Joseph Thomas Coe, Jr., Ph.D., of Temple University, is the winner of this year’s DFI Educational Trust Young Professors Paper Competition for his paper, “Comparison of Borehole Ultrasound and Borehole Radar in Evaluating the Length of Two Unknown Bridge Foundations.” Coe conducted a study where the length of foundations at two bridge sites in Philadelphia was evaluated using ultrasound acoustic waves. A Borehole Ultrasound (BHU) system was lowered in a borehole alongside each foundation as 100 kHz P-waves were generated to develop a reflection image of the pile-soil interface. Foundation length was evaluated based on discontinuity of the reflected signals with depth. This system was developed to address inadequacies with borehole radar testing in similar applications related to unknown foundations.
Coe obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010. He is currently an assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. Prior to joining the faculty at Temple University, he taught for two years at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. He is an active member of DFI, EERI and the ASCE Geo-Institute, where he contributes to the Deep Foundations Committee and the Engineering Geology and Site Characterization Committee.
The award was presented at the DFI 39th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations in October 2014 in Atlanta, GA, and Dr. Coe presented his paper to conference attendees. The paper will be published in a future issue of the DFI Journal.
The call for entries for the 2015 Young Professors Paper Competition will be released at the end of January 2015. See archive.dfi.org or www.dfitrust.org for details at that time.
