Did You Know? Geostrata Is 20
Spring 2000 was the first issue of Geo-Strata (now GEOSTRATA). That issue included articles on academic-industry partnerships, implementing innovative technology, marketing advice from "The Old Rainmaker,"...
Soil Sampling at Sword Beach in Normandy, France, 1943: How Geotechnical Engineering Influenced the D-Day Invasion
When the World paused last summer to remember the 75th anniversary of D-Day, many of us were gripped by stories, both heroic and horrific, told about the Allied invasion of Normandy’s beaches. One of these...
Big Steps for Mankind: Extraterrestrial Sampling and Exploration 50 Years after Apollo 11
Between June 1966 and January 1968, four Surveyor missions successfully landed on the Moon, collecting invaluable scientific data required to support the coming manned Apollo missions. Central to the goals...
Best Practices For Geotechnical Site Characterization: Have We Regressed from Decades Past?
The objective of a geotechnical site-characterization program is to determine soil and rock stratigraphy, in-situ pore water pressure conditions, and soil and rock properties for analysis and design of...
Creating Art AND Reducing Project Risk WITH 3D Modeling: Digital Insights Unearth Hidden Landscapes
Humans have always lived in threedimensional space, with senses that evolved for a 3D environment. So, it’s perfectly natural that people can more quickly, easily, and fully understand something when it’s...
The Best Places For Civil Engineers 2020
ASCE’s Civil Engineering magazine researched and wrote this feature article before the widespread outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequently declared pandemic in the United States. Since then, the health...
Technology Update: CES For CEs
Walking the grounds at the CES in Las Vegas—dodging the 175,000 attendees, 4,000-plus exhibitors, 6,000 or so reporters, and innumerable screens—can be an overwhelming experience. Tech nerds come to this...
Spanning the Saint Lawrence
The recently opened Samuel De Champlain Bridge is an iconic gateway to Montreal. Its signature structure, an asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge, features a 240 m long main span over the Saint Lawrence River....
Innovation At The Heights
Population growth in metropolitan Washington, D.C., has been on an upward trajectory in recent years, and this is especially true for Arlington County, in Northern Virginia. This increase in population...
Automated Model And Parameter Selection: Incorporating Expert Input into Geotechnical Analyses
Excavation for construction of MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, MA. This complex soil-structure interaction problem required advanced numerical methods and soil constitutive models. A) PLAXIS 3D model of...
The Present And Future Of Virtual and Augmented Reality In Geotechnical Engineering: This Technology Has Gone Way Beyond Gaming!
One of the greatest challenges with subsurface construction has always been our relative inability to visualize underground conditions that are often comprised of spatially variable soil and rock strata,...
Reliability-Based Design (RBD) For Everyone: (No Monte Carlo Simulation Required!)
In North America, the design of earth structures for transportation applications is most often carried out using load and resistance factor design (LRFD). In the U.S., the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications...
Micropiles Support the "Missing Link": Understanding Load Transfer in Challenging Subgrades
Authorized by Congress in 1944, the Foothills National Parkway partly traverses the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee. Large sections of the parkway cross high ridges located...
A New Approach to Mitigate Subsidence Problems: A New Approach to Mitigate Subsidence Problems
Mexico City has a decades-old problem with severe consequences: its lacustrine zone is subsiding due to pumping of potable water from the main aquifer. The geotechnical team assigned to work on the problem...
Dried Lakes Do Tell Tales: Seismic Soil Amplification in Mexico City
Mexico City is a vibrant, urban metropolis — a living and breathing example of an "old layered city," where past civilizations coexisted with one another. Standing more than 2.2 km above sea level, surrounded...
The Transcona Grain Elevator Failure Revisited: A Modern Perspective a Century Later
More than a century ago, a seminal event in the then world of foundation engineering took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, when the mat-foundation-supported Transcona Grain Elevator underwent catastrophic...
Forever Frozen? Future Challenges for Ground
On a typical day, in a typical town, in a city almost anywhere in North America, roads and highways are filled with people going about their everyday business — commuting to work, delivering goods and...
An Unknown-Unknown Does In An Overpass: A Soil Stockpile on Soft Clay Is Too Much for a Bridge in Canada
Like most structures, bridges are designed for an array of loading conditions. Some loads are known or can be reasonably estimated with confidence (i.e., known-knowns, such as structure dead and vehicular...
Geotechnical Aspects Of Coastal Impacts During Hurricanes Harvey And Irma: Logistical and Technical Challenges During Reconnaissance
As designers and managers for society’s infrastructure, civil engineers, including the geotechnical community, must understand and predict the most severe expected loadings from physical or environmental...
Design Criteria and Land - Use Practices: Is it Time to Consider Geo-Impacts of Wildfires?
Wildfires are extreme events with impacts that are notorious because of smartphone videos followed by news reports that feature sensational infrastructure damage and human suffering. The geo-impacts shown...
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