Welcome to the Jacques Group at the Virginia Tech Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Our research focuses on two broad areas: (i) robustness and resilience of infrastructure against extreme hazards, including blast, impact, and seismic events; (ii) development of new structural forms and innovative materials, validated through large-scale testing and analysis, for cost-effective risk mitigation and hardening.
The Principal Investigator, Eric Jacques, Ph.D., P.Eng., is an Assistant Professor in the Structural Engineering & Materials Group in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is also the Director of the Shock Tube Research Facility, equipped with a large-scale gas-detonation blast simulator, focused on the study of structural and non-structural components subject to extreme blast loads. This unique facility fosters collaborative high strain rate blast research in an on-campus environment tightly integrated with faculty from Virginia Tech and elsewhere in the country.
We stand at the intersection of structural engineering, high strain rate loading, and material response under extreme mechanical conditions.