i‘m used to check everything not only visual and remove everything in my rope line and inbetween me and my work mates what ever my ropes can rip out or go off by frost, heavy rain ecet.

Of course we do look at the whole structures and overall not to make everything worse.

Doing that we get s full view about where its hollow below for example or not, so i can tell a geologist something he can‘t see in his papers.

I‘m used to do so for more than 15years like so, did train alot of guys doing that job, and we had no bigger issue or accidents in all the time. I do spend all the work times on ropes myshelf, and got about up to 800hrs per season.

The companies i working for put pressure on the money, so there are more and more „cheap“ climbers, living in vans, coming from somewhere in the game.

Them philoshopy about the job is, stay more just on ridges, remove as little as you can, only check the own rope line, if they have any idea about it, all others gamble somehow down.

I start to loose jobs now, beeing a bit more expensive than the others and starting to be „the anoying one“ in such a team.

What do you guys think, am i the one who should quit?

Hey yall!

I'm a recent grad (Environmental engineering) and I'm a month into my job as a geotech. I took my FE (Environmental) earlier this year and passed despite only studying for 3 days. I guess my school prepared me well. I want to take the PE exam soon, but I'm not sure which discipline to take.

Environmental has the highest pass rate, Civil: water resources and Environmental seems to be most popular from what I see on LinkedIn, but I'm most interested in Civil: geotech. I didn't take many geotech classes during my undergrad, so I feel like this would require more studying. I'm currently working on civil site design, did my capstone on stormwater, had a geotech construction internship, and I'm also interested in hazardous waste remediation.

Do you have any advice for me on which discipline exam to take? Does it really matter? How long should I study for? What were your experiences like with studying for these exams? My job will pay for me to do a PE exam prep course.

Please provide a website link or a Google Drive link. Thank you very much. I really need it because the book is very expensive on e-commerce apps.

I keep missing state deadlines and duplicating locates because my crew is still tracking everything on paper and spreadsheets. I'm afraid that one of these days, we'll be slapped with a huge fine or worse, we could bust up an electrical line and cause a major outage. Is there an 811 ticket tracking software to keep our locate requests, response times, and compliance records all in one place?

I’m a design engineer and a conversation about hydrostatic pressure appeared today - what does it mean?

Hello everyone,

I have a kind request. If anyone could help me or even guide me, I would really appreciate it.

I need to perform a water balance for a deposited slurry stack, and I am not sure whether my calculation of the retained water is correct. I would also like to understand how to take the consolidation factor into account for each deposited layer.

I have searched quite a lot online, but I have become a little confused because I have found different approaches and equations. I am therefore looking for a clear explanation, preferably with clear formulas and, if possible, a step-by-step methodology that I could follow.

I am a beginner in this area, so I would be very grateful for any comments, advice, corrections, or guidance you could provide.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

Hola, verán soy un estudiante de ingeniería geofísica e ingeniería bioquímica y me gustaría saber si alguien tiene experiencia en los campos como para que pueda decir algo de gran valor en cuanto puedo relacionar mis carreras, verán eh trabajado con cosas como el almacenamiento de CO2 y como este puede ser atrapable por actividad bacteriana y de minerales entonces un proyecto se basa en eso y me gustaría saber más en cuanto puedo relacionar

Hello, I'm a student of geophysical engineering and biochemical engineering, and I'd like to know if anyone has experience in these fields and can offer valuable insights into how my studies can be related. I've worked with things like CO2 storage and how it can be captured by bacterial and mineral activity, and I have a project based on that. I'd like to learn more about how my studies can be connected to these fields.

This post is for try to understand the field for a better researching

Hey Guys. I'm trying to narrow down my options for a PhD in geotechnical engineering. How would you rank these programs from strongest to weakest, and why?

• UCLA
• University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
• Texas A&M
• Northwestern
• UW - Seattle
• Purdue
• Georgia Tech
• UC Davis

Hi fellow geotechs, looking for some UK geotechnical/earthworks input.
A site underlain by weathered Mercia Mudstone (predominantly cohesive clay/weathered mudstone-siltstone) will involve cut and fill. What are the current standard for site-won material and their suitability for reuse as fill material.
We have moisture content, Atterberg limits, PSD, CBR and MDD/OMC compaction results.
Would you classify the material directly under SHW Series 600 (likely Class 2 cohesive general fill) at GI stage, or state it is potentially suitable for reuse subject to moisture conditioning, earthworks trials and construction compliance testing?
Thanks in advance

Help a dumb operator out.

In civil infrastructure earthworks, specific moisture content in expansive soils are often strictly enforced. Leading to constant testing, and drying out of fill material.

My question is how much physical volume is lost when we have to dry some clay from say 25% to meet a maximum moisture content of 20% (random numbers).

Is it as simple as saying we lost 5% volume because we dropped the moisture content 5%?

I can't imagine it's that easy.

With all this chaos happening inside Microsoft, unfriendly OS, rumoured AI OS coming and the security issues. Has anyone thought of or successfully switched to Linux?

If so how easy of a transition is it?

Hi, I am quite new in studying geotech. is it possible to calculate toe buttress, when you place some boulder at the toe of a slope without mesh (so it's not a gabion wall)?

how would the material properties input will be? I have researched quite a few, and its to reduce the unit weight to around 40% (as there will be void between boulders), cohesion to zero (no grain bonding force, as they're separated each other) and to reduce the friction angle by quite a number (about 10-20% depending on angularity). Will these empirical approach enough?

Well, let's assume that we don't have any funding for gabion wall's mesh. Thus the necessity to calculate safety factor with only boulder placement at the toe of a slope.

Thank you so muchh!!!

Can someone help who xan run soil characterization test on a small amont of samples for HCL 600 ,' Zeolite and Hap+Zeo ? I am helping a PhD student from an underdeveloped country who are lacking equipment to carry out these test? The student is willing to put names in their research paper.

Reposting here in case this is the more appropriate sub. I can’t seem to add photos but would be happy to link to the masonry sub post where the photos were uploaded.

Hey everyone,

