The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) was awarded a $419,486 Project Grant by the National Science Foundation Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041). The grant supports collaborative research to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of hydraulic plucking, a fundamental process in landscape evolution where large, competent rock blocks are eroded from fractured rock masses by flowing water. This...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $306,062 Project Grant to Princeton University under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to conduct collaborative research from April 2022 through March 2025. The research aims to advance understanding of cohesive sediment transport through multiscale experiments and numerical simulations. Specifically, the university will combine nano- to microscale imaging and molecular dynamics simulations, micro- to mesoscale millifluidic experiments and...
The National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences awarded $627,744 under the Geosciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.050) to The Washington University from July 2022 to June 2025. This Project Grant will support research aimed at developing a physical model to assess the sensitivity of mountain river channels to shifts in climate and associated hazards. Specifically, the grant will fund 1) analysis of high-resolution topography and sediment transport data to establish baseline...
This $672,212 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) funds research that aims to improve the understanding of factors contributing to the instability of jointed rock slopes. The project intends to identify and quantify the distinct roles of natural rock fractures and the rock matrix in slope failures, which pose significant risks to lives, infrastructure, and economies. Through a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical...
This $642,143 Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), supports research to address a critical gap in understanding, modeling, and predicting how soil behaves during transitions from solid-like to fluid-like motion, such as during landslides. The research objectives include: 1) measuring the statistical characteristics of particle collisions using discrete element modeling, 2) conducting rheology tests in dry and saturated sands to...
This $550,000 National Science Foundation Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will support the development of data-driven physics-informed machine learning models to predict flood-induced flow and sediment dynamics. Over a four-year period ending June 2027, the grantee will improve existing high-fidelity numerical modeling tools and apply them to evaluate flood impacts on infrastructure stability in large waterways. They will then use simulation results to inform and...
This $411,496 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports research to understand and predict the evolution of backward erosion piping (BEP) - a type of internal erosion that can cause failures in geotechnical flood protection infrastructure. The research aims to develop novel computational modeling capabilities to mechanistically characterize the relationship between hydraulic conditions and the time-dependent evolution of BEP. Key...
This Project Grant award of $317,811 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports research at the University of Pittsburgh to understand and predict the evolution of backward erosion piping (BEP) in geotechnical flood protection infrastructure. The research aims to develop a stochastic multiphase computational model to gain mechanistic insights into the relationship between hydraulic conditions, soil characteristics, and the time-dependent progression...
The National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences awarded Washington State University a $273,481 Project Grant under the Geosciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.050) to conduct collaborative research from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024. The research aims to inform river corridor transport modeling by harnessing community data and physics-aware machine learning. The Geosciences program supports basic research to strengthen understanding of Earth's integrated system through...
This $162,243 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports collaborative research at the University of Central Florida (UCF) to advance predictive understanding of landscape evolution and erosional extremes under changing climatic conditions. The key objectives are to: (1) extract local geomorphic transport laws driving landscape evolution using large-scale experimental data and novel physics-informed artificial intelligence methods; (2)...