The Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) Educational Trust has selected Joseph Thomas Coe as the winner of its 2014 Young Professors Paper Competition.

Coe’s paper, “Comparison of Borehole Ultrasound and Borehole Radar in Evaluating the Length of Two Unknown Bridge Foundations,” used ultrasound acoustic waves to study where the length of the foundations at two bridge sites was evaluated.

The system he used was created to address weaknesses with borehole radar testing in similar applications involving unknown foundations. A Borehole Ultrasound (BHU) system was lowered in a borehole alongside each foundation. Simultaneously, 100 kHz P-waves were generated to make a reflection image of the pile-soil interface.

The award was presented at the DFI 39th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations in October 2014 in Atlanta, Ga.  The paper will be published in a future issue of the DFI Journal.

Coe is an assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa.  He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010 and is an active member of DFI.

The DFI is an international association of contractors, engineers, academics and suppliers in the deep foundations industry with more than 3,000 members worldwide. For more information about the Deep Foundations Institute, visit www.dfi.org.