Restoring the Flow: Carleton Laboratory’s Engineering Impact on New York City

Restoring the water pump system at Morningside Park is just one of many projects conducted in Columbia’s largest lab on its Morningside campus

October 02, 2024
Holly Evarts

A Waterfall Celebration was held Oct. 4 at Morningside Park to mark the beginning of a new ecosystem and a flourishing community partnership. The event celebrated the restoration of the park’s pond and waterfall – a project prompted by the pond’s extreme algal bloom levels. Joining forces, the team at Robert A. W. Carleton Strength of Materials Laboratory have collaborated with Columbia’s Climate School, NYC Parks, and Friends of Morningside Park to tackle this slimy green problem.

The repair team, led by Carleton Lab Director Adrian Brügger, Senior Laboratory Engineer Amos Fishman-Resheff, and engineering students Sophia Hann, Erica Kyle, and Angelina Wu, focused on fixing the pond’s pump system. Instead of providing brand-new pumps, the team retro-commissioned the existing pumps with advanced control systems. This state-of-the-art controller will enable the city’s parks department to efficiently regulate the waterflow and track the pumps’ health. As well as being more resilient to changes in climate, this new system will be a sustainable, more cost-effective, and lower maintenance solution for NYC Parks.

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Civil Engineering student, Angelina Wu, and the Carleton Lab team working on restoring the old pump system.
Civil Engineering student, Angelina Wu, and the Carleton Lab team working on restoring the old pump system. Credit: Civil Engineering Department

The project’s second component focuses on the continuous monitoring and maintenance of algal blooms. The research team, led by Joaquim Goes from Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is developing a non-toxic mineral blend that can stem the pond’s algae outbreaks. Alongside this, the team is developing a self-driving boat that can autonomously identify blooms and administer the mineral solution to eradicate them.

Brügger and Goes shared their work during the Oct. 4 event as well as discussed the next steps of the collaboration. Researchers from Columbia Engineering’s Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department also showcased their team’s cutting-edge drone, which they plan to deploy in the future to survey the ecosystems across all the parks in New York City.

“Though this partnership has local roots, the project’s aim is to provide a valuable blueprint for climate resilience and an understanding of the contribution that parks make in society, climate, and environmental justice not only in New York City, but across the globe,” said Brügger, who is also an adjunct assistant professor and associate research scientist in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics.

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Participants in the Oct. 4 event at Morningside Park gather to ceremonially hit a button to turn the park's waterfall on.
Participants in the Oct. 4 event at Morningside Park gather to ceremonially hit a button to turn the park's waterfall on. Credit: Brandon Vallejo/Columbia University

This partnership, however, is not the only example of how Carleton Lab is helping to resolve engineering predicaments across New York City.

Endowed by Robert A. W. Carleton in 1962, the Carleton Lab is a cutting-edge research and testing facility for Columbia Engineering students and the wider global engineering community. At 24,000 square feet – one-third of the size of the White House – it is the largest lab on Columbia University’s Morningside campus and an integral part of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics.

Many diverse projects, like the Morningside Park project, have been managed by the Carleton Laboratory team over the years. Engineers and researchers have worked closely with industry experts on infrastructure projects such as bridge resilience testing and fluid mechanics of earthquakes and avalanches. Providing these external services enables the lab’s team to support innovation and respond to urgent challenges in the built environment.

“The Carleton Lab is a very busy testbed for all kinds of critical infrastructure studies,” said Brügger. “We work with students and faculty across the campus, as well as with clients around the world. What’s exciting about the Morningside Park project is our collaboration with NYC Parks and the City. We’re looking forward to working with them on many more projects like this one. It really is a great opportunity for all of us!”

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Columbia Engineering's Adrian Brügger speaks at the Oct. 4 Waterfall Celebration in Morningside Park
Columbia Engineering's Adrian Brügger speaks at the Oct. 4 Waterfall Celebration in Morningside Park. Credit: Brandon Vallejo/Columbia University

Highlights from the Carleton Lab include:

Earthquakes 

The 2011 earthquake in D.C. and the subsequent damage to the National Cathedral prompted an unusual test for the Carleton Lab in 2012. Collaborating with the Cathedral team, they simulated an earthquake to test whether the new 2.5 ton, 10-foot-high pinnacle model could withstand vibrations similar to the 2011 5.8-magnitude earthquake. The new design included a post-tensioning rod down the center of the spire. Using the lab’s shake table, they then tested a full-scale model of the spire to understand if the design would be successful in service.

“The good news was, it worked!” Brügger noted.

