Samuel H Carpenter
Primary Research Area
- Transportation Engineering
Research Areas
Biography
Samuel H. Carpenter received his B.S. (Texas A & M University 1968), M.S. (Texas A & M University 1972), and Ph.D. (Texas A & M University 1976) in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1976, and serves as the Director of the Illinois Cooperative Highway and Transportation Research Program.
Dr. Carpenter has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in pavement rehabilitation, pavement management, pavement design, and bituminous materials and mix design. His major area of academic study has been in the area of asphalt materials characterization and mix design, performance evaluation and rehabilitation, with an emphasis on moisture/environmental damage and the means to mitigate such damage through drainage.
He has received the D. Grant Mickle award from the National Academy of Science, Transportation Research Board in 1989 for the best paper in the pavement maintenance area. In 1995 he received the Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence from the College of Engineering as an outstanding teacher in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. He has been on the Advisor's List several times for excellence in under graduate advising. He has recently been elected to serve on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Pavement Preservation (FP2) and is on their education committee to expand the dissemination of instructional material on the concept of pavement and infrastructure preservation.
Dr. Carpenter is a member of ASCE, and serves on TRB committees dealing with asphalt mixtures, rehabilitation, and maintenance. He is the author of over 90 technical publications and reports in the field of pavement materials characterization, temperature and moisture and drainage effects, mix design and performance characterization.
Research Statement
Dr. Carpenter's research focuses on performance characterization and implementation of Superpave asphalt mixtures for the Illinois DOT, the Division of Aeronautics, and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. As part of the Federal Aviation Administration's Center of Excellence for Airport Technology, he helped develop new fatigue characterization methods for asphalt mixtures that will greatly enhance mechanistic pavement design philosophies with new support for a fatigue endurance limit for asphalt mixtures. His work for Caterpillar Inc. has pioneered innovative testing to determine the deformation characteristics of hot mix asphalt prior to and during compaction.
Primary Research Area
- Transportation Engineering