Career
In 2010, he was recognized with the Award of Excellence from Engineering News-Record. Born in North Dakota and raised in east Tennessee, Hillman received a bachelor"s degree from the University of Tennessee in 1986 and a master"s degree in civil engineering (Master of Science in Civil Engineering) from Virginia Technical in 1990. Hillman has worked at several well-known bridge companies including Figg & Muller (see Eugene Figg), Jean Muller International (see Jean M Muller), and VSL. He is currently employed at Teng & Associates in Chicago.
At one point in his career, Hillman worked on developing fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bridges.
This led to his idea of the hybrid composite beam: combining a concrete and steel tied arch structure within an FRP box. A $320,000 grant from the Transportation Research Board"s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis ( the International Development & Education Award) program paid for the first HCB"s to be constructed.(insert ENR ref tag) These beams were installed on a railroad test track (the Federal Railroad Administration"s Facility for Accelerated Service Testing (FAST) loop at the Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo, Colorado).
There the beams successfully supported a heavily-loaded train. The hybrid composite beam is single structural element, a beam.
lieutenant is constructed as a composite of three materials steel strands, concrete, and fiber reinforced polymer.
The materials are arranged in a manner that the materials act as what would traditionally be separate structural elements. The concrete is in the shape of an arch and carries compressive load internal to the beam. The steel strands act as a tie for the arch and carry the tensile load internal to the beam.
The FRP shell carries the shear and bending moment internal to the beam.
This means that the beam acts structurally in a hybrid nature, somewhere between a tied-arch and a beam. 2010 Award of Excellence from Engineering News-Record for creating a new type of structural beam.
United States 6145270 Plasticon-optimized composite beam system United States 7562499 Hybrid composite beam system United States application 2009241452 Hybrid composite beam and beam system.