Solutions for Soft Soils
Because of highly permeable soils and high water tables, deep foundations and basements in southeast Florida have been virtually impossible, limiting the excavation depths in cities like Miami and leading...
Arena of Books
The new Qatar National Library features a folded design with cantilevered corners on the exterior, while inside, an enormous single space for reading or socializing offers terraces stacked with bookshelves....
Training for Disaster
The structural complexes used to train first responders must accommodate a wide range of theoretical and practical learning. From classroom spaces to built-to-burn assemblies to buildings within buildings,...
What Lies Ahead?
How will trends in climate change, alternative energy, high-tech construction, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and public funding affect communities, infrastructure, and the practice of civil engineering...
Originality Built In
The new Goethals Bridge linking New Jersey and New York is a twin cable-stayed crossing that incorporates an innovative cable-stayed anchor in its towers, which angle outward to keep melting ice off the...
Delivering Olmsted Lock and Dam
The Olmsted Locks and Dam, the largest civil works project by the US Army Corps of Engineers since the Panama Canal, became operational in August 2018. More than 30 years in the making, the $3-billion...
A Moving Mystery
Along the southeastern edge of California’s Salton Sea, there are areas that contain geothermal mud pots and mud volcanoes—Geological features that may change shape, but never location. In 2016, a large,...
Bridging History
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently rehabilitated the Frankford Avenue Bridge, also known as the Pennypack Creek Bridge. This stone-arch structure, originally built circa 1697, is the...
Mixed Foundations Resolve Complex Conditions
A 46-story residential tower currently under construction in downtown Boston abuts an existing parking garage, necessitating extreme care to ensure its stability amid tight space constraints. Part of the...
Designed for Durability
The Marc Basnight Bridge, completed in February, carries North Carolina Highway 12 over the Oregon Inlet, an area that is one of the most dynamic and dangerous inlets on the Atlantic Coast. At 2.8 mi long,...
Infrastructure Solutions: Schools Offer Resiliency
When natural disaster strike, public K-12 school buildings are often used as emergency shelters. Yet public school infrastructure received a D+ on ASCE’s 2017 Infrastructure Report Card. There are, however,...
Restoration Through Reclamation
The people of the Netherlands have a long history of reclaiming land from the sea. In one of the lasted examples, the construction of an artificial archipelago represents a remarkable collaboration among...
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...
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