Christopher D. P. Baxter

Christopher Baxter
  • Professor and Graduate Director
  • Department of Ocean and Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • Phone: 401.874.6575
  • Email: cbaxter@uri.edu
  • Website

Christopher Baxter is a joint Professor in the Departments of Ocean/Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Rhode Island and was Chairman of the Ocean Engineering Department from 2011-2017. He has been a member of the URI faculty since 2001 and is a registered professional engineer in Rhode Island. Dr. Baxter received his BS degree from Tufts University, his MS degree from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. All three degrees are in Civil Engineering. His research expertise is in the areas of marine geotechnics, fundamental soil behavior, and coastal resilience. He is primarily an experimentalist, and has focused much of his research on characterizing unique or difficult soils such as sensitive marine clays in Maine, gassy clays from the North Sea (at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute), weakly cemented sands in oil-bearing formations in the Caspian Sea, non-plastic silts in Rhode Island, and calcareous sands in Puerto Rico. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and other sources. He teaches courses to both civil and ocean engineering students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Features

  • Meet the Experts — Chris Baxter - Dr. Christopher D. P. Baxter is a URI Civil & Environmental Engineering and Ocean Engineering professor as well as the Graduate Director of Ocean Engineering.

Research

  • Cyclic Axial Load Testing of Piles for Jacket Foundations - The goal is to investigate the behavior of pipe piles under axial cyclic loading considering the effects of time and large numbers of cycles. The information will be used to improve foundation design procedures for piled offshore wind jackets.