Design of the Future Mexico City Airport: Attaining Resilience in Soft Ground
The Lake Texcoco region to the east of Mexico City is famed for its deep lacustrine deposits of compressible clay, which amplify ground shaking during seismic events. The area is also gradually subsiding...
A Preliminary Case for the Existence of Hurricane Alleys in the Gulf of Mexico
A review of hurricance intensity in the Gulf of Mexico suggests there are two alleys where hurricanes are roughly 20% more intense than elsewhere. This paper develops a physical basis for the alleys using...
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...
Borehole Geophysics: Tools to Characterize Rock Properties
Effective design and construction in rock requires characterization of the engineering properties of the rock mass, as well as any associated geological features such as joints, faults, and bedding planes....
Emergency Retaining Wall Replacement: The East 26th Street Slide Repair in Baltimore, MD
During a record rainfall on April 30, 2014, a century-old, stone retaining wall between a dense urban roadway (26th Street) and the CSXT railroad track in Baltimore, MD, failed. The stone retaining wall...
Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering: What Can It Do for You?
There's been a lot of talk, and some confusion, lately about performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE). Many geotechnical engineers wonder -- what is it, how does it differ from what I've been doing,...
You Designed It for the Big One, Right? Illustrating and Communicating Uncertainty in a Deterministic Seismic Hazard Analysis
In seismic regions of the U.S. and worldwide, engineers design structures to withstand seismic ground motions resulting from a large, rare earthquake. But definitions of "large" and "rare" depend on who...
Review of Climate Science for Engineering Practice
Weather and climate are a factor in civil engineering design and practice. Weather is defined as the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, moisture, pressure,...
Research, Development, and Demonstration Needs
Research, development and demonstration (RDD) is needed to advance recommended civil engineering practices and standards in order to effectively address climate change impacts. Wilbanks...
Detailed Site Investigations
This section addresses site investigation issues that are important for detailed design and construction of microtunneling projects. These site investigations include the following: Geotechnical...
Shear and Interface Strength of Clay at Very Low Effective Stress
Thin-specimen direct shear (TSDS) tests were conducted to measure the shearing strength of kaolinite, and interface strengths between kaolinite and acrylic plastic and anodized aluminum,...
Effective Stress Theory of Soil Compaction
The shape of the moisture-density curve obtained from compaction tests has been explained in terms of capillarity and lubrication, viscous water, and physico-chemical interactions. None...
Finite Difference Analyses for Sand Drain Problems
The geotechnical literature contains a number of papers in which sand drain installations are described and field performance is compared with theoretical predictions. Some of the field...
Hybrid Modelling of Seismic Structure Interaction
Measurements of On-Site Dynamic Parameters for Seismic Evaluations
Increased Seismic Resistance of Highway Bridges Using Improved Bearing Design Concepts
Evaluation of Soil-Structure Interaction Methods
Aseismic Design of a 31-Story Frame-Wall Building
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