The first stage of any major civil engineering project generally involves some form of preliminary reconnaissance study of project sites followed by detailed geotechnical investigation. Primary aim of this study is to collect data concerning physical characteristics of terrain and ground conditions in order to assess their likely influence on the overall design and performance of infrastructure...

This paper presents a landslide-inventory-based and GIS-based framework for systematic landslide hazard analysis by employing historical landslide data in Hong Kong, coupling with geological, geomorphological, population, climatic, and rainfall data. Based on 1448 landslide data from 1984 to 1998, the diurnal and seasonal distributions of landslides are established and compared with the seasona...

Rover-mounted geotechnical systems are of paramount importance to lunar trafficability assessment, construction, and excavation/mining toward establishing permanent human presence on the Moon. These tools can also be used to determine density, when the regolith is used as radiation shield, for example. Two popular insitu devices for establishing geotechnical properties of soil are the Static Co...

In application to numerical analysis of geotechnical problems, the limit-state surface is usually not known in any closed form. The probability of failure can be assessed via the so-called reliability index. A minimization problem can naturally be formed with an implicit equality constraint defined as the limit-state function and optimization methods can be used for such problems. In this paper...

Dam monitoring relies on the long-term measurement of small structural motions at regular intervals. Traditional surveying techniques and geotechnical instrumentation can effectively monitor oneor twodimensional modes of motion. However, spatial distribution of geotechnical instrumentation is usually limited to the locations that the instruments can be installed during dam construction, whilst ...

This research paper presents a compendium of the geotechnical sub-soil data profiling and zoning of the major urban settlements of Peshawar using Geographic Information System. Significant geotechnical properties of the under study area soils i.e., Zone 5 & 6 in Peshawar were assessed through one hundred and three different standard penetration test reports up to the depth of 1 m and 3 m. The q...

As physical modeling sees increasing use in geotechnical engineering education, there is a need for a strategic approach for integrating this powerful simulation technique into courses in a way that ensures the greatest benefit for students. For this reason, a learning theory approach, which recognizes the natural learning cycle of students, has been developed. The approach is based on a modifi...

John S. McCartney received BSCE and MSCE degrees from the University of Colorado Boulder and a PhD degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. McCartney’s research interests include unsaturated soil mechanics, geosynthetics, and thermally active geotechnical systems. He has received several research awards, including the NSF Faculty Early Development (CAREER) Award i...

The finite-element (FE) method is widely recognized as a powerful tool in modeling structural and geotechnical systems and simulating their response to static and dynamic loads. In addition, numerical optimization is commonly used in many engineering applications, such as structural reliability analysis, FE model updating, structural identification, and structural optimization. This paper focus...

In this study, the flood hazard of Corum province (Turkey) was investigated using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is one most popular Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods, based on Geographic Information System (GIS). As a result AHP process, categorized into five classes: very high, medium, low, and low. It determined that 3% total area under high hazard, 25% considered haza...