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Geotechnical and Pavements Research Featured Publication

The Geotechnical Engineering program focuses on the way natural materials are characterized and used for civil engineering construction. Current research projects include:

Elastic moduli of soils with dispersed oversized particles

Soils are heterogeneous materials and are made of a mixture of soils and rock fragments (Fig. 1). Our knowledge of how heterogeneous soils behave under static or dynamic loads is very limited. Research sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant is being conducted on the measurement of the mechanical properties (elastic moduli, shear strength, hydraulic conductivity) of heterogeneous soils in the laboratory.

Vallejo, L.E., and Lobo-Guerrero, S. (2005). The elastic moduli of clays with dispersed oversized particles. Engineering Geology, Vol. 78, pp. 163-171.

Crushing of granular materials and its effect on their mechanical properties

Granular materials forming part of the base of pavements and railroads, embankments, and pile foundations are subjected during their engineering lives to either static and dynamic loads. As a result of these loads these materials can break. The breakage of these materials will change their original mechanical properties. These original mechanical properties were used for the design of the civil engineering structures that were placed on the granular materials. A change of the granular materials' original mechanical properties could be detrimental to the safety of the structures that rest on them. The objective of this NSF funded project is to study the mechanics of crushing of granular materials using laboratory tests and simulations by the Discrete Element Method (Fig. 2).

Lobo-Guerrero, S., and Vallejo, L.E. (2005). Crushing a weak granular material: experimental numerical analyses. Geotechnique, Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 245-249

Geotechnical research

Faculty & students perform leading edge research using advanced computing techniques.

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