Professional Structural Engineer with over 25 years of academic and consulting experience in the structural analysis, design, long-term monitoring, and condition assessment of highway bridges and pavement structures. Experience is also extended to the design and construction of water-front structures, industrial and high-rise residential buildings. Published over 120 articles in international journals and conference proceedings. Member of several national technical committees. Participated in writing four design codes/guidelines published by the American Concrete Institute.
Extensive experience with 3D nonlinear finite element analysis of diverse complex structures using LS-DYNA. Problems involved mesh construction of complicated geometries, contact, nonlinear material behavior, fracture and failure analysis, and validating results with experimentally measured data. Experience with lightweight composite structures with emphasis on automotive lightweighting technologies and, lightweight dense hydrogen storage systems. Structural characterization of lightweight composite materials including polymer reinforced composites and metal matrix composites.
Starting his career as a structural/geotechnical engineer, followed by long experience with long-term field monitoring of the performance of various types of bridges, Gergis was exposed to many problems associated with bridge construction and design specifications such as early age full-depth longitudinal cracks in empirically designed bridge decks, transverse deck cracking, out-of-plane web distortion of steel I-girders, restrained bridge expansion at integral abutment or expansion joints, etc. Dr. William provided expert assistance in several issues such as early age longitudinal cracking of empirically designed bridge decks and out-of-plane distortion of steel girders through WVDOT/FHWA task force in 2006-2007.