Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. Geotechnical engineering is important in civil engineering, but also has applications in military, mining, petroleum and other engineering disciplines that are concerned with construction occurring on the surface or within the ground. Geotechnical engineering uses principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics to investigate subsurface conditions and materials; determine the relevant physical/mechanical and chemical properties of these materials; evaluate stability of natural slopes and man-made soil deposits; assess risks posed by site conditions; design earthworks and structure foundations; and monitor site conditions, earthwork and foundation construction.
NASTRAN is a finite element analysis (FEA) program that was originally developed for NASA in the late 1960s under United States government funding for the aerospace industry. The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) was one of the principal and original developers of the publicly available NASTRAN code. NASTRAN source code is integrated in a number of different software packages, which are distributed by a range of companies.
Seismic analysis is a subset of structural analysis and is the calculation of the response of a building structure to earthquakes. It is part of the process of structural design, earthquake engineering or structural assessment and retrofit in regions where earthquakes are prevalent.
In geotechnical civil engineering, the p-y method is a method of analyzing the ability of deep foundations to resist loads applied in the lateral direction. This method uses the finite difference method and p-y graphs to find a solution. P-y graphs are graphs which relate the force applied to soil to the lateral deflection of the soil. In essence, non-linear springs are attached to the foundation in place of the soil. The springs can be represented by the following equation:
A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths.
The finite element method (FEM), is a numerical method for solving problems of engineering and mathematical physics. Typical problem areas of interest include structural analysis, heat transfer, fluid flow, mass transport, and electromagnetic potential. The analytical solution of these problems generally require the solution to boundary value problems for partial differential equations. The finite element method formulation of the problem results in a system of algebraic equations. The method approximates the unknown function over the domain. To solve the problem, it subdivides a large system into smaller, simpler parts that are called finite elements. The simple equations that model these finite elements are then assembled into a larger system of equations that models the entire problem. FEM then uses variational methods from the calculus of variations to approximate a solution by minimizing an associated error function.
Z88 is a software package for the finite element method (FEM) and topology optimization. A team led by Frank Rieg at the University of Bayreuth started development in 1985 and now the software is used by several universities, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. Z88 is capable of calculating two and three dimensional element types with a linear approach. The software package contains several solvers and two post-processors and is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Unix/Linux computers in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Benchmark tests conducted in 2007 showed a performance on par with commercial software.
LUSAS is a UK-based developer and supplier of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) application software products that bear the same name.
Klaus-Jürgen Bathe is a civil engineer, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founder of ADINA R&D, who specializes in computational mechanics. Bathe is considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of finite element analysis and its applications.
Slope stability analysis is performed to assess the safe design of a human-made or natural slopes and the equilibrium conditions. Slope stability is the resistance of inclined surface to failure by sliding or collapsing. The main objectives of slope stability analysis are finding endangered areas, investigation of potential failure mechanisms, determination of the slope sensitivity to different triggering mechanisms, designing of optimal slopes with regard to safety, reliability and economics, designing possible remedial measures, e.g. barriers and stabilization.
SVSLOPE is a slope stability analysis program developed by SoilVision Systems Ltd.. The software is designed to analyze slopes using both the classic "method of slices" as well as newer stress-based methods. The program is used in the field of civil engineering to analyze levees, earth dams, natural slopes, tailings dams, heap leach piles, waste rock piles, and anywhere there is concern for mass wasting. SVSLOPE finds the factor of safety or the probability of failure for the slope. The software makes use of advanced searching methods to determine the critical failure surface.
ADINA is a commercial engineering simulation software program that is developed and distributed worldwide by ADINA R & D, Inc. The company was founded in 1986 by Dr. Klaus-Jürgen Bathe, and is headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, United States.
A finite element limit analysis (FELA) uses optimisation techniques to directly compute the upper or lower bound plastic collapse load for a mechanical system rather than time stepping to a collapse load, as might be undertaken with conventional non-linear finite element techniques. The problem may be formulated in either a kinematic or equilibrium form.
StressCheck is a finite element analysis software product developed and supported by ESRD, Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri. It is one of the first commercially available FEA products to utilize the p-version of the finite element method and support the requirements of Simulation Governance.
VisualFEA is a finite element analysis program running on MS Windows and Mac OS X platforms. The program is being developed and distributed by Intuition Software, Inc. in South Korea, and is used chiefly for structural and geotechnical analysis. The strongest point of the program is its intuitive and user-friendly usage based on graphical pre- and postprocessing capabilities. VisualFEA has educational functions for teaching and learning structural mechanics and finite element analysis through graphical simulation. Thus, this program is widely used in college courses related to structural mechanics and finite element method.
The Newmark's sliding block analysis method is an engineering that calculates permanent displacements of soil slopes during seismic loading. Newmark analysis does not calculate actual displacement, but rather is an index value that can be used to provide an indication of the structures likelihood of failure during a seismic event. It is also simply called Newmark's analysis or Sliding block method of slope stability analysis.
David Malcolm Potts is a professor of Analytical Soil Mechanics at Imperial College London and the head of the Geotechnics Section at Imperial College. He has been a member of the academic staff at Imperial College since 1979, responsible for teaching the use of analytical methods in geomechanics and the design of slopes and earth retaining structures, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
DIANA is a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) solver developed and distributed by DIANA FEA BV and several other resellers worldwide. The software is utilised at both ends of the market, by small consultancies and global engineering consultants, research institutions and is utilised by many highly respected educational institutions worldwide in both civil and geotechnical engineering courses. DIANA is equipped with very powerful solvers which enables the analysis of a wide range of structures, large and small - with basic or advanced analyses. A large selection of material models, element libraries and analysis procedures are available within the package which gives DIANA a large degree of flexibility. The main fields of use of DIANA include design and analysis of dams & dikes; tunnels & underground structures; oil & gas & historical constructions and large reinforced concrete structures. Some of the specialised analyses available in DIANA for these fields of use include seismic analysis; fire analysis and young hardening concrete.
Medhat Haroun was an Egyptian-American expert on earthquake engineering. He wrote more than 300 technical papers and received the Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award (2006) and the Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1992) from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Scott William Sloan FRS FREng FAA FTSE is laureate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle.
