Open Pit Geotechnics: Designing Slopes for a Very Deep Hole
For most hard rock surface mining operations, the development of an open pit is required to extract the ore resource. In designing an open pit, the challenge is to develop the most cost-effective pit slopes...
Where Geosynthetics Meet Mining Geotechnics: Part of the Mining Engineer's Toolbox
From enhancing stability to providing environmental containment, geosynthetic materials play an important role in mining projects and geotechnics in general. While often overlooked, advancements in geosynthetic...
Redevelopment of Aggregate and Rock Quarries: No Longer Just a Hole in the Ground
Redevelopment of former sand and gravel (aggregate) and rock quarries can be challenging, often requiring developers, quarry operators, planners, and engineers to work in tandem. As urban and suburban...
Wider and Deeper (part of "A Greater Wonder")
A key component of the recent Panama Canal expansion involved the widening and deepening of Gatun Lake, the artificial lake that serves as the canal's reservoir, and the deepening of the Culebra Cut (also...
Raising Gatun Lake (part of "A Greater Wonder")
Raising the maximum operating level of Gatun Lake was one of the four main undertakings of the Panama Canal expansion project. Its goal was to increase the storage capacity for water used for human consumption...
Testing the New Locks (part of "A Greater Wonder")
The recently completed third set of locks at the Panama Canal incorporates several civil components and hydraulic design features that are intended to reduce routine maintenance and conserve water. For...
Guidelines for Construction Vibrations: How Much Rattle is Too Much?
The study of construction/blast-related ground vibrations on structures, people, and objects is a surprisingly diverse field. Vibration sources vary from blasting, all types of construction equipment,...
Automated Vibration Monitoring for Construction Applications: A Retrospective and Current Practice or… Everything Is so Much Easier Now!
My career in vibration monitoring (VM) began in the late 1980s. At that time, the state of the practice was primarily focused on blasting operations, which was driven by a boom in highway construction...
Seismic Data from Smartphones: MyShake: Building a Global Smartphone Seismic Network
Increasing the density of earthquake-monitoring instruments at a fast rate and at a low cost is a dream for many researchers who study earthquakes. MyShake, a smartphone application developed by the Berkeley...
Claims against Geotechnical Engineers: Getting it Right in the Midst of Uncertainty
Geotechnical engineering is one of engineering's riskiest professions, prone to litigation due to the inherent uncertainty associated with characterizing the subsurface. Site investigations rarely provide...
The Uselessness of Elephants in Compacting Fill
This article is based on an article that was originally published in the August 1967 Canadian Geotechnical Journal (Vol. IV, Number 3)....
Value Engineering Shaves Years and $1.8 Billion from Ohio River Bridges Project (part of "Attractive Alternative")
A value engineering process for the Ohio River Bridges Project, of which the Lewis and Clark Bridge is just one part, saved more than $1.8 billion and shaved nine years from earlier estimates....
Canals, Cutoffs, and the Vicksburg Campaign
During the American Civil War, the term “Union” was used to refer to the United States of America, and specifically to the national government and the 20 free states and five border slave states that supported...
Military Geotechnics in the Ancient World: Geo-Innovating the Hard Way
The technical expertise that is now part of geotechnical engineering was of paramount importance in the ancient worlds. This is because before, but also after, the invention of siege equipment, nearly...
Cracking the Nuclear Code: Finding an Alternative to the Nuclear Density Gauge
Two of the most basic quality control tests made in the field during soil construction are the soil’s moisture content and density. The establishment of a uniform procedure to compare the performance of...
Translating the Language of Soils: Developing a Soil Classification System for International Engineering Projects
Soil classification systems are used to help predict soil behavior and provide information to farmers, engineers, builders, agricultural extension agents, homeowners, community planners, and government...
Remote Sensing: A New Revolution in Geotechnical Engineering
Remote sensing in the form of satellite imagery has become part of our everyday life—from displaying boring locations at a job site to the various mapping apps on our smart phones that help us get there....
A Faculty Internship: Reconnecting with the Profession
After spending eight years as a full-time academic administrator at Lafayette College in Easton, PA – one of only a handful of institutions where discipline-specific engineering programs are embedded in...
Nature Sides with the Hidden Flaw: Lessons Learned from Failures of Earth-Support Systems
In recent years, the demand for excavations and fills of significant height has increased due to many factors, including requirements for below-grade parking for urban buildings and the need to construct...
Soil Nailing in the 2010s: Its Evolution and Coming of Age
While the early 2000s witnessed soil nailing as a well-established method in the U.S. for providing temporary and permanent support of excavation (SOE), the technique has since continued to evolve thanks...
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