While growing up, David Wayne Fowler (Fig. 1) helped his father—a hardworking concrete contractor in the Texas Hill Country, west of San Antonio—mix and place concrete by hand, using tin cans to measure ingredients and pieces of rebar to tamp the final mix in place. Little did he know that he would one day be internationally renowned as one of the foremost authorities on superhigh-strength concrete. He was made an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Engineering in 1992, among the first non-Russians ever to receive the honor. When he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1998, Fowler was specifically cited for his “development and application of concrete–polymer materials.”
Fig. 1. David W. Fowler (Photo courtesy of David W. Fowler)
Because polymer–concrete mixtures of aggregate and liquid resins, when properly cured, form an extremely durable and strong material, ever-increasing uses and applications of it are surfacing regularly. According to Fowler, the current usable concrete available today has a strength of about 20,000 pounds per square inch (psi). He said, “The Army Corps of Engineers has achieved strengths of 35,000 psi in concrete in which steel fibers are used. I think 40,000 or 50,000 psi concrete might be possible in the future.” In recent years, Fowler has also become well known for his advancements in the body of knowledge concerning the use of manufactured sands in concrete and his contributions dealing with the repair of concrete.
Also while a youngster, Fowler had no indication of how a horrific tragedy at the central campus tower at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin would one day present “a very troubling experience” for him and the country. Hundreds of lives were forever disrupted by the disturbing event. Photographs of the impressive tower, which he had seen in a textbook while still a schoolboy, had inspired Fowler to select and attend UT once he knew that going to college to study engineering was his future.
This column is drawn from the author’s long acquaintance with Fowler. Quotes are from recent personal interviews and e-mail correspondence.
Early Life
David was born on April 25, 1937, to Otis and Sadie (Cox) Fowler in the small town of Sabinal, Texas, 60 miles outside of San Antonio. He had one brother, Lin, and two sisters, Rebecca and Lisa. Until David was 13, his father was a concrete contractor, and then he went into the building materials business in southwest Texas. He had two stores in which David worked while in high school and college during summers and holidays. David’s mother, a homemaker, also helped out in Otis’s business.
The Fowlers lived in the picturesque Texas Hill Country near the Frio and Sabinal rivers, two of the most beautiful waterways in central Texas, popular for swimming, boating, fishing, and hunting. Fowler reminisced, “I spent many summers in those rivers and on their banks with my friends while growing up—happy memories.”
Fowler recalled his concrete contracting days before his father went into the building materials business:
“My dad was a concrete contractor in the days when dump trucks were not common and front-end loaders and transit-mix trucks were not found in small towns. My dad and his helper would load his flatbed truck with sand and gravel out of the river bottom with shovels, haul it to the construction site, and unload it with shovels. Using a small 3-cubic-foot gasoline mixer, they would shovel in the sand and gravel, measure out the cement and water in cans and throw it in the mixer, and let it mix for a few minutes. The concrete was placed in wheelbarrows, which were pushed by helpers to the concrete slab or water tank, and placed by hand. No such thing as vibrators. My job was to take a short piece of rebar and tamp the concrete for consolidation. My dad would then finish the slab with a steel trowel, sometimes with the aid of truck headlights if it was a long day of placing concrete and it got dark before the slab could be finished. As I grew older, I had to do the harder work, and that was probably when I decided that I had better go to college.”
It was in the 7th grade that David began thinking about studying engineering. He recalled,
“A teacher went around the room asking what we wanted to be. When I didn’t have an opinion, he said, ‘You’re good in math, so you should be an engineer.’ A couple years later, in the 9th grade, my math teacher asked the same question. When I replied I was thinking of becoming an engineer, he asked what kind. I told him I didn’t know. Being as we lived in a small town, he knew my parents and said, ‘Since your dad is in the lumber and building business, you should be a civil engineer.’ I decided that sounded pretty good, and from then on I had no doubt as to what I wanted to do—be a civil engineer.”
Education and Family
After attending the Sabinal Public Schools for 12 years and graduating from high school in a class of 25 students, David enrolled at UT at Austin. He began with civil engineering as his major, but knowing that he really wanted to work with buildings, he soon switched to architectural engineering. While at UT, Fowler was vice president of Tau Beta Pi, president of Chi Epsilon and the student chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, a member of the Student Engineering Council, and active in a number of other groups. Among his exemplary professors was Phil Ferguson (1899–1986), the legendary concrete expert, who would greatly influence his future teaching techniques in a number of ways.
