Simulation Insights for Safer Buildings

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 reminiscent of impacts and explosions. The simulation outcomes can assist designers develop mitigation methods.

“Simulations assist us perceive what may 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 Skilled Girls in Development named her one in all its 20 Below 40: Girls in Development for 2025.

Kizildemir is enthusiastic about mentoring younger engineers and being an IEEE volunteer. She says she has made it her mission to “pack as a lot influence into my years as attainable.”

A brilliant pupil 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 mother or father being concerned within the subject. Whereas she grew to become an skilled in civil and mechanical engineering, her brother is an industrial engineer.

As a toddler, she was filled with curiosity, she says, considering determining how issues had 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 gained a spot in a STEM-focused highschool, the place she studied arithmetic and physics.

“Engineering is among the few careers the place you can also make an enduring influence on the world, and I plan on mine being significant.”

Throughout her remaining 12 months at the highschool, she took the nationwide YKS (Larger Training Foundations Examination). The take a look at determines which universities and packages—reminiscent of medication, engineering, or regulation—college students can pursue.

She acquired a full scholarship to attend Işik College in Şile. Figuring she would examine engineering overseas at some point, she selected an English-taught program. She says she discovered that civil engineering finest aligned with making the most important influence on her neighborhood and the world.

A number of of her professors had been alumni of Lehigh College, in Bethlehem, Pa., and spoke extremely of the college. 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 steel 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 accomplished in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration—a part of the Division of Transportation—which is seeking to modify technical requirements 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 stop 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 revealed the primary part of the analysis in 2024.

After graduating in 2018, Kizildemir started a summer season 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 offered her suggestions for enchancment to the corporate’s administration.

Throughout her internship, she labored with professors in numerous 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 ingredient fashions for crucial infrastructure and excessive occasions.

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

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

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

When a brand new construction is being constructed, for instance, it’s not designed to resist a truck crashing into it. However Kizildemir and her staff need to understand how the constructing would react ought to that occur. They simulate the environments and conditions, they usually make suggestions based mostly on the outcomes to cut back or eradicate dangers of structural failure.

Mitigation recommendations embrace particular methods to be carried out throughout undertaking design and development.

Simulations might be created for any infrastructure, Kizildemir says.

“I really like issues that pressure me to assume in another way,” she says. “I need to continue to grow.”

She says she plans to dwell by Thornton Tomasetti’s inside 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 various and inclusive the group is, she joined in 2024. She has since been elevated to a senior member and has grow to be a volunteer. She joined the IEEE Expertise and Engineering Administration Society.

She chaired the convention tracks and IEEE-sponsored classes on the 2024 Joint Rail Convention, 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 in the present day, and I need 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 seeking to develop her attain by means of IEEE’s mentorship packages.

“Engineering doesn’t have a gender requirement,” she says she tells ladies. “When you’re curious and like understanding how issues work and get excited to unravel 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 among the few careers the place you can also make an enduring influence on the world, and I plan on mine being significant.”

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