Said Bolourchi, Ph.D., P.E, F.ASCE, an engineer and principal in charge at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (SGH), in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Bolourchi has been at SGH since 2002, where he first led the nuclear practice group. As a senior principal, he has been PIC of many projects, including seismic SSI analyses, heavy loads lifting analyses, structural design, and construction oversight of new nuclear facilities. He was also PIC for structural design and seismic SSI analyses of five combined operation license applications (COLAs), and design of waterproofing membrane with required friction coefficient for the two nuclear islands currently under construction in the United States.
He has, in addition, been PIC for analyses, field structural inspections, structural evaluations and retrofit design upgrades of Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant structures since 2010, where the plant has a comprehensive alkali-silica reactivity (ASR) monitoring program. Bolourchi developed a methodology for the analysis and evaluation for Seabrook Seismic Category I structures. He presented to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff and the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) in support of the Seabrook plant’s license application with a first-of-its-kind ASR monitoring program.
Bolourchi was with Sharif University, in Iran, as an assistant professor of the structural department until 1981, and then joined John Blume & Associates (now URS) in San Francisco. He led seismic analyses, retrofit design, and seismic soil-structure interaction (SSI) analyses for nuclear power plants and Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. He conducted nonlinear seismic rack-water interaction analyses for dense storage of fuel in fuel pools. He also performed probabilistic seismic damage evaluations of convention facilities and citywide structures. In 1989 Bolourchi cofounded Advanced Engineering Consultants, San Francisco, where he concentrated on natural phenomena hazard (NPH) analyses including seismic SSI analyses and design upgrades of energy structures and nuclear facilities at DOE sites.
He has been an active voting member of ASCE 4 and ASCE 43 since 2004. He also was a member of the ASCE Nuclear Standards Committee until 2016 and a member of the NPH Lessons Learned group for DOE until 2011. He has published papers and presented at conferences on the topics of finite element formulations, seismic analyses of structures and cranes, deterministic and probabilistic seismic SSI analyses, seismic structure-soil-structure analyses, design of nuclear facilities, heavy load lifting analyses, and structural retrofit of nuclear facilities.
Bolourchi completed his B.Sc. in 1973 from Queen Mary College, London, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in applied mechanics in 1979 from MIT.