Simulation Insights for Safer Structures

A undertaking engineer at Thornton Tomasetti’s utilized science division in New York, Kizildemir makes use of simulations to review how buildings fail beneath excessive occasions akin to impacts and explosions. The simulation outcomes may also help designers develop mitigation methods.

“Simulations assist us perceive what might occur earlier than it happens in actual life,” she says, “to have the ability to higher plan for it.”

She loves that her work mixes creativity with fixing real-world issues, she says: “You’re creating one thing to assist individuals. My favourite query to reply is, ‘Are you able to make this higher or simpler?’”

For her work, the nonprofit Professional Women in Construction named her one in all its 20 Under 40: Women in Construction for 2025.

Kizildemir is captivated with mentoring young engineers and being an IEEE volunteer. She says she has made it her mission to “pack as a lot influence into my years as potential.”

A shiny scholar in Türkiye

She was born in Istanbul to a father who’s an expert drummer and a mom who labored in journal promoting and gross sales. Kizildemir and her older brother pursued engineering careers regardless of neither dad or mum being concerned within the subject. Whereas she grew to become an professional in civil and mechanical engineering, her brother is an industrial engineer.

As a baby, she was stuffed with curiosity, she says, focused on determining how issues have been constructed and the way they labored. She cherished constructing objects out of Legos, she says, and one in all her earliest recollections is utilizing them to make miniature homes for ants.

After acing an entrance examination, she received a spot in a STEM-focused highschool, the place she studied mathematics and physics.

“Engineering is likely one of the few careers the place you can also make a long-lasting influence on the world, and I plan on mine being significant.”

Throughout her last 12 months at the highschool, she took the nationwide YKS (Larger Schooling Foundations Examination). The take a look at determines which universities and applications—akin to medication, engineering, or regulation—college students can pursue.

She obtained a full scholarship to attend Işik University in Şile. Figuring she would examine engineering overseas someday, she selected an English-taught program. She says she discovered that civil engineering finest aligned with making the largest influence on her group and the world.

A number of of her professors have been alumni of Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa., and spoke extremely of the varsity. After incomes her bachelor’s diploma in civil engineering in 2016, she determined to attend Lehigh, the place she earned a full scholarship to its grasp’s program in civil engineering.

Shifting overseas and dealing the rails

Her grasp’s thesis targeted on investigating root causes of crack propagation, which threatens railroad security.

Repeated wheel-rail loading causes microcracks, resulting in metallic fatigue, and residual stress outcomes from specialised heating and cooling therapies through the manufacturing of metal rails. Cracks can develop beneath the rail’s floor. As a result of they’re invisible to the bare eye, such fractures are difficult to detect, Kizildemir says.

The undertaking was completed in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration—a part of the Department of Transportation—which is trying to regulate technical standards and make use of mitigation methods.

Kizildemir and 5 colleagues designed and carried out testing protocols and physics-based simulations to detect cracks earlier and forestall their unfold. Their analysis has given the Railroad Administration insights into structural defects which might be getting used to revise rail-building pointers and inspection protocols. The administration printed the first phase of the analysis in 2024.

After graduating in 2018, Kizildemir started a summer time internship as a civil engineer at Thornton Tomasetti. She carried out computational modeling utilizing Abaqus software program for rails subjected to repeated plastic deformation—materials that completely adjustments form when beneath extreme stress—and introduced her suggestions for enchancment to the corporate’s administration.

Throughout her internship, she labored with professors in several fields, together with supplies habits and mechanical engineering. The expertise, she says, impressed her to pursue a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Lehigh, persevering with her analysis with the Railroad Administration. She earned her diploma in 2023.

She cherished the work and the staff at Thornton Tomasetti a lot, she says, that she utilized to work on the firm, the place she is now a undertaking engineer.

From simulations to real-world functions

Her work focuses on growing finite component fashions for essential infrastructure and excessive occasions.

Finite modeling breaks advanced techniques or matters into small components linked collectively to numerically simulate real-world conditions. She creates computational fashions of constructions enduring lifelike catastrophic occasions, akin to a automobile crashing right into a constructing.

She makes use of simulations to grasp how buildings react to assaults such because the one on 9/11, which, she says, is commonly used for example of why such analysis is crucial.

When beginning a undertaking, she and her staff evaluation constructing requirements and attempt to establish new points not but coated by them. The staff then adapts current codes and requirements, normally developed for well-understood hazards akin to earthquakes, wind, and floods, to outline simulation parameters.

When a brand new construction is being constructed, for instance, it’s not designed to face up to a truck crashing into it. However Kizildemir and her staff wish to know the way the constructing would react ought to that occur. They simulate the environments and conditions, they usually make suggestions primarily based on the outcomes to scale back or remove dangers of structural failure.

Mitigation ideas embrace particular methods to be carried out throughout undertaking design and building.

Simulations may be created for any infrastructure, Kizildemir says.

“I like issues that pressure me to assume otherwise,” she says. “I wish to continue to grow.”

She says she plans to stay by Thornton Tomasetti’s inner motto: “When others say no, we are saying ‘Right here’s how.’”

Becoming a member of IEEE and getting extra concerned

When Kizildemir first heard of IEEE, she assumed it was just for electrical engineers. However after studying how numerous and inclusive the group is, she joined in 2024. She has since been elevated to a senior member and has turn out to be a volunteer. She joined the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society.

She chaired the convention tracks and IEEE-sponsored classes on the 2024 Joint Rail Conference, held in Columbia, S.C. She actively contributes to IEEE’s Collabratec platform and has participated in panel evaluation conferences for senior member elevation functions.

She’s additionally a member of ASME and has been volunteering for it since 2023.

“Group is what helped get me to the place I’m at present, and I wish to pay it ahead and make the sector higher,” she says. “Serving to others improves ourselves.”

Trying forward and giving again

Kizildemir mentors junior engineers at Thornton Thomasetti and is trying to broaden her attain via IEEE’s mentorship programs.

“Engineering doesn’t have a gender requirement,” she says she tells women. “In the event you’re curious and like understanding how issues work and get excited to resolve troublesome issues, engineering is for you.

“Civil engineers don’t simply construct bridges,” she provides. “There are numerous area of interest areas to be explored. Engineering is likely one of the few careers the place you can also make a long-lasting influence on the world, and I plan on mine being significant.”

Kizildemir says she desires each engineer to have the ability to enhance their group. Her principal piece of recommendation for current engineering graduates is that “curiosity, self-discipline, and the willingness to grasp issues deeply, to see how issues may be completed higher,” are the keys to success.