Avalanches and mudslides

In 2013, a team led by Liming Li, who manages the Centrifuge Laboratory in Carleton, collaborated with Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory to undertake centrifuge testing of particle transport in avalanches and mudslides. They undertook a number of colloidal dynamics tests with glass spheres in oil under various g-forces as well as ceramic spheres in air. By creating a standing wave in a rotating drum that was again rotating in the centrifuge, they were able to quantify the very complex friction/contact mechanics of the spheres under various g-forces (i.e. simulated gravity). This data has enabled more accurate avalanche and mudslide predictions by tuning advanced predictive models.

Material strength

Working with Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago and New York, Brügger and his team helped test an interactive installation for the National Building Museum’s Summer Block Party in Washington, D.C. Hive was built entirely of nearly 2,700 wound paper tubes – a construction material that is recyclable, lightweight, and renewable. The tubes varied in size from several inches to 10 feet high, and interlocked to create three dynamic interconnected domed chambers. Rising nearly 60 feet high, the installation’s tallest dome featured an oculus that was 13 feet in diameter. Said Brügger, “I’ve tested many different types of structural materials, but this is definitely the first time that I encountered paper composite. I was blown away by the fracture toughness of this material. The fact that it carried over 25 tons of load after initial cracking is amazing.”

Bridges and fire

Bridges have long been a research priority at the Carleton Lab, whose investigators have worked on the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Verrazzano Narrows Bridge, and the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Brügger, alongside Professor Raimondo Betti and Jumari Robinson PhD’22, worked together on the Suspension Bridge Fire Project – a project funded by NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. For the first time ever, they conducted thermomechanical quantification of the steel that holds up the vast majority of the world’s suspension bridges. Through their tests, they found that the steel in these wires, although very strong at the onset, loses significant strength when subjected to high temperatures like fire. They also quantified, for the first time, the thermal conductivity of a bridge cable, finding a 10x disparity between the assumed and the actual cable’s radial thermal conductivity. This suggested a paradigm shift in simulations and strength estimations of bridges. The study ran from 2018 to 2022, and the latest paper won the 2024 Norman Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, for the most impactful article published in any ASCE journal.

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Carleton Lab members enjoying a day in the busy lab. Pictured, Ana Mateo-Jerez, a junior at Columbia Engineering majoring in civil engineering (left) with Mari Chikaarashi, a chemical engineering sophomore
Carleton Lab members enjoying a day in the busy lab. Pictured, Ana Mateo-Jerez, a junior at Columbia Engineering majoring in civil engineering (left) with Mari Chikaarashi, a chemical engineering sophomore. Credit: Chris Taggart/Columbia Engineering

Drones, wind towers, and microclimates 

Just this year, the lab has been working with Marco Giometto, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, on a new project that will measure and analyze meteorological field data. The team is planning to deploy a network of weather towers to continuously monitor atmospheric variables. Later this year, they hope to fly drones in New York City parks beginning with Morningside. This will be a first experience for Columbia, and a fairly new venture for New York City, which has strict drone usage regulations. The drones will be scanning the ground using a high-fidelity LiDAR sensor package that will pick up individual leaves, trees, and the forest floor. The team will also scan the area using a hyperspectral camera that measures tree health, such as the amount of chlorophyll, and harmful algal blooms in the various bodies of water in New York City parks. The geophysical data gathered by the drones will be complemented by a network of meteorological towers gathering vital data like wind speed, temperature, and humidity.

Protecting the mummies 

Over the span of almost two decades, Brügger and Andrew Smyth, Robert A.W. and Christine S. Carleton Professor or Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, have worked with many of New York’s art museums, as well as institutions beyond the tristate area to ensure that art remains safe during construction projects. 

Ranging from minor gallery construction to complete museum gut renovations, art objects of all types are subjected to vibrations due to construction activities of varying degrees. Brügger and Smyth have leveraged their unique experience in structural dynamics, health monitoring, and damage detection, as well as experimental mechanics to ensure that art, ranging from Van Gogh oil paintings to Egyptian mummies, can safely weather these vibrations. They have installed highly intricate vibrations detection and alerting systems that can warn museum conservators and curators of real-time vibrations, ensuring that the art remains safe during construction. In extreme cases, the team has base-isolated fragile art, such as an Egyptian sarcophagus, coffins, and other irreplaceable objects by placing custom-tailored isolation pads under the objects to “eat” the harmful vibration energy before it makes it to the art objects. This type of work is akin to structural base isolation that can be found in critical buildings such as hospitals in earthquake zones such as California or Japan. In this case, instead of a hospital, the team has isolated priceless historical artifacts.


Lead Photo Caption: View of Morningside Park Pond taken July 2023. Credit: Diane Bondareff/Columbia University

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