Charles-Darwin Annan

Charles-Darwin Annan
Associate Professor
Universite Laval, Civil and Water Engineering, Canada

Biography

In the last 10 years, conducted extensive research on the seismic design and construction of Modular Steel Frames. In the last four years, he has been leading an industry-driven research in collaboration with a leading steel bridge fabricator, Canam-Bridges (formerly Structal-Bridges), and the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to characterize the slip resistance of corrosion-resistant metallized faying surfaces used with slip-critical bolted connections in steel bridges.Dr. Annan is currently a researcher of the strategic inter-university Research Centre for Structures under Extreme Loading (CEISCE) and the Research Center on Aluminium (REGAL), both funded by the Provincial Government of Quebec, FRQNT, Québec, where he is conducting a number of different research on sustainable civil infrastructure. Dr. Annan was nominated for the 2014 Mitacs Award of Exceptional Leadership, which recognizes excellence in collaboration and highlights superior research achievements. He is currently serving in a number of technical committees, including the ASCE performance-Based Design of Structures committee and the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division Technical Committee. Dr. Annan is also the chair of the Steel Structures subcommittee of the Structures Division and the Chair of Student Affairs of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE).

Research Interest

Dr. Charles-Darwin Annan has,Dr. Annan’s research interests lie in the general area of sustainable infrastructure and the development of resilient structural components to meet multiple performance objectives. Brief descriptions of selected research are as follows:
- Metalized Faying Surfaces used with Slip-critical Connections in Steel Bridges: Metalizing, which describes the thermal spray of zinc, aluminium or both, is becoming a commonly used corrosion protection solutionin the North American steel bridge industry, and designers need to know the slip resistance of metalized faying surfaces in order to eliminate the costly and time-consuming current practice of masking off connection faying surfaces before metalizing. Will research indicating significant slip resistance influence future code revisions and impact steel bridge fabrication in North America.
- Incremental Engineered Improvements for Enhanced Seismic Performance of Steel Braced Frame System: Seismic load-resisting systems available in today’s building codes are calibrated for good performance at the life safety limit states. They do not offer any guarantee in structural performance at other less severe but significant and frequent levels of loading. This research aims at developing a novel technique in structural detailing and design of steel brace components to incrementally improve the seismic performance and reliability of steel braced systems. The primary objective is to provide the basis for the development and calibration of an innovative buckling-restrained brace component that is inherently optimised to meet multiple performance objectives.