FOR MOST RESEARCHERS, the end of a major project means it's time
to finally take a deep breath, decompress, and consider the next
major effort. But for Kurt McMullin, finishing his research
project, Defining the Drift Sensitivity of Precast Cladding
Panels Under Static Seismic Loading, was just the beginning of
another quest.  When applying for the federal funds for the
research in 2005, McMullin, associate professor in the
Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics at San
Jose State University, wanted to find an alternative use for the
concrete he would use in the testing. “Typically, when we finish
a test like this, we just scrap the panels and they are probably
ground up and end up in a landfill,” he says. “So when we asked
for the federal money, we added a line item that one of our
goals was to find a different use other than simple disposal.”
Precast producers told McMullin that when they have production
errors or when a panel has a defect, they save some of the steel
connections, but the rem