Once he had earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architectural engineering from UT, David decided to study for his doctorate at a noteworthy university beyond Texas. For this, he chose the University of Colorado Boulder, where Professor James Chinn, one of Professor Ferguson’s former star pupils, was making a name for himself in thin-shell concrete theory and design and in the advanced applications of concrete in complex structures.
On March 31, 1961, while he was still working on his master’s, Fowler married Maxine Thomson in a small chapel in Austin. They had been introduced by his roommate’s girlfriend. Said Fowler,
“We decided to get married on the Friday night of the Easter weekend. In those days, UT was closed on Friday and Monday of Easter weekend—that was our spring break. Professor Ferguson was teaching a course on concrete thin shells and folded plates that semester, and after we had already set the wedding date, he decided to have an all-day session on Monday presented by Professor Haas of Delft in the Netherlands. I felt I had to cut the honeymoon short and get back for the Monday session. I still hear about that today when we have our anniversary.”
Maxine, who majored in business administration at UT, worked as a legal secretary while David finished his master’s. Their first child, Teresa, was born when she was trying to type his master’s thesis. Shortly afterwards, the three of them left for Boulder. By then, Fowler had a Ford Foundation fellowship that paid his salary, tuition, and expenses so Maxine was able to stay home and take care of the couple’s new baby. During that time, nonetheless, she developed a good home business typing papers for law students at the University of Colorado.
Teresa followed in her father’s footsteps, receiving her bachelor’s and master’s in architectural–structural engineering. She married a fellow structural engineer, David Price, and the two of them moved to Portland, Maine, where they have their own structural engineering firm in North Yarmouth. Teresa’s younger sister, Leah—Maxine and David’s second child—received her M.Ed. in special education from UT. She teaches special education in an Austin elementary school, and her husband works for a software company.
In 1964, after receiving his Ph.D. in civil–structural engineering from Colorado, Fowler moved back to Austin and began teaching at UT in the Department of Architectural Engineering. The architectural program was later merged with civil and environmental engineering to become the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering.
While Fowler was working on his master’s, and later when he began teaching, he worked for several engineering consultants designing railroad bridges and miscellaneous building structures framed in wood, steel, and concrete. During that time, he taught courses in wood engineering, advanced concrete design, construction materials, long span structures, building components, concrete repair, and forensic engineering, as well as the introductory course for architectural engineering students.
Two years after the Fowlers returned to Austin, in the summer of 1966, a heartbreaking event struck the UT campus. Charles Whitman, an architectural engineering student, killed his mother and wife and then went to the top of the UT tower and killed 16 more people. He was an ex-marine and a very good rifle shot. Had he begun his rampage at the time classes were changing and the plaza below was full of pedestrians, the toll would have been much higher. Said Fowler,
“I was working that summer at a local consulting office to gain experience, and we were listening to the account on the radio. I can still remember the shock when news reporters announced who the sniper was. I had had Charles in two courses the previous two semesters and had been his academic advisor. He was a very good student—involved, always had a lot of questions, and was likeable. He was best friends with the president of the student technical society. He was not the type of person that I would ever have predicted would be capable of such terrible deeds. A tumor was discovered at the base of his skull during the autopsy, and I have to think that it had something to do with his abnormal behavior. It was a very troubling experience for me.”
Work in Strengthening Concrete
While a young faculty member, Fowler was always on the lookout for research projects and funding. He said, “I had heard about some work that had been done on impregnating wood with low-viscosity monomers that resulted in tremendous strength and durability increases. I thought perhaps the same could be done with concrete.” He asked an older colleague what he thought about the idea, and the response was, “You can never get monomers to penetrate concrete.” So Fowler filed that idea away mentally. About a month later, he picked up the latest copy of the ACI [American Concrete Institute] Journal, and “lo and behold,” said Fowler,
“there was a feature article about researchers at the Bureau of Reclamation and the Brookhaven National Laboratory who had successfully collaborated to achieve polymer impregnation of concrete [PIC] and had made 20,000 psi concrete out of 5,000 psi concrete. It also made it much more durable.”
