Episode 38 Geotechnical Research Stories with Jason Buenker

Jason Beunker: Profile of a rising research engineer   On this week’s episode, Dan Zehner speaks with research engineer Jason Beunker.  Currently in year two of his PhD, Jason Beunker studies soil structure interaction and seismicity at UCLA’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.   Why academia? Like many PhD candidates in the field, Beunker returned to academia after working as a professional engineer. He discusses enjoying work for Seattle-based firm Shannon and Wilson and how his projects there actually inspired him to come back to school. He explains the value of applied engineering, logging hours in the field and interacting with knowledgeable clients. Field work gives your analyses more “teeth,” he says. And seeing his designs in action was a rewarding experience.   Early on, as a civil engineering undergraduate at the University of Illinois, it was just that hands-on nature of geotechnical engineering that appealed to him, he says. It was the right mix of math and science and being outside, getting his hands dirty.   He explains how, after eight years as a practicing engineer, he was encountering larger projects — with more complex problems and greater technical demands. He decided that, while he was still young, to enroll in a PhD program to build his knowledge in soil structure integration and soil response.   Research in soft soils. Beunker describes working with UCLA researcher Scott Brandenberg on a project examining shallow foundations on soft soil. (Brandenberg was a recent guest on DesignSafe Radio.) By replicating the response of ground failure and structure failure in these conditions, the work will function as a case history, a guide for future engineers looking at structural responses to earthquake shaking.   Beunker details his “steep learning curve,” as a hands-on researcher. Brandenberg, a noted expert in soil structures, performs his experiments on the large centrifuges at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling, a NHERI facility. New to centrifuge modelling, Beunker describes having to learn the nuts and bolts of centrifuge modelling with help from the support team at UC Davis. “I learned how to model there,” he says, thanks to the deep knowledge on the UC Davis team.   Host Dan Zehner was eager to learn about Beunker’s experience as a new NHERI researcher. As NHERI’s facility scheduling and operations coordinator, Zehner talked about providing new ways to “flatten the learning curve” for hazards engineers working at experimental faciities.   Data publishing. Beunker says that all the findings from the project will be posted to DesignSafe in a single Jupyter notebook. Currently he’s working to make the raw data from the experiments usable for colleagues, “dressed up and filtered,” as he puts it. He explains how Jupyter enables embedding direct connections to data in reports, so users can filter and examine the information in various ways. We can look forward to hearing more Jason Beunker’s adventures in geotechnical engineering in the coming years.