Professor of civil engineering

Walking across streams around campus and around the Lewisburg area, Jai Kim's influence is obvious. Kim has a special interest in wood bridges that has led to senior design projects of timber bridges built behind Bucknell Hall, by faculty court, in downtown Lewisburg, and near Penn's Creek and Pine Creek.

"Timber bridges are not for everywhere, but they are good for places where traffic is not heavy and the span is not more than 70 feet," says Kim. "Where they are appropriate, they are warm and romantic, economical, safe, and long-lasting."

Metal truss bridge rehabilitation is another passion of Kim's and an important one. There are over 35,000 steel truss bridges in the country, many of which are substandard in terms of width and load-carrying capacity.

Kim and his student, John Yadlosky '80, obtained a patent on a rehabilitation technique called the Bucknell System as a result of Yadlosky's senior design project. The Bucknell System has been used in at least 15 bridge projects throughout the country. his technique not only savescommunities by not having to pay millions of dollars in bridge replacement costs, but also allows the rehabilitated truss bridge to carry the modern traffic loads, as well as preserves the historic beauty of many of these significant bridges.

Teaching areas

• Wood engineering design loads for structures
• Structural design

Research Interests

• Wood engineering
• Metal truss bridge rehabilitation
• Timber bridges

Recent Publications

• "Preservation of Aged Wood Structures by the Determination of Strength Properties of In-Place Lumbers by a Non-destructive Test Method," co-authored with G. Williams ’03, Transactions of the Material Research Society of Japan, vol.29, no. 5, pp.2439-2442, August 2004.
• "Non-destructive Evaluation of Strength Properties of In-Place Wood Members," coauthored with R.Renn '97, IAWPS 2003 International Conference on Forest Products, Daejeon, Korea, 2003 Proceedings, pp. 299-305.
• "Non-linear Modeling of the Heel Joint of Metal Plate Connected Roof Trusses," co-authored with Kevin Barron '97, The World Conference on Timber Engineering 2000, Whistler Resort, British Columbia, Canada, 2000, pp 7.3.4-1 to 7.3.4-10.

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