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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 16, 2019)
T he C olumbia P ress August 16, 2019 3 Scholarship goes Spaceship technology used to determine coastal tsunami risk for Geotechnical Modeling af- to late city police ter originally being part of NA- B y s teVe l undeBerg SA’s Ames Research Center. Oregon State University officer’s daughter “We can use high-speed vid- A Warrenton resident was among the eight state recipi- ents of 2019 Workers’ Memo- rial Scholarships. The awards help finance higher education for family members of Oregon workers fatally injured or permanent- ly disabled on the job. Alannah Rudduck earned three associate’s degrees at Mount Hood Community College and is working to- ward a bachelor’s degree in dental hygiene at Augusta University in Georgia. She plans to pursue a minor in business. Rudduck’s father, Robert “Bernie” McMaster, was a Warrenton police officer who died in the line of duty in March 1996, shortly before Rudduck was born. She is receiving a $4,000 award. Rudduck is a longtime vol- unteer, each year delivering food to hundreds of families in need in Warrenton. She also volunteered at Legacy Mount Hood Medi- cal Center, stocking medical carts and helping prepare rooms after discharges. The awards were an- nounced by the Oregon Oc- cupational Safety and Health Division. Each recipients has experi- enced personal and financial hardship resulting from a parent being lost to a work- place death or permanently disabled while on the job. The 1991 Legislature estab- lished the Workers’ Memori- al Scholarship at the request of the Oregon AFL-CIO, with support from Associated Or- egon Industries. Other recipients lost par- ents to farm and logging acci- dents, on-duty car accidents, and shootings. Researchers are using a centrifuge that once tested Apollo astronauts’ resistance to G-forces to better under- standing how a tsunami could devastate the Oregon coast. They hope to pave the way toward greater safety for coastal residents and infra- structure by developing a better means of modeling the destructive force of tsunami waves. Rare but potentially dev- astating, tsunamis can cause huge damage to coastal in- frastructure, with part of the problem traced to unstable soil around the structures. Understanding the process- es through which a tsunami destabilizes soil is a key to developing engineering tech- niques that can make build- ings, roads and bridges better able to withstand the compli- cated forces at work within a tsunami. An Oregon State University team led by Ben Mason and Harry Yeh of the College of En- gineering attached a container apparatus filled with soil and water to the centrifuge to make a scalable simulation of the ef- fects of inundation. The technique replicates in- Lynn Ketchum/Oregon State University Structures such as the Coos Bay bridge are among the major infrastructure facing damage when a subduction zone earthquake strikes the Pacific Northwest. undation physics over a parcel of soil 21 meters long, near- ly 10 meters deep and more than 14 meters wide – much larger than can be simulated in a traditional wave tank. “This is the first time any- thing like this has been done,” Mason said. “We’re trying to mimic the entire process of a tsunami coming onshore and then drawing back.” Their findings were published in Nature Scientific Reports. A centrifuge is a device that puts something in rotation around a fixed axis. “Imagine holding a 5-gallon bucket of water that you start spinning around with, and if you spin fast enough, the water will stay in the bucket regardless of its position, and if you slow down, it will pour out,” Mason said. “That’s ex- actly the concept we were working with.” The centrifuge in the study is housed at the UC Davis Center eo to learn a lot about what’s happening in the soil, such as scouring, and under the surface, how pore water pres- sure changes with time as the water moves across,” Mason said. It’s important to under- stand how soil around coastal infrastructure will be affected so engineers can learn how to protect it, he said. We’re Better than a Bank. We’re a Family . The Vandervalks, Fibre Family Members Since 2013 As a Fibre Family member, you’re not just a customer, you’re a member and owner of your credit union. Along with Fibre Family status comes a level of service and care that you expect and deserve. It’s all in the family! 800.205.7872 102 W 5th St, Rainier fibrecu.com Federally Insured by NCUA
