Geotechnical engineering, also known as geotechnics, is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles and methods of soil mechanics and rock mechanics for the solution of engineering problems and the design of engineering works. It also relies on knowledge of geology, hydrology, geophysics, and other related sciences.
Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides. Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to. They are used to bound soils between two different elevations often in areas of terrain possessing undesirable slopes or in areas where the landscape needs to be shaped severely and engineered for more specific purposes like hillside farming or roadway overpasses. A retaining wall that retains soil on the backside and water on the frontside is called a seawall or a bulkhead.
In engineering, a foundation is the element of a structure which connects it to the ground, and transfers loads from the structure to the ground. Foundations are generally considered either shallow or deep. Foundation engineering is the application of soil mechanics and rock mechanics in the design of foundation elements of structures.
Hangzhou Bay Bridge is a long 35.7 km (22.2 mi) highway bridge with two separate cable-stayed portions, built across the mouth of Hangzhou Bay in the eastern coastal region of China. It connects the municipalities of Jiaxing and Ningbo in Zhejiang province.
In construction or renovation, underpinning is the process of strengthening the foundation of an existing building or other structure. Underpinning may be necessary for a variety of reasons:
In geotechnical engineering, a caisson is a watertight retaining structure used, for example, to work on the foundations of a bridge pier, for the construction of a concrete dam, or for the repair of ships. Caissons are constructed in such a way that the water can be pumped out, keeping the work environment dry. When piers are being built using an open caisson, and it is not practical to reach suitable soil, friction pilings may be driven to form a suitable sub-foundation. These piles are connected by a foundation pad upon which the column pier is erected.
The Narrows Bridge is a freeway and railway crossing of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia.
A pile driver is a device used to drive piles into soil to provide foundation support for buildings or other structures. The term is also used in reference to members of the construction crew that work with pile-driving rigs.
A girder bridge is a bridge that uses girders as the means of supporting its deck. The two most common types of modern steel girder bridges are plate and box.
The Loughor railway viaduct carries the West Wales Line across the River Loughor. It is adjacent, and runs parallel to, the Loughor road bridge. The 1880 viaduct was granted Grade II listed building status. Before it was demolished in early 2013, the viaduct was the last remaining timber viaduct designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
A dolphin is a man-made marine structure that extends above the water level and is not connected to shore.
Rochester Bridge in Rochester, Medway was for centuries the lowest fixed crossing of the River Medway in South East England. There have been several generations of bridge at this spot, and the current "bridge" is in fact four separate bridges: the "Old" bridge and "New" bridge carrying the A2 road, "Railway" bridge carrying the railway and the "Service" bridge carrying service pipes and cables. The bridge links the towns of Strood and Rochester in Medway. All except the railway bridge are owned and maintained by the Rochester Bridge Trust.
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. A pile or piling is a vertical structural element of a deep foundation, driven or drilled deep into the ground at the building site.
A pile cap is a thick concrete mat that rests on concrete or timber piles that have been driven into soft or unstable ground to provide a suitable stable foundation. It usually forms part of the deep foundation of a building, typically a multi-story building, structure or support base for heavy equipment, or of a bridge. The cast concrete pile cap distributes the load of the building into the piles. A similar structure to a pile cap is a "raft", which is a concrete foundation floor resting directly onto soft soil which may be liable to subsidence.
Holzbrücke Rapperswil-Hurden is a wooden pedestrian bridge between the city of Rapperswil and the village of Hurden crossing the upper Lake Zürich (Obersee) in Switzerland. The prehistoric timber piles discovered to the west of the Seedamm date back to 1523 BC. The island settlement Technikum is a prehistoric pile-dwelling settlement which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps. The first wooden footbridge led across Lake Zürich, followed by several reconstructions at least until the late 2nd century AD when the Roman Empire built a 6 metres (20 ft) wide wooden bridge. Between 1358 and 1360, Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, built a 'new' wooden bridge across the lake that was used until 1878. On 6 April 2001, the reconstructed wooden footbridge was opened, being the longest wooden bridge in Switzerland.
Screw piles, sometimes referred to as screw anchors, screw-piles, helical piles, and helical anchors are a steel screw-in piling and ground anchoring system used for building deep foundations. Screw piles are manufactured using varying sizes of tubular hollow sections for the pile or anchors shaft.
The Surtees Bridge is a road bridge carrying the A66(T) road east west across the River Tees near Thornaby-on-Tees in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees in the north east of England. The bridge is situated one kilometre upriver from Stockton town centre, just upriver of Surtees Rail Bridge – a rail bridge carrying the Tees Valley Line. Built at a cost of £14.3 million the bridge replaces an earlier Surtees Bridge (1981) that showed signs of distress resulting from excessive settlement.
The Franki piling system is a method used to drive expanded base cast-in-situ concrete (Franki) piles. It was developed by Belgian Engineer Edgard Frankignoul in 1909.
The Old Rhine Bridge at Konstanz spans the Seerhein. It is a combined road and railway bridge. In addition to one track of the Upper Rhine Railway at kilometer 413.5, it carries the Konzilstraße, the road that connects the borough of Petershausen with the city centre. The road bridge carries two lanes into the city center and three lanes in the other direction. Additionally, there is a bicycle lane in both directions on the left and a sidewalk on the right. In the 19th century, distance markers were placed along the Rhine; they start counting kilometers at this bridge.
The Samuel De Champlain Bridge, colloquially known as the Champlain Bridge, is a cable-stayed bridge designby architect Poul Ove Jensen and built to replace the original Champlain Bridge over the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec between the Island of Montreal and the South Shore suburbs. The new span is located just north of the original Champlain Bridge, which is currently being demolished. The new bridge carries eight lanes of automobile traffic of the A-10, A-15, and A-20, with one lane in each direction dedicated for buses. It also includes a multi-use lane for cyclists and pedestrians. The central portion of the bridge deck, still under construction, will carry the South Shore branch of the forthcoming Réseau express métropolitain (REM) automated light rail system. At 60 metres (200 ft) wide, the new Champlain Bridge is the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world that uses two planes of cables.
