USACE News

April

17 Apr 2020
Discovering the Mural in Permafrost
In the forests of Fox, Alaska, carved into a frozen hillside is a unique manmade 350-meter long research tunnel. Situated on a 16-acre parcel near the confluence of Goldstream and Glenn Creeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory’s Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility was excavated deep into a large block of discontinuous permafrost that has been going through several recent periods of expansion. The expansion project began back in 2011, taking advantage of the digging seasons when the ground is at its coldest, with an overall project goal of expanding the tunnel facility to better support ongoing and growing research and engineering needs. The most recent expansion effort, this year, has added 300-feet of new tunnel, improved 200 feet of the existing tunnel and added links between the old and new tunnel sections at several locations, to include at an interface between subsurface bedrock and overlying gravels.
15 Apr 2020
Team successfully tests new unmanned autonomous surface vessel
Anxious at first about the specter of possible software glitches that would derail the project, the U.S. Army Engineer and Development Center’s Justin Wilkens, a research biologist with the Environmental Laboratory, soon confirmed that everything was functioning well. He and a team of other EL research biologists, including Dr. Guilherme Lotufo and Dr. Mark Ballentine, visited Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, for five days in February to demonstrate a new unmanned autonomous surface vessel, or USV.
March

10 Mar 2020
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center assists in mudslide assessment
A team of researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center assisted the Vicksburg National Military Park in assessing landslides and erosion on the grounds.
2 Mar 2020
Want a glimpse of the future? Look no further than ITL’s new DIVE laboratory.
The newest facility at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) will make you feel like you’ve traveled forward in time. The Dynamic Immersive Virtual Environment (DIVE) laboratory allows researchers to test and develop solutions for the Department of Defense (DoD) using leading augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) gear. The rise of this technology has already changed the way we work and learn, and it will now be used to allow Army engineers, scientists, and stakeholders to immerse themselves in true scale, 3D environments.
February

28 Feb 2020
Two ERDC researchers earn Black Engineer of the Year awards
At the office, LaKenya Walker spends her time using high-performance computing to help the military better understand its weapon systems. Cameron Thomas works just a few buildings away as an expert in explosive weapons effects. Though their jobs are a bit different, the two U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center employees now have something very special in common—they are both winners of the 2020 Black Engineer of the Year Award (BEYA) for Modern Day Technology Leaders.
26 Feb 2020
Multifunctional Assessment Reconnaissance Vessel allows for remote survey of marine structures
A team of researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, led by principle investigator Thad Pratt and including co-pi William Butler and research engineers Jonathan Marshall and David Nguyen, have developed and improved a prototype Multifunctional Assessment Reconnaissance Vessel that allows for remote survey of pile-supported marine structures. Operators can produce final data products within 12 hours of arriving on site, allowing structural engineers to deliver a repair plan within 24 hours. The U.S. Transportation Command and Office of the Secretary of Defense-funded project has resulted in the schedule of five units to be delivered to Army dive detachments as part of the Instrument Set, Reconnaissance and Surveying (ENFIRE) program.
13 Feb 2020
Landmark guidelines on natural and nature-based features is an international effort
Nearly four years ago, a team led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that now includes 189 scientists, engineers and resource managers from 73 worldwide organizations gathered to begin work on a set of international guidelines for utilizing Natural and Nature-Based Features. Today, the project is nearing completion with the publication of “Guidelines on the Use of Natural and Nature-Based Features for Sustainable Coastal and Fluvial Systems” expected in 2020. The guidelines will provide practitioners with the best available information concerning the conceptualization, planning, design, engineering, construction and maintenance of NNBF to support resilience and flood risk reduction for coasts, bays and estuaries, as well as river and freshwater lake systems.
13 Feb 2020
Morton elected AIAA Fellow
Dr. Scott Morton, a senior computational physicist in ITL’s Computational Science and Engineering Division, has been elected as an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Fellow. AIAA, the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession, inducts only one member as Fellow for every 125 Associate Fellows each year, a practice that allows the recognition to be bestowed on only the most influential members of the field.