Simulation Insights for Safer Structures

A challenge engineer at Thornton Tomasetti’s utilized science division in New York, Kizildemir makes use of simulations to check how buildings fail underneath excessive occasions resembling impacts and explosions. The simulation outcomes might 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 folks. 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 every of its 20 Under 40: Women in Construction for 2025.

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

A vivid 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 turned an skilled in civil and mechanical engineering, her brother is an industrial engineer.

As a baby, she was filled with curiosity, she says, keen on determining how issues had been constructed and the way they labored. She liked constructing objects out of Legos, she says, and one in every of her earliest reminiscences 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 without doubt one of the few careers the place you may make an enduring affect on the world, and I plan on mine being significant.”

Throughout her remaining 12 months at the highschool, she took the nationwide YKS (Increased Schooling Foundations Examination). The take a look at determines which universities and packages—resembling medication, engineering, or legislation—college students can pursue.

She acquired a full scholarship to attend Işik University in Şile. Figuring she would research engineering overseas someday, she selected an English-taught program. She says she discovered that civil engineering greatest aligned with making the largest affect on her neighborhood and the world.

A number of of her professors had 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 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 challenge was finished in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration—a part of the Department of Transportation—which is trying to modify technical standards and make use of mitigation methods.

Kizildemir and 5 colleagues designed and applied 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 can be getting used to revise rail-building tips and inspection protocols. The administration printed the first phase of the analysis in 2024.

After graduating in 2018, Kizildemir started a summer season internship as a civil engineer at Thornton Tomasetti. She performed computational modeling utilizing Abaqus software program for rails subjected to repeated plastic deformation—materials that completely modifications form when underneath extreme stress—and introduced 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 liked the work and the workforce at Thornton Tomasetti a lot, she says, that she utilized to work on the firm, the place she is now a challenge engineer.

From simulations to real-world functions

Her work focuses on creating finite ingredient fashions for crucial infrastructure and excessive occasions.

Finite modeling breaks complicated programs or subjects into small parts linked collectively to numerically simulate real-world conditions. She creates computational fashions of constructions enduring reasonable catastrophic occasions, resembling a car 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 challenge, she and her workforce evaluate constructing requirements and attempt to establish new points not but lined by them. The workforce then adapts present codes and requirements, normally developed for well-understood hazards resembling earthquakes, wind, and floods, to outline simulation parameters.

When a brand new construction is being constructed, for instance, it isn’t designed to resist a truck crashing into it. However Kizildemir and her workforce need to know the way the constructing would react ought to that occur. They simulate the environments and conditions, and so they make suggestions primarily based on the outcomes to scale back or get rid of dangers of structural failure.

Mitigation strategies embrace particular methods to be applied throughout challenge design and building.

Simulations will be created for any infrastructure, Kizildemir says.

“I like issues that drive me to assume in another way,” she says. “I need 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 grow 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 evaluate 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 as we speak, and I need to pay it ahead and make the sphere higher,” she says. “Serving to others improves ourselves.”

Trying forward and giving again

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

“Engineering doesn’t have a gender requirement,” she says she tells women. “When 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 without doubt one of the few careers the place you may make an enduring affect 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 fundamental piece of recommendation for current engineering graduates is that “curiosity, self-discipline, and the willingness to grasp issues deeply, to see how issues will be finished higher,” are the keys to success.