The Intersection of Mythbusters, CSI, and Civil Engineering

The modern era of civilization is marked by immense networks of complicated, interdependent systems and rapidly evolving technologies. Many of these technologies, while born from academia, are implemented and refined in the world of industry.

As today’s complex ideas are put into practice, there is an increasing tendency for things to fail, and an urgent desire to prevent such failures.

This is the realm of technical consulting and the subject of this talk. Several projects from structural engineering, including nuclear reliability analysis, earthquake reconnaissance, and storm surge analysis are presented to highlight the broader role of technical consultants in a world that increasingly depends on sophisticated engineering to protect itself from both natural and human-induced catastrophe.

Dr. Troy Morgan is a Managing Engineer at Exponent, specializing in the risk analysis and performance assessment of structures under extreme loading such as earthquakes, wind, flood, and explosions. He has performed extensive research on the use of innovative seismic isolation and energy dissipation devices.

He has served as a consultant on major projects, assisting with the analysis and design of essential structures including healthcare facilities, laboratories, industrial buildings, and critical infrastructure requiring sophisticated analysis techniques and the applications of advanced seismic protective systems. Morgan also has substantial consulting experience with the nuclear power industry, evaluating the seismic risk to new and existing safety-critical structures and equipment through ground motion selection/scaling and nonlinear structural analysis including soil-structure interaction.

He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and in addition to his position at Exponent, he serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University.