GeoTrends Blog

Minnesota disaster leads to testing of county bridges

2011-01-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

Minnesota disaster leads to testing of county bridges

The World is sinking: Dubai islands 'falling into the sea' - Telegraph

2011-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

The World is sinking: Dubai islands 'falling into the sea' - Telegraph

2011-01-23T15:12:00.000-08:00

Progressive Failure in Manaus Port

In November, 2010, there was a progressive failure of a river port in Manaus. This was not picked up by the media. I was given access to the security camera's video of the accident in progress. It appears to have been the classical set up for such a failure: construction activity (construction of a fill, some excavation) to accommodate lower river levels due to an unusual drought in the Amazon (yes, Global Warming is leaving its imprint everywhere) sparked the failure.

2008-06-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

Levee Failures Continue

There is a bigger picture: the deterioration of U.S. infrastructure, an investment of past generations that loses value everyday. Lost value comes from its decreased capacity to allow individuals and organizations to do their work or live their lives (which includes protecting them from loss and allow them to generate income) but also from the fact that it will cost increasingly more dollars to rehabilitate or rebuid the infrastructure. This now from the New York Times:

CANTON, Mo. — The levees along the Mississippi River offer a patchwork of unpredictable protections. Some are tall and earthen, others aging and sandy, and many along its tributaries uncataloged by federal officials.

The levees are owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, even individual farmers, making the work in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri last week of gaming the flood — calculating where water levels would exceed the capacity of the protective walls — especially agonizing.

After the last devastating flood in the Midwest 15 years ago, a committee of experts commissioned by the Clinton administration issued a 272-page report that recommended a more uniform approach to managing rising waters along the Mississippi and its tributaries, including giving the principal responsibility for many of the levees to the Army Corps of Engineers.
But the committee chairman, Gerald E. Galloway Jr., a former brigadier general with the Corps of Engineers, said in an interview that few broad changes were made once the floodwaters of 1993 receded and were forgotten.

More...

Sixth International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering

2008-05-28T13:30:00.001-07:00

This conference is taking place in August. The general report for the Session on Foundations can be downloaded from here.

2008-05-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Geotechnique is publishing a 60-year Jubilee issue. Geotechnique published for the first time in 1948, and the commemorative issue has papers that cover the contributions made by the journal to various subdisplines of geotechnical engineering. The foundation engineering paper addresses contributions to shallow and deep foundations and offshore foundations.

2008-02-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

New NAE Members:

Amadei, Bernard
Armstrong, Robert C.
Arvind
Assanis, Dennis N.
Austin, Wanda M.
Baughman, Ray Henry
Bhattacharya, Pallab K.
Blumberg, Paul N.
Brown, Gerald G.
Bruschi, Howard J.
Calabrese, Gary S.
Chang, Mau-Chung Frank
Cheng, Stephen Z.D.
Cundall, Peter A.
Dodds Jr., Robert H.
Dwork, Cynthia
Dzombak, David A.
Fiorato, Anthony E.
Fogarty, Thomas J.
Foley, James D.
Fu, Lee-Lueng
Grest, Gary Stephen
Grosz, Barbara J.
Haderle, Donald J.
Harrison, J. Michael
Hudson, John L.
Hunkapiller, Michael W.
Iglesia, Enrique
Kleinberg, Jon M.
Kurtz, Anthony David
Lin, Burn-Jeng
Lipo, Thomas Anthony
Livanos, Alexis C.
Lockett, Michael J.
Luenberger, David G.
Malkin, Stephen
Marr Jr., W. Allen
Martin, John C.
Miller, James A.
Mills, David L.
Nayar, Shree K.
Nikias, Chrysostomos L. 'Max'
O'Neill, Malcolm R.
Raghavan, Prabhakar
Rahmat-Samii, Yahya
Raibert, Marc
Rath, Bhakta B.
Richards-Kortum, Rebecca Rae
Robinson, Stephen M.
Rokhlin, Vladimir
Russell, Thomas P.
Sawyer, Robert F.
Sethian, James A.
Siegel, Paul H.
Singh, R. Paul
Sinha, Kumares C.
Sites, Richard L.
Spaepen, Frans
Suo, Zhigang
Tirrell, David A.
Walt, David R.
Weiner, Andrew Marc
Yeh, William W-G.
Yoon, Roe-Hoan
Yortsos, Yannis C.

New NAE Foreign Associates:

Akasaki, Isamu
Dowling, Ann P.
Healy, Thomas W.
Inoue, Akihisa
Leontiev, Alexander I.
Milner, Arthur John Robin Gorell
Ramm, Ekkehard
van Santen, Rutger Anthony
Watanabe, Tadashi

2008-01-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

Despite repeated assurances that it had Big Dig leaks under control, the Turnpike Authority has allowed the number of leaks to explode in the last two years and has been forced to launch a fresh effort to plug hundreds of trouble spots, according to an analysis of Big Dig records.

