous computer based simulations. The DOT projected is concerned with rapid restoration of the strength of damaged infrastructure like a bridge by repairing with bonded composite patch repair. He is the Co-PI of a soon to be awarded approved NSF project related to bridge health monitoring.

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