Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at Notre Dame

Ahsan Kareem Robert M Moran Professor of Engineering

Biography Ahsan Kareem, the Robert M. Moran Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, came to Notre Dame in 1990 from the University of Houston, where he had been serving as Professor and Director of the Structural Aerodynamics and Ocean Systems Modeling Laboratory. Dr. Kareem received his bachelor's degree with distinction from Pakistan University of Science and Technology, followed by a master's degree from the University of Hawaii through a joint program at MIT under the Fulbright Program, and his doctorate from Colorado State University. He has received numerous honors, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the White House Office of Science and Technology in 1984 , ASCE's J. E. Cermak and R. H. Scanlan Medals and IAWE's A. G. Davenport Medal for contributions to dynamic wind load effects on structures. He was honored by the American Society of Civil Engineering with the 2008 State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering award. In 2009, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, for his contributions to analyses and designs to account for wind effects on tall buildings, long-span bridges, and other structures. He is a recipient of the University of Notre Dame 2009 Research Achievement Award . In 2010, he was elected as a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and ASCE Board elected him as a Distinguished Member of ASCE.

Research Interests

Real-time monitoring the response of tall buildings around the world including the world's tallest, Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai) and Guangzhou TV Tower and their condition assessment
Advanced analysis framework for the analysis of long-span cable-supported bridges, especially the nonlinear effects and influence of turbulence
Modeling of gust front winds and their effects on buildings and structures
Development and design of Aqua Sloshers (tunes liquid dampers) and other motion-mitigation devices and modeling of damping in structures
Development of cyber-based virtual collaborative research platforms, living laboratories; e.g., VORTEX-Winds and virtual organization for the reduction of toll of extreme winds on society
Automated damage assessment from satellite/aerial imagery
Crowd sourcing the design of civil infrastructure: tapping the wisdom of the crowd to facilitate engineering tasks from simple damage identification to the design of tall buildings through sharing of hardware, software and collaborative contributions of citizen engineers
Cyber-eye: Development of a cyber-center for national risk-assessment and decision-making dedicated to mitigating the impacts of hurricanes
ANN/Cellular automata and Volterra systems for modeling nonlinear aerodynamics
Regenerative buildings: energy harvesting from oscillating buildings and their components
Modeling of wind load effect on Wind Turbine
Modeling of non-stationarity and non-linearity in engineering systems
Characterization of extreme winds, e.g., hurricanes utilizing emerging tools
Multi-hazard performance-based design and the potential impact of climate change

Research Specialties

Dynamic Wind Load Effects:
Developed prediction methods for evaluating the response of tall buildings; long-span cable-supported bridges; complaint offshore structures under extreme environments and service loads using computational fluid dynamics, laboratory scale wind tunnel experiments and full-scale studies

Dynamics/System Identification and Control:
Conducted research in a wide range of topics in the areas of dynamics, coupled systems, sloshing, deep-water offshore systems, nonlinear probabilistic mechanics; system identification; control; time-frequency analysis

Simulation/Computational Methods/System Identification:
Developed efficient simulation schemes for random vector processes: stationary/non-stationary; Gaussian/Non-Gaussian; Conditional/Un-Conditional utilizing spectral and time-series methods and wavelet transform; CFD; higher order analysis; ANN and cellular automata; automated damage assessment using aerial/satellite imagery

Uncertainty/Safety and Reliability/Risk Assessment:
Developed schemes for the propagation of uncertainty in damping, reliability analysis under winds and pdf of extreme response of nonlinear ocean platforms with applications

Codes/Standards e-Analysis and e-Design Technologies:
Developed improved provisions with implementation in current and past versions of ASCE Standard on Wind Loads and developed web-based e-analysis and e-design tools for promoting their usage in design practice, virtual organizations, collaborative research platforms and crowd sourcing the design of civil infrastructure

Recent Papers

Haan, Jr., F. L. and Kareem, A., "Anatomy of Turbulence Effects on the Aerodynamics of an Oscillating Prism," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, 135 (9), 2009, 987-999.

Kwon, Dae-Kun and Kareem, A., "Gust-front factor: A new framework for wind load effects on structures," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 135 (6), 2009, 717-732.

Kareem, A., "Numerical Simulation of Wind Effects: a Probabilistic Perspective," Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 96 (10-11), 2008, 1472-1497.

Kwon, Dae-Kun, Kijewski-Correa, T. and Kareem, A., "e-Analysis of High-Rise Buildings Subjected to Wind Loads," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 133 (7), 2008, 1139-1153.

Chen X. and Kareem, A., "Identification of Critical Structural Modes and Flutter Derivatives for Predicting Coupled Bridge Flutter," Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 96 (10-11), 2008, 1856-1870.

Yalla, S. and Kareem, A., "Dynamic Load Simulator: Actuation Strategies & Applications," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, 133(8), 2007.

Simiu, E., Vickery, P. and Kareem, A., "Relationship Between Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale Wind Speeds and Peak 3- Sec Gust Speeds Over Open Terrain," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 133(7), 2007.

Kijewski-Correa, T. and Kareem, A., "Nonlinear Signal Analysis: A Time-Frequency Perspective," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, 133(2), 2007, 238-245.

Chen, X. and Kareem, A., "Revisiting Multi-mode Coupled Bridge Flutter: Some New Insights," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, 132(10), 2006, 1115-1123.

Chen X. and Kareem, A., "Closure: Equivalent Static Wind Loads on Buildings: New Model" Journal of Structural Engineering, 132(6), 2006, 1007-1008.

Kijewski-Correa, T., Kilpatrick, J., Kareem, A., Kwon, D.K., Bashor, R., Kochly, M., Young, B.S., Abdelrazaq, A., Galsworthy, J., Isyumov, N., Morrish, D., Sinn, R.C. and Baker, W.F. (2005), "Validating the Wind-Induced Response of Tall Buildings: A Synopsis of the Chicago Full-Scale Monitoring Program," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 132(10), 2006, 1509-1523.

Kijewski-Correa, T., Kareem, A. and Kochly, M. "Experimental Verification and Full-Scale Deployment of Global Positioning Systems to Monitor the Dynamic Response of Tall Buildings," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 132(8), 2006, 1242-1253.

Kijewski, T. and Kareem, A., "Efficacy of Hilbert and Wavelet Transforms for Time-Frequency Analysis," Journal of Engineering Mechanics , ASCE 132(10), 2006, 1037-1049.

Chen, X. and Kareem, A., "Dynamic Wind Effects on Buildings with 3-D Coupled Modes: Application of HFFB Measurements," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, Vol. 131, No. 11, 2005.

Chen, X. and Kareem, A., "POD Based Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Dynamic Wind Loads," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, Vol. 131, No. 4, 2005, pp. 325-339.

Chen, X. and Kareem, A., "Coupled Dynamic Analysis and Equivalent Static Wind Loads on Buildings with 3-D Modes," Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 131, No. 7, 2005 pp. 1071-1082.

Image Gallery

Contact Information Office: 156C Fitzpatrick Hall
Phone: 574 631 6648
Email: kareem(at)nd.edu
Web: www.nd.edu/~nathaz

Primary Research Areas Characterization and formulation of wind load effects via fundamental experimental, laboratory and full-scale measurements. Dynamic loads due to wind, waves and earthquakes on tall buildings, long-span bridges, offshore structures and other structures. Wind hazard mitigation and applications of cyberinfrastructure for pooling and coordination of computational resources, data management and archiving, and visualization tools into a web-accessible framework. Development of virtual organizations and design codes and standards.

Lab Personnel Visiting Professors
Prof. Luigi Carassale
Prof. Y. Q. Ni
Prof. Yukio Tamura

Post Doctoral Research Fellows
Dr. Dae-Kun Kwon
Dr. Deepak Kumar
Dr. Daniel Wei

Visiting Faculty
Lixiao Li
Li Shouying
Huilan Cao

Graduate Students
Rachel Bashor
Sarah Bobby
Yanlin Guo
Megan McCullough
Jim Thomas
Teng Wu
Chao Yin

Courses Introduction to Structural Engineering
Structural Analysis
Design of Structures to Resist Natural Disasters
Advanced Structural Dynamics
Wind Engineering
Topics in Risk and Relibaility of Structures
Analysis of Wobbly Structures: An Introduction to Structural Dynamics