A massive effort by Big Dig contractor Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff reduced the number of the most serious leaks near the tunnel roof from more than 800 in March 2005 to just three eight months later, according to Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff records posted on the turnpike's website. But the state sharply curtailed efforts to seal leaks when it took over maintenance in 2006, and the number of serious leaks going unchecked rose to 237 last month, according to interviews and turnpike records.

Link

2007-05-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

Spider-Man 3 Director Geeks Out on His Movie's Real Star: Sand -

2007-05-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

May 4, 1904: U.S. Dives Into the Panama Canal -

2007-04-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Some very funny and totally wrong predictions of the past | Thought Mechanics

2006-12-30T05:20:00.000-08:00

Grand Canyon and Noah's Flood: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: News Releases

2006-10-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

YouTube - deslizamiento

2006-08-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

A Geomechanics Reading List

I am teaching a course on geomechanics this semester. I cover the fundamentals of stress and strain analysis, elasticity, plasticity and applications to BVPs of interest in geomechanics. I compiled a list of books that I would add to an incipient library were I a student today. They were picked as good references for the students in this class but are just as good for engineers that are further along in their careers. Here it is:

Stress and Strain Analysis

Y.C. Fung's "First Course in Continuum Mechanics" is in my view the absolutely best first book on continuum mechanics. It is clear and it keeps it simple. Its coverage is limited but it will get you going.

Almost every book on mechanics uses the tension/elongation positive conventions for stress and strain. Geotechnical engineers must keep in mind that the the signs of equations don't change if they are constitutive equations, but the equations for equilibrium, boundary conditions or strain-displacement relations do.

Elasticity and Elastic Boundary-Value Problems

Saada's Elasticity text is a useful reference. It was written by a geotechnical engineer, and so has some fairly extensive treatment of boundary-value problems that are of interest in geomechanics.

Fundamentals of Plasticity TheoryFor those willing to go through some challenging reading, Lubliner's text on Plasticity Theory has much to offer. It is dense, given the author's declared appreciation for conciseness, but it is reach with information and rigorous in treatment. Make sure to make use of the errata.

The recent text by Hai-Sui Yu, which targers soil plasticity, is a good overview of various
aspects of plasticity theory.

Basic Soil Constitutive Models

Desai and Siriwardane's text has many useful features, covering a whole range of models that can be used for soil and rock. It naturally does not have some of the more recent models. In a quick serch, I have interestingly not found it at amazon.com.

The best way to start in critical state soil mechanics is with Atkinson and Bransby's text. It probably remains out of print (I could not find it on amazon.com).

Theoretical Geomechanics and Relation to Practice

Terzaghi's Theoretical Soil Mechanics is still a good read. It is outdated in many respect but the (unchanging) fundamentals are covered well. Scott's Foundation Analysis is not a quick read but has an interesting coverage of various theoretical problems in foundation engineering. My own book, while not a theoretical text, does attempt to establish a firm link between analysis and the use of analysis and design.

Numerical Methods

Without a doubt, Chapra and Canale's award-winning book would be the starting point for anyone aiming to develop a background in numerical methods in engineering.

For studies in the finite element method, Potts and Zdravkovic's volume 1 (theory) and 2 (practice) are very good references.

Programming with FORTRAN

I think Etter's FORTRAN 70 text was a very simple, essentials-only book, to start with F77. Etter's FORTRAN 90 text is also a good way to start with FORTRAN, but some have found it lacking for someone already knowledgeable about F77 wishing to transition to F90. The Ellis et al. FORTRAN 90 text has everything that is needed to get started with FORTRAN and probably does a better job for the initiated. Newer versions of FORTRAN have capabilities, including object-oriented features, that may be appealing to some.

2006-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

I am wrapping up my new book on foundation engineering. I decided to check where in the world are people searching "foundation engineering" using google. Some interesting results: most searches occur in India, followed by some major U.S. cities and London appearing in the top 10. Obviously, there is an English-language bias in these results but they do suggest the increasing importance of the so-called BRIC (or the more inclusive BRICK, if you are partial to Goldman Sachs or Korea) countries.

2006-04-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

UBC Archives - Karl Terzaghi Research Collection - File List

2006-04-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

U.S. News Rankings of Civil Engineering Departments

1. University of California-Berkeley

University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign

3. Stanford University (CA)

4. Georgia Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of Texas-Austin

7. California Institute of Technology

8. Purdue University-West Lafayette (IN)

9. Cornell University (NY)