ATLSS Center featured in Easton newspaper

A feature story in the April 28 issue of the Express-Times newspaper of Easton, Pa., titled "Lehigh center helps keep structures safe," described the research programs at the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATLSS).

The article said ATLSS researchers test the ability of buildings, bridges and other large structures to perform under seismic loading and fatigue from repeated loading. The center has investigated numerous structural failures, including the collapse of the World Trade Center and the sections of buildings that gave way during the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Recent field tests have been performed on the Newark Airport Monorail guideway structure, the steel orthotropic deck on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City, and the AMTRAK bridge over the Susquehenna River.

"Discoveries and tests done here go on to be applied in bridges and buildings everywhere," said George Tamaro, who earned an M.S. in civil engineering from Lehigh in 1961. Tamaro, a partner with Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, helped supervise the reconstruction of the WTC's below-ground diaphragm walls and lateral support system, a four-block-by-two-block site, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.