Immediately—with Donald Paul, a UT professor of chemical engineering, as his partner—Fowler began a PIC research program that resulted in a process for partial impregnation of bridge decks for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). That led to many years of ongoing work in concrete polymer materials, particularly polymer concrete, a material that consists of sand and stone held together by a polymer binder and that has no cement or water. For this new technology in civil engineering, Fowler and Paul received a lot of positive publicity. Said Fowler, “I became the leading researcher in the United States in concrete polymer materials. And it all started with that seed of a thought about wood impregnation.”
In recent years, superhigh-strength concrete has been increasingly used in more and more complex structures and skyscrapers around the world. As an example, 18,000 psi concrete, rather than structural steel, was effectively used as the main structural material for the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Fig. 2), by its U.S.-based structural engineers, Thornton Tomasetti of New York.
Fig. 2. Petronas Towers (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons-Langers7)
In addition to concrete polymer materials research and application, Fowler developed several leading-edge methods for repairing and treating flaws and defects in concrete like spalling, honeycombing, and potholes by using both regular and polymer concrete. His ingenious methods have been effectively and economically used in overlays for bridge decks and pavements to greatly prolong their lives.
In 1992, UT and Texas A & M were selected to house the International Center for Aggregates Research (ICAR) that eventually was the recipient of a multimillion-dollar research grant from the aggregate industry. The group has completed cutting-edge research to show that microfines, or dust of fracture produced when aggregates are crushed, can be successfully used to make very good quality concrete. Fowler reported,
“In the past, microfines have had to be removed from the fine aggregate since the amount nearly always exceeds the amount permitted by ASTM C 33 [American Society for Testing and Materials International 2011]. We [ICAR] also showed that microfines can be used to make very good self-consolidated concrete. We developed a portable rheometer (Fig. 3) for measuring the workability of concrete that is practical and fast and can be used in the field. It is being sold internationally by an equipment firm. Recent research has shown that by proper aggregate grading and the use of microfines as part of the powder (along with cement and fly ash), up to 20% of the cement can be reduced with no reduction in strength or durability. Because of these kinds of breakthroughs, ICAR has become the most recognized research center in the world for aggregate research. We have performed more research on the use of manufactured sands than any other organization, and this has led to guidelines for their use. We have shown that by proper grading and design of the mixtures, we can reduce the amount of cement and maintain the same strength and durability.”
Fig. 3. Portable rheometer (Photo courtesy of David W. Fowler)
At present, Fowler’s team is working on several research projects to determine the best tests for aggregates to ensure that quality concrete can be produced consistently and economically on a regular basis. Numerous studies are also under way to identify a wide range of feasible applications for the polymer materials in general. Included are increasing applications in the precast industry for making high-quality components. (ICAR’s work has the ongoing support of TxDOT.)
Universally recognized as among Fowler’s outstanding contributions to the engineering profession—in addition to his historically significant developments and applications of concrete polymer materials in structural construction in general—are the unique processes he has invented for partial-depth polymer impregnation of existing concrete structures such as bridge decks and other slabs and walls. The first commercial application of this type of polymer impregnation was in the Dworshak Dam (Fig. 4), in its outlet tunnels and stilling basin floor, which had been badly damaged by the flow of water when the dam was first put in use. Dworshak Dam, located in Clearwater County, Idaho, on the North Fork of Clearwater River, is the highest straight-axis concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere and the 22nd largest dam in the world. According to Fowler,
“We developed a process that could even be successfully applied to vertical as well as horizontal surfaces to obtain an impregnated depth of about 3/4 inch. Once that was accomplished on the dam, the problem was solved, and the project’s life was greatly extended. It has been in service for about 35 years now. The dam’s stilling basin floor also had to be replaced, and to make the surface as durable as possible, it was also impregnated to a depth of about 3/4 inch, which made the surface very durable, much more so than the original.”
Fig. 4. Dworshak Dam (Photo courtesy of U.S. government)
Other Achievements
Fowler, who holds the Joe J. King Chair at UT, brought forensic engineering into the institution’s graduate program. He said, “I began teaching a course in forensic engineering to transfer information that I had accumulated as an expert witness over the past 30 years.” He has lectured around the world on forensic engineering and has developed an internationally recognized annual short course on the subject. Several of his former students have gone on to found world-class forensic engineering firms, and countless others work as forensic engineering experts in other well-established companies.
