SlashGeo pointed me to LandSerf, an interesting bit of free GIS software (not open source) for viewing and analysis of DEMs, TINs, and other files in 3D. It uses OpenGL for the 3D graphics, and […]
A 12 million cubic meter landslide occurred in Wulong county in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality on Friday. There are some excellent blog posts on this rockslide at Dave’s Landslide Blog. This massive failure occurred in […]
UC Berkley has a bunch of lectures online, including three geoengineering themed ones. It appears that they were all from lectures given as a part of the 27th Annual GeoEngineering Distinguished Lecture Series on May 8, 2009. So if you have an hour plus to kill per lecture (and I haven’t yet), you can check out one of the following.
[Updated Thursday May 29, 2009 – 1:00 PM PDT] Added a photo of the AIS Kaiser S2 excavator (spider excavator), and added photos of the Devil’s Slide debris dump where they have put the landslide material removed and the material from the tunnel excavation. [/Update]
Grant Wilcox, Geology Branch Chief with CALTRANS Office of Geotechnical Design West gave a presentation on the Devil’s Slide repair along PCH Highway 1 at the Southwest Geotechnical Engineer’s Conference on May 12 in Phoenix. I’ve posted about the project here before. When I saw Mr. Wilcox, I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. At the beginning of his presentation he made light of his being on You-Tube…then it clicked! He gave a nice overview of the history of the failures, the geology, and the tunnel project. What follows are a few quick tidbits from his talk based on my notes. (Photo via Caltrans site).
In this month’s ASTM updates, there is a new standard for determining the laboratory density of soil specimens. Not having a standard for this item was a common problem for us in our practice. The lab would give us a density on ring samples by weiging, drying and weighing again using the known volume of the rings, but there was never any standard to go with it. Other updates this month include ones related to dimension stone, fiber reinforced concrete, sulfate content of soils, and calcium and magnesium content of water.
Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I’m a geek, I’ve been wrapped up in a new programming project with PHP and the Twitter API. Its going to be a new feature on the […]
More videos! French Company G.T.S. has posted some great videos on rockfall protection systems on their YouTube channel. I don’t speak French, so I can’t give you any more info on the company (although their website looks like it has plenty of info!). But the videos cover the preparation of, drilling for, and installation or rockfall protection fences and barriers as well as a couple of general rockfall ones. They just have video with background music, so no worries about a language barrier. You can watch the installation video below.
Given the earthquake risk from the Wasatch Fault in Utah and the already steep landslide prone terrain in the area, there is definitely cause for concern about the potential for major landslides in the region. […]
A temporary micropile underpinning foundation system was used to support the abutments of the US 69 bridge over the Kansas River near Kansas City, KS while repairs to the abutment bearing devices were performed. This post is based on my notes from the presentation titled “Emergency Micropile Underpining of the U.S. 69 Truss – Kansas River Bridge” by Jim Brennan, Assistant [State?] Geotechnical Engineer with KDOT. It was the first presentation of the 34th Southwest Geotechnical Engineers Conference in Phoenix this week. Read on for more.
[Editor] Updated Thursday May 28, 2009 2:15pm [/Editor]
I was able to attend the first full day of the 34th Southwest Geotechnical Conference in Phoenix, AZ yesterday. The conference, sponsored by the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and the FHWA, is going on through tomorrow, and I wish I could have attended the rest of the sessions, but I had to get back to work! There were some very interesting presentations, and I made some valuable contacts that will hopefully result in some additional articles and other content for GeoPrac. Below are some of the highlights for me, some of which I plan to elaborate on in separate posts. When I do, I’ll update this post with the links. The highlights were…
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