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Dr. Salih Kocak

Biography

Dr. Salih Kocak is an Assistant Professor in the Building Construction program at the University of West Florida. Dr. Kocak brings 10 years of expertise and experience in educational and public sector, working as an academician, consultant, project engineer, construction project manager and management supervisor in a range of mid to large size projects in Europe, Asia, Middle East and United States, with focus on highways, bridges, geotechnical and public facilities. He received his M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University (MSU) following his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU).

Dr. Kocak has been involved in designing, managing, supervising, providing technical assistance, performing long term cost-benefit analysis and QA/QC supervision of various European Union, Turkey, Qatar and U.S. government funded multi-million dollar projects. Cluj-Napoca autostrada construction project, METU-Bilkent and Beytepe bridges design and building phases, Black Sea region divided highway project, Doha water pipeline project, Montana I-15 and Maryland warm mix asphalt projects, New Hampshire high recycled/reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) project, MDOT I-75 modernization project were some of the projects that Dr. Kocak was involved in.

His field experience covers a wide-range of areas within Civil Engineering & Construction Management disciplines including geotechnical and pavement designs, site coordination and supervision of various teams, solving the site-specific problems, applying job and worker safety systems including traffic diversion and signalization, preparing the progressive payments, scheduling the work and worker load effectively, resource allocation, applying project specified Q/C and Q/A procedures. He has extensive knowledge of construction materials, transportation systems, material testing such as asphalt, concrete, steel, soil, aggregates and timber.

His research examined the relationship between material characteristics of flexible paving materials and highway noise. Moreover, he investigated the interaction between recycled tire rubber, polymers and high amount reclaimed asphalt pavement. Kocak’s work has been in peer-reviewed publications such as Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Road Materials and Pavement Design.

Dr. Kocak’s computer skills include civil and construction related technology such as AASHTOWare Pavement M-E Design, MATLAB, S-Steel, SAP2000, Slope/W, Seep/W, Quake/W, gINT, AllPile, Apile, Lpile, Settle3D, SPSS, Watercad, AutoCad, Revit and many others.

Degrees & Institutions

Dr. Kocak holds a Bachelor's Degree (B.Sc.) in Civil Engineering with a major in Construction Management program from Middle East Technical University (METU). Dr. Kocak earned his Master’s (M.Sc.) and Doctorate (Ph.D.) Degrees in Civil & Environmental Engineering with Geotechnical and Pavement Engineering specialization from Michigan State University, where he was the recipient of McCowan endowed fellowship, Chi-Epsilon honor society award, excellence in diversity award and MSU Dean’s office graduate fellowship, college of engineering best teaching assistant award and doctoral scholarship.

Current Courses

  • Statics & Strength of Materials (BCN2405)
  • Computer Aided Design (ETD2320)

Classes Taught

  • Statics & Strength of Materials
  • Fundamentals of Structural Engineering
  • Computer Aided Design
  • Mechanical, Electrical & Equipment Systems
  • Construction Materials
  • Heavy Construction Means and Methods
  • Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics
  • Geotechnical Design & Analysis
  • Concrete & Asphalt Pavement Design & Analysis
  • Bituminous Materials

 

 

Special Interests

  • Characterization and modification of construction materials (laboratory characterization , analytical and numerical modeling)
  • Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Asphalt Pavements (crumb rubber modified asphalt and warm mix asphalt)
  • Pavement design, analysis and modeling
  • Recyclable materials in Portland cement and asphalt concrete
  • Non-destructive construction material evaluation techniques
  • Statistical techniques in modeling material performance

Publications

Recent Peer-Reviewed Journal & Conference Articles

  • Kocak, S, Kutay, ME (2016). Effect of Addition of Dry Crumb Rubber on the Performance of Terminal Blend Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Mixtures. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2633-11
  • Kocak, S, Kutay, ME (2015). Use of Crumb Rubber Modifier in Lieu of Grade Bumping for High Percent Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement Mixtures. Road Materials and Pavement Design. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680629.2016.1142466
  • Kocak, S, Kutay, ME (2012). Relationship between Material Characteristics of Asphalt Mixtures and Highway Noise. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Vol. 3, No. 2295, pp. 35-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2295-05
  • Kocak, S, Kutay, ME (2016). Combined Effect of SBS and De-vulcanized Rubber (DVR) Modification on Performance Grade and Fatigue Cracking Resistance of Asphalt Binders, 8th RILEM International Conference on Mechanisms of Cracking and Debonding in Pavements, Vol 13, Part 5, pp. 269-274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0867-6
  • Kocak, S, Kutay, ME (2015). A Hybrid Terminal Blend – Dry Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Mixture – CRHY. Proceedings of the Rubberized Asphalt Rubber 2015, Las Vegas, NV, http://www.consulpav.com
  • Kutay, ME, Kocak, S, Petros, AK (2010). A New Numerical Modeling Approach for Sound Propagation and Generation: Lattice Boltzmann Method. Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers.

Selected Professional Presentations

  • Kocak, S. (2017). “Combined Effect of SBS/DVR/CR Modifications on Binder and Mixtures Performance”, Presented at 18th AMAP Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, February 9th, 2017.
  • Kocak, S. (2017). “Effect of Addition of Dry Crumb Rubber on the Performance of Terminal Blend Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Mixtures”, Presented at 96th Annual Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, D.C., January 09-13, 2017.
  • Kocak, S (2016). “Combined Effect of SBS and De-vulcanized Rubber (DVR) Modification on Performance Grade and Fatigue Cracking Resistance of Asphalt Binder”, Presented at 8th RILEM Conference, Nantes, France, June 07-09, 2016.
  • Kocak, S. (2015) “Feasibility of using crumb rubber modifier in lieu of grade bumping for high percent reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) mixtures in Michigan”, Presented at 94th Annual Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, D.C., January 11-15, 2015.
  • Kocak, S. (2015) “A Hybrid Terminally Blend - Dry Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Mixture –CRHY”, Presented at 6th Rubberized Asphalt Rubber Conference (RAR-2015), Las Vegas, NV, October 4-7, 2015.
  • Kocak, S. (2012) “Relationship between Material Characteristics of Asphalt Mixtures and Highway Noise”, Presented at 91st Annual Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, D.C., January 11-15, 2012.
  • Kocak, S. (2010) “A New Numerical Modeling Approach for Sound Propagation and Generation: the Lattice Boltzmann Method”, Presented at 89th Annual Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, D.C., January 10-14, 2010.

Keywords: material characterization, construction materials, asphalt modification, sound propagation, crumb rubber, de-vulcanized rubber, polymers, highway materials, flexible and rigid pavements, numerical modeling, sustainable construction, non-destructive testing, engineering economy, project engineering