Dr. Aw specializes in geotechnical investigations, instrumentation, and analyses. He has experience in analyzing railway subgrade problems, as well as developing field instrumentation (e.g., settlement probes, high-response pieozometers, accelerometers) and remote monitoring platforms. His educational background included coursework in geotechnical engineering, numerical analyses, soil behavior, laboratory testing, rock mechanics, structural engineering (steel and concrete designs) and remote sensing. His coursework also included a minor in business from MIT’s Sloan business school. With his experience as a teaching assistant and research assistant in soil mechanics laboratory testing, Dr. Aw is familiar with various soil characterizations and tests, including triaxial tests, direct-simple-shear devices, odeometers, constant-rate-strain tests, and x-rays of soil samples.
Since joining Exponent, Dr. Aw has worked on projects involving piles, slope stability analysis and the design and evaluation of retaining walls. In addition, Dr. Aw has experience in construction vibrations and their effects on adjacent structures.
His academic research involved developing remote field instrumentation to study the long-term performance of railway subgrade under repeated loading of high-speed trains. Dr. Aw studied the development of mud pumping process (i.e., penetration of underlying subgrade into the ballast layer) using field measurements of train accelerations, ground vibrations, evolution of train-induced dynamic pore pressures, as well as numerical analyses.
Aw ES, Stoianov I, Whittle AJ, Germaine JT. A wireless remote monitoring system: Application in the Northeast Corridor railtrack. 7th International Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Geo-Institute, Boston, MA, September 2007.
Aw ES. Low cost monitoring system to diagnose problematic rail bed: Case study at a mud pumping site. Ph.D. Thesis, MIT, 2007.
Aw ES, Germaine JT, Whittle AJ. Monitoring system to diagnose rail track settlement due to subgrade problems. Soil and Rock America, 12th Pan American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Cambridge, MA, 2003.
Presentations and Published Abstracts
Aw ES. Construction-induced vibrations: Effect on adjacent structures and occupants. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 7, 2008.
Aw ES. Low cost monitoring system to diagnose railtrack settlement due to subgrade problems. Northeast Geotechnical Graduate Research Symposium, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 2002.