Austin HuangPhD, PE, LG, D.GE, F.ASCE Merit Engineering, Inc. Bellingham, WA |
Austin Huang is the Principal Engineer Record for Merit Engineering, Inc. in Seattle, Washington.
His design of Buoyancy Compensated Erosion Control Module (Patent no. US 10,214,870 B2 Feb 26, 2019) for USDA NRCS LA-16 Non-rock Alternatives for Louisiana Shoreline Protection demonstrated the best performance in three years of field test among five selected systems.
He improved the bearing capacity model for drilled pile with rock socket since the previous model was limited to all bonds broken between the surrounding bedrock and the pile, which is not practical to use. He derived the equation by including cohesion for unbroken bond between the concrete and bedrock interface. The model therefore becomes practical to use.
His research paper “A general poro-elastic model for hydraulic fracturing stress measurements” made significant contribution to rock mechanics both in understanding effective stresses in saturated porous media and the effect of rock anisotropy on pore pressure and effective stresses. The paper has been collected into the Society for Mining Engineering’s permanent literature.
He was awarded 2018 Engineer of the Year ASCE Region 8 and American Council of Engineering Company Washington State Gold Award in 2004 for special contribution to civil engineering. He earned both MS and PhD in Rock Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
