This project joins two efforts: The Tom's Creek Bridge Rehabilitation and Durability Field Site: We will employ a unique opportunity to study composite material performance in a low risk field site. The author has lead a successful effort to incorporate commercial composites box 1 beams in the Tom's Creek Bridge as structural members. Our ultimate objective is to provide an organizing structure in which to assimilate a methodology to define and predict composite performance in an actual infrastructure environment. This approach will help address our present lack of practical understanding of composites durability in the infrastructure, even with the large sets of lab data that already exist. This program will study the critical processes that influence composite. Broadening our Definition of Underrepresented in Engineering and Science: The object in this program is to bring disadvantaged/underrepresented youth to Virginia Tech for a summer of structured education/introduction to the engineering and science and research on the Tom's Creek Bridge test site. The underrepresented youth in this case are not defined by sex or ethnic background, but selected from a group that can defined as `at-risk` due to economic status or an ineffectual environment.
