The Geoengineer Newsletter

http://www.geoengineer.org

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Issue: #13, April 2004

Editor: Dimitris P. Zekkos

** This Newsletter lists only updates of the Geoengineer website **

Editorial: The Geoengineer Website is here to help

It has been about 2 years since the Geoengineer website was founded. The website has greatly expanded since then. Contributions by many engineers and Professors greatly enhanced the site's content making the website more useful to its visitors, but hopefully this is just the beginning. We want the Geoengineer website to provide support to all interesting ideas in our field. If you have one, please send us an e-mail and we will explore how the geoengineer website can support your activities. There are various interesting ideas underway already and some of those will be announced very soon to the members of the Geoengineer Newsletter.

Many interesting resources are provided in this issue. To list a few: Links to the classic Seed and Whitman (1970) paper on Design of Earth Retaining Structures for Dynamic Loads as well as the expensive EPRI report "Reliability-Based Design of Foundations for Transmission Line Structures" are provided for free on our free books session. Also some new publications on SASW, drilled shafts and earthquake engineering can be found. Allan Breitenbach presents the history of rockfill dam construction on the "virtual Geotechnics" session. A series of interesting programs developed in NTUA (Greece) and distributed for free can be found in the "applications" session. Finally, a link to the very interesting video was prepared by Professor Boulanger and Jason T. DeJong, and should be a useful resource for students and Professors.

I would like also to thank gINT software and GAEA Technologies Ltd for their support to the Geoengineer Website. Their support greatly encourages our efforts.

The editor

VIRTUAL GEOTECHNICS

http://www.geoengineer.org/virtual.html

Session with emphasis to various photos related to construction sites, geotechnical practice, case histories and labs.

Updates:

• History of rockfill dam construction, Part 2. by Allan J. Breitenbach, P.E., AB Engineering Inc. Littleton, Colorado, USA

 

GEOENGINEERING PHOTO GALLERY

http://www.geoengineer.org/gallery.html

Collection of photos related to various fields of geoengineering, that can be used for educational purposes or presentations or upon request for any other purpose.

 

EDUCATIONAL HYPERLINKS AND DATA

http://www.geoengineer.org/learnbyhy.html

These are hyperlinks of web pages in the Network with entirely educational index on specific topics or with data useful to other engineers.

Updates:

• Rayleigh Waves and Site Characterization. Recources on the use of SASW as an site investigation method.
  
  
• Jason T. DeJong & Ross W. Boulanger, "An Introduction to Drilling & Sampling in Geotechnical Practice", Instructional Video, Revised July 2000.
  

   

ONLINE FREE PAPERS AND BOOKS

http://www.geoengineer.org/books.html

A collection of papers and books which are available through the internet on Geotechnics are collected here.

Updates:

• H. Bolton Seed and Robert V. Whitman (1970), Design of Earth Retaining Structures for Dynamic Loads. The classic paper now available online.
  
• Phoon, K-K., Kulhawy, F. H., & Grigoriu, M. D., "Reliability-Based Design of Foundations for Transmission Line Structures", Report TR-105000, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA, July 1995, 380 p. (Report TR-105000).
  
• North America - Japan Workshop on the Geotechnical Aspects of the Kobe, Lome Prieta and Northridge Earthquakes, Report to National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Japanese Geotechnical Society, Osaka, Japan, 22-24 January 1996. Also available by GEEP.
  
• Drilled Shafts: Construction Procedures and Design Methods, FHWA IF-99-025, Published 08/1999 and its Errata Sheet (pdf 22 kb) updated 6/00. Available by the FHWA Publications list page.
  
• Sebastiano Foti (2000), Multistation Methods for Geotechnical Characterization using Surface Waves, PhD thesis under the supervision of Professor Lancellotta.
  

 

TOP 10 PAPERS ON GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

http://www.geoengineer.org/top10.html

Chosen qualified and well-known Professors or engineers are invited to propose the best 10 papers in a specific field of their expertice. The purpose of this session is to provide to any interested engineer or company a starting point of the best publications on a specific topic.

WEB APPLICATIONS

http://www.geoengineer.org/applications.htm

Collection of web applications, tools and programs in the Geotechnical Engineering field.

A series of applications developed by the Laboratory of Structural Mechanics, Department of Surveying, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, are distributed for free:

• "Mohr" is a Windows Application to plot Mohr circles allowing stress transformations in 2D.
  
  
• "Rockfall" is a Windows Application for the kinematic simulation of rockfalls. A plane cross section of a ridge is considered.
  
  
• Layered Tunnel Excel File. An Excel Spreadsheet to calculate roof and wall stress of a elliptical tunnel, driven in a anisotropic medium.
  
  
• "Stress Transform" is a Windows Application for the calculation of principal stress in 3D space, graphical representation of stress and stress calculations on the plane of a joint.
  
  
• "Stereographic projection" is a Windows Application for the drawing of Rock Joint planes by using the stereographic projection.
  
  
• Hemispherical Matlab Application. A Matlab Application to plot hemispherical projections of planes (such as rock joints).
  

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THIS ISSUE IS SPONSORED BY:

and

"GAEA Technologies is pleased to annouce the release of WinLoG version 4. It has never been easier to create detailed full color boring and well logs. WinLoG is used in more than 80 countries by over 2000 companies. For more information please visit our web site at: www.gaea.ca"

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If you are interested to sponsor the Geoengineer Website and support this effort please contact us at: zekkos@geoengineer.org