Wind Turbine Foundations and Massive Off-Shore Turbines

June 29, 2008 rockman Comments Off

Within the span of a few days I had two wind turbine foundation items to post. First, an old U of A Geological Engineering colleague, Eric Ntambakwa sent me a link to a paper written by him and a colleage (Kirk Morgan). Both of them work for Garrad Hassan America, Inc., one of the preeminent authorities on wind turbine design. Their paper entitled "Wind Turbine Foundation Behavior and Design Considerations" was a very interesting look at foundations in this specialized industry. The other item came from ENR, and was about massive, "behemoth" off-shore wind turbines with an interesting foundation design. Read on for the rest of the details. (Photo by brentdanley)

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February Update of Google Earth Imagery

March 6, 2008 rockman Comments Off

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found Google Earth to be a very useful tool in my practice. Whether it is scoping out a site I’ve never seen before or creating a boring location plan or other figure for a report. Feel the same way? Then you might be interested in some recent (February 19, 2008) updates to Google Imagery and other data. Higher resolution images are always welcome! Comprehensive list after the break.

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Geologic Hazard Photos

February 28, 2008 rockman Comments Off

The National Geodetic Data Center (NGDC) of NOAA has an online collection of photos of various geologic hazards. Many of the photos are from older sets of 35mm slides that have been digitized. They are free to use provided you credit the photographer and the NGDC as the source. The would be really useful for educators and for powerpoint presentations. The only drawback is that they are in TIF format and some of them could use some retouching. (Photo by University of Colorado, made available by NOAA/NGDC)

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New Sheet Piling Installation Manual

February 28, 2008 rockman Comments Off

The North American Steel Sheet Piling Association (NASSPA) has released a Sheet Piling Installation Manual. It has a nice overview of different hammer systems and covers issues such as driving systems and methods, templates, cofferdams, driving corrections, driving assistance and extraction. (Photo courtesy of NASSPA)

NASSPA promotes the use of steel sheet piling through the development and dissemination of technical information. This guide was compiled to assist the designer, contractor, or owner with the construction of steel sheet pile walls.

Download the Steel Sheet Piling Installation Guide – Best Practices

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Available Resources

Second Issue of International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories [Official This Time]

February 19, 2008 rockman Comments Off

The International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories has formally announced their second issue. Apparently when I posted about it previously, they had only two of the four papers.

This second issue contains four case histories that come with additional downloads. In particular, check out Dr. Edmund Medley’s Paper on the 2006 Hawaii Earthquakes. He has some neat photos including some in 3-D (more about his 3-D photos).

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Series of Articles on Seismic Analysis

February 19, 2008 rockman Comments Off

I had an earthquake engineering course in my geological engineering undergraduate program, and an excellent teacher, but man, the math gave me fits! Well, apparently my time has finally come to make the effort to understand it again. A retired Canadian geophysicist/engineer is writing a series of articles on seismic analysis. Read more… (Photo by trochee)

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Ground-Based Stereo Photography in Geoengineering

February 18, 2008 rockman Comments Off

Stereo photography has long been a tool for geoengineers with respect to aerial photos. But many people are not aware that you can use stereo photography with ground based targets to create 3-D photos. I beleive the technical term is terrestrial photogrammetry (useful if you want some technical articles on the subject). [Red/cyan anaglyph by E. Mathieson]

Dr. Edmund Medley of Geosyntec, owner of the Bimrocks website, has a page on the topic of 3-D Photos in Geoengineering at the GeoEngineer.org website. On it he has several PDF versions of presentations on the topic that have many examples of the applications of this type of thing to geoengineering projects and suggestions for how to implement it.

Furthermore, Dr. Medley extended a gracious offer to mail Red/Cyan anaglyph 3-D glasses to any GeoPrac.net visitors who are interested. Contact him through his Bimrocks website.

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Geo-Institute Website Changes

January 22, 2008 rockman Comments Off

The Geo-Institute of the ASCE has made some changes to their online services. For starters, they have now posted online versions of the Geo-Strata magazine. The only catch is you have to be a member to read them. Additionally, they now have a blog with an associated RSS news feed. If you don’t use RSS feeds, you can always head over to our Outside News and Blogs page where we have already incorporated this new blog’s feed into our aggregated news.

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Utah Releases Landslide Susceptibility Map

January 9, 2008 rockman Comments Off

The Utah Geologic Survey has released a "Landslide Susceptibility Map of Utah". They apparently relied quite heavily on GIS based thresholding of existing slope angles but only after they had statistically analyzed failure angles for particular geologic units. So it sounds like they throw the known landslides, the geologic map of Utah and a DEM into the GIS a blend it all up. Perhaps a slight oversimplification!

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Free Online Access to Natural Hazards Journal

November 1, 2007 rockman Comments Off

Springer, publisher of a number of geo-related journals and books is having a promotion offering free online access to their Natural Hazards journal. The access is good for 30 days from October 22 so go check it out now. (Image copyright Springer).

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