Alkali-Aggregate Reaction in Concrete Dams

Author Biography

Dr. M. Amin Hariri-Ardebili is a Research Scientist at the University of Maryland and an Associate Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). His work spans performance-based earthquake engineering, risk and uncertainty analysis, nonlinear modeling of infrastructure, aging and deterioration, and scientific machine learning. He has authored over 130 peer-reviewed publications and six books, and has led interdisciplinary projects funded by NIST, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Dr. Hariri-Ardebili has also served as a technical adviser at HDR, overseeing national efforts in the design and analysis of concrete dams and hydraulic structures. He holds leadership roles within USSD committees and international dam-engineering initiatives and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Dam Engineering and Design section of Frontiers in Built Environment. Dr. Golsa Mahdavi is a structural dam engineer at AECOM (Denver, USA), where she supports the design and advanced analysis of concrete dams, spillways, and hydraulic structures under combined seismic loading and alkali–aggregate reaction (AAR) demands. She earned her Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, completing USBR-funded doctoral research focused on the finite-element assessment of AAR-affected concrete dams (the topic of the current proposed book), with an emphasis on practical modeling workflows that connect deterioration mechanisms to structural response and decision-ready performance metrics. An active member of the U.S. Society on Dams (USSD), she has presented technical work at USSD and ICOLD venues and has received multiple awards and funding recognitions, including support through USSD, recognition from CU Boulder, and an award associated with the MMM conference at Johns Hopkins University.