Ruiyang Zhang Named Ruttan L. Khosa Scholarship Recipient

CEE graduate student Ruiyang Zhang was named a recipient of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ruttan L. Khosa fellowship.

The fellowship, which carries a $3,000 scholarship, is awarded to CEE students specializing in Structures.

Zhang's interests lie in the structural control technologies and real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS). Through his graduate studies, Zhang has investigated the mitigation of damage under medium- to long-standoff distance blasts on civil infrastructure through base isolation and supplemental passive devices. His findings relating to the benefits of using base isolation for seismic protection were published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

As a Ph.D. student, Zhang is focusing more on substructure RTHS using a shake table. RTHS has been increasingly recognized as a powerful experimental technique to evaluate the performance of structural components subjected to earthquake loads. Additionally, RTHS combines experimental testing and numerical simulation by substructuring and modeling the interactions. The challenge is, however, that using this experimental technique in real time can easily lead to instability.

To address this, under the supervision of CEE Assistant Professor Brian Phillips, Zhang has successfully proposed a versatile framework for shake table RHTS. The frame was validated using a uni-axial shake table and two-story building specimen.

The proposed techniques were taken a step further this past summer using a large-scale shake table and base-isolated specimen at Tohoku University in Japan. In this testing, RTHS techniques were applied to a 14-story high-rise building with mid-story isolation.

"I am extremely honored to be awarded the Rattan L. Khosa graduate scholarship in Structural Engineering for the 2015-2016 academic year," Zhang said. "I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Mr. Khosa for his generous support. This scholarship will help to cover some of the costs for my academic studies, such as conferences where I can gain great experience."

Rattan L. Khosa established the Rattan L. Khosa '71 Graduate Endowed Scholarship in Structural Engineering in January 2014 to provide awards for graduate students entering or enrolled in the master of science program in civil and environmental engineering with a focus on structures in the A. James Clark School of Engineering. Rattan L. Khosa is the epitome of the American dream. A native of Kashmir, he left India with $8 in his pockets. After minor expenses, he arrived at the University of Maryland with $3.75, which dropped to $3.25 after he purchased a coffee and one sweet roll at the student center. Through his own perseverance and the encouragement and support of his parents, faculty members, especially Professor Conrad Heins, and fellow students, Khosa graduated with a master of science degree in structural engineering in 1971.

Published November 15, 2015