TLC2 researcher receives $1.2 million grant from Qatar
The Qatar National Research Fund recently awarded University of Houston researchers two separate grants, including one to TLC2 affiliated faculty member David Zimmerman for work in structural health monitoring.
A country north of Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf, Qatar ranks among the top 20 producers of oil worldwide.Though the natural resource is the cornerstone of their economy, Qatar wants more. Recently, they dedicated 2.8 percent, or roughly $1.5 billion yearly, of their gross domestic product toward earning a reputation as a knowledge-based nation.
On their path to achieving this goal, the Qatar National Research Fund recently awarded University of Houston researchers two separate grants totaling $2.4 million to collaborate with researchers in that country to advance science research and education.
“Their motivation,” said David Zimmerman, an investigator on one of the grants, a TLC2 affiliated faculty member and a professor of mechanical engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, “is to fund research that benefits Qatar, and the rest of the world.”
The UH projects, part of the country’s National Priorities Research Program, work to develop a scientific framework for sustainable approaches to addressing environmental issues.
Focused on structural health monitoring, Zimmerman’s grant has its roots in a 2005 proposal funded by TLC2’s Innovation Grants program. The grant teams Zimmerman and Matthew Franchek, chair of the college’s department of mechanical engineering, in another international partnership with Qatar. Through the use of a laser vibrometer and other monitoring equipment, researchers will attempt to measure the vibration response of objects to not only detect potential damage, but also its extent.
“The TLC2 seed funding did two things,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “First, it allowed us to get preliminary data (simpler cases) which we included in the Qatar proposal, thus establishing the feasibility of the approaches. Further, as we performed the work with our students, we identified better problem formulations, which were the basis of the Qatar proposal.”
The Qatar proposal concentrates on the integrity of transportation infrastructure and historical monuments. Qatar researchers plan to construct scale model buildings—roughly four feet in height per floor—to be placed outside in the elements for the three-year duration of the grant. These researchers will study how the environment affects the models, and then devise methods to compensate for any problems associated with their findings. Franchek and Zimmerman plan to monitor the models in real time via the Internet.
