Tulie Chakma stood near her poster during the 2024 No-Dig Show’s student poster competition and skillfully answered any questions about her research project that were thrown at her by the attendees walking the show floor.

Chakma, a Ph.D. student at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, was one of many students from around the U.S. that were taking part in the annual contest that highlights what engineering students are researching and learning about.

Chakma won first prize for her poster at the show, which is hosted by the North American Society for Trenchless Technology. Chakma is a member of her university’s North American Society for Trenchless Technology student chapter.

THE RESEARCH

The theme of Chakma’s award-winning poster was “Frontal Polymerization Technique in CIPP.” The bold, clear graphics in her poster illustrate the efficiency of using the chemical “frontal polymerization” method for heating resin liners to seal leaks within existing pipes, compared to traditional cured-in-place methods that use hot water or steam.

“My goal is to reduce time and energy consumption for sealing pipes,” says Chakma. “To achieve this, I proposed using polymerization in CIPP liner sealing. The process works like a domino effect. I start the reaction of the initiating chemical with just a little bit of heat and the reaction propagates throughout the entire pipe length, curing the resin liner on its own with the energy created by the reaction. This means we don’t need to heat the pipe the entire time, saving a lot of energy consumption and time. It is very fast!”

The fact that the No-Dig Show is over doesn’t spell the end of Chakma’s research into this process. She continues to dig into the potential of frontal polymerization as an effective trenchless technology technique.

“My bachelor’s was in chemical engineering, and my research is in civil engineering,” Chakma observes. “So it is very interdisciplinary.”

Chakma was introduced to this field of research by her Ph.D. faculty adviser, Dr. Shaurav Alam. He is an associate professor in Louisiana Tech’s departments of civil engineering and construction engineering technology; associate director of research at the University’s Trenchless Technology Center; a SWEPCO-endowed professor; and a former faculty adviser to the local NASTT student chapter.

“I was very intrigued to know that I could actually apply my chemical knowledge into civil engineering,” says Chakma. “Until Dr. Alam told me about CIPP, I didn’t have any idea about it.”

To test her frontal polymerization process, Chakma tried three different kinds of chemical initiators. As it turned out, “We have found that Perkadox CH-50 worked very well,” she says.

As for focusing her poster’s explanation of her work with bold graphics and few words? “I always feel that I can say more if I have very good graphic images,” replies Chakma. “People get lost if there are a lot of words, and I just wanted to draw their attention to the words that I was saying. That was the whole idea of it.”

Chakma’s approach to poster design certainly helped her win first prize at the No-Dig Show. It also garnered lots of attention from show attendees.

“I got very good and positive responses from people, who were really interested,” she says. “They asked me a lot of questions regarding the test results and the time reduction.”

ONTO THE INDUSTRY

Chakma hopes that this success will boost her career, along with the networking she was able to do with industrial partners at the No-Dig Show.

“I’m hoping it’ll help me in my research and also in landing a good job in the industry,” she says. “Before I went to my first No-Dig Show in 2022, I had no idea that this CIPP technology existed. But after I went there and saw all this cool stuff that we could do, I started to incorporate those into my research. So this has been very educational for me.”

One thing is certain: “I can positively say that I would love to work in the trenchless industry,” says Chakma. “My research is going in that direction, and I’m very much wanting to use my chemical knowledge into the trenchless sector.”

According to Dr. Alam, this is a very real possibility.

“Two big resin industry partners that we have — AOC Resins and Interplastic Corporation — were very excited about her work,” he says. “So I think she has a very good shot in those two companies, and others. I expect that the resin industry will try to hire her right away.”