Nerves of steel
Rebecca Nylen kneels next to blasted steel cylinders, some of her handy work as a computational shock physicist.
Rebecca and her team sacrifice cylinders like these and other objects to refine the accuracy of computer simulations of damaging blasts, part of a field known as computational shock physics. But as a doctoral candidate in civil engineering at Georgia Tech, she’s more of an experimentalist, pummeling materials like reinforced concrete with high-powered actuators to study how the materials deteriorate and how to improve their post-impact strength.
Learn more at go.usa.gov/xPajh.
Photo by Randy Montoya.
Nerves of steel
Rebecca Nylen kneels next to blasted steel cylinders, some of her handy work as a computational shock physicist.
Rebecca and her team sacrifice cylinders like these and other objects to refine the accuracy of computer simulations of damaging blasts, part of a field known as computational shock physics. But as a doctoral candidate in civil engineering at Georgia Tech, she’s more of an experimentalist, pummeling materials like reinforced concrete with high-powered actuators to study how the materials deteriorate and how to improve their post-impact strength.
Learn more at go.usa.gov/xPajh.
Photo by Randy Montoya.