Fowler has written several hundred publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and research reports. He has published many articles on concrete polymer materials, materials for repair, aggregates used for making Portland cement concrete, and forensic engineering that have been widely referenced.
An energetic and electrifying speaker—few attendees ever fall asleep during his presentations (see Fig. 5)—Fowler has given one of the main core seminars at the World of Concrete on epoxies and other polymers for repair of concrete for more than 30 years. In June 2010, he was honored at the Second International Conference on Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies in Ancona, Italy, by having two main sessions named in his honor.
Fig. 5. Photo of Fowler lecturing to students in Poland (Photo courtesy of David W. Fowler)
When Fowler was a student at UT, one of his favorite and much-admired professors, Phil Ferguson, would spend the last day of every undergraduate class talking about life, ethics, careers, and so forth. When he became a professor, Fowler also began doing that. It eventually evolved into a lecture on how to be successful. The concept has become very popular not only at UT, but also with many among Fowler’s international audience. For instance, when he was in South Africa several years ago, Deon Kruger, a professor at the University of Johannesburg and lifelong friend, asked Fowler if he would speak to one of his larger classes. Said Fowler,
“I didn’t want to bore them with a dry lecture about concrete, so I gave them my lecture on success. Several years later, Deon told me that one of the students in the class came back to see him and told him that the one thing he remembered about his college experience was that lecture by the professor from Texas. That kind of response and interacting with young people to help them reach their educational and career goals are what is most satisfying about being a teacher.”
As a frequent traveler both within and beyond America’s borders, Fowler has journeyed to and lectured in such diverse countries as Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, South Africa, and Thailand.
In addition to being presented with virtually all the teaching awards UT offers, Fowler has been named to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, which carries the title of University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Said Fowler, “I consider these awards to be due to the great students I have been privileged to teach.” Among his other noteworthy honors are the following:
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Distinguished Graduate of the College of Engineering Award from the University of Texas at Austin;
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Delmar Bloem Award and Robert Philleo Award, both from the ACI;
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Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the University of Colorado, Boulder; and
•
Owen Nutt Award from the International Congress on Polymers in Concrete, for distinguished service and leadership in the field of polymers in concrete.
On March 11, 2010, the Regents of the University of Texas System, with gift funds from Jim D. Wiethorn, one of Fowler’s former students, honored the Fowlers by establishing the David and Maxine Fowler Endowed Excellence Fund in Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering.
Noteworthy leadership roles Fowler held (or holds) in professional and civic organizations include
•
Board of Directors, American Concrete Institute;
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Chair, ACI Concrete Research and Education Foundation;
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Charter president, International Congress of Polymers in Concrete;
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Director, International Center for Aggregates Research, University of Texas; and
•
Chair, Men’s Intercollegiate Athletics Council at the University of Texas, Austin.
The Athletics Council is the advisory group to the president of UT for its athletics program, which has the largest budget in the country, over $140 million. About serving in this leadership role, Fowler stated,
“It was [and continues to be] a great privilege. I have had the opportunity to interact with all of the head coaches of the men’s sports, including Mack Brown [football], Rick Barnes [basketball], and Augie Garrido [baseball]—and with the athletic director, DeLoss Dodds, and many of the great athletes that have been associated with UT over the years.”
Conclusion
A true son of Texas, Fowler never forgot his roots or his loyalties while making his mark as a world leader in the engineering profession and in concrete polymer research, application, and design. From modest beginnings, he has enriched innumerable colleagues and students and achieved importance both in his home state and worldwide.
References
American Society for Testing and Materials International (ASTM). (2011). “Standard specification for concrete aggregates.” C 33, West Conshohocken, PA.
Richard G. Weingardt is chairman of Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc., Denver, Colorado. The author of 10 books, his latest ASCE Press book, Circles in the Sky, deals with George Ferris, the inventor of the Ferris Wheel, and his upcoming book Empire Man, about Homer Balcom, structural engineer for the Empire State Building, is scheduled for release in 2012. Weingardt can be contacted at [email protected].
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