Graduate student Saman Zarnani and Dr. Richard Bathurst of the Royal Military College have developed a new application for geofoam and geosynthetics, to mitigate earthquake damage by improving the foundation subgrade. Initial shake table testing has been encouraging. [Source: The Whig Standard via Geosynthetica.net News. Image: The Whig-Standard]
Related Articles
Christchurch Earthquake – 10th Anniversary
EPS Geofoam Project Second Largest in US
DENVER, CO–(Marketwire – May 10, 2011) – ACH Foam Technologies supplied an estimated 2.1 million cubic feet of EPS Geofoam to the second largest Geofoam project in the US: the West Valley TRAX line. Utah Transit Authority (UTA) constructed the light rail line to a new hub in West Valley near Salt Lake City. Projected to cost $200 million and span 5.1 miles, the project required 639 truckloads or 750,000 cubic yards of the lightweight fill material. ACH Foam delivered the first truckloads in Febuary 2009; Geofoam installation was complete by January 2010. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from ACH Foam Technologies. [/Editor]
Geologists Recover Pieces of San Andreas Fault from 2 Miles Deep
As a follow up to a previous post, the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) team has announced that they have successfully completed their drilling and obtained cores of the San Andreas Fault at depths in excess of 2 miles below the surface. The zone of interest is approximately 135-ft in length. The core size is 4-in diameter. They have cemented in a 7-in casing and the next phase of the project will be to perforate the casing within the fault and install monitoring equipment consisting of seismometers, accelerometers, tiltmeters and a fluid pressure transducer. Read on for more info and links. (Image credit: EarthScope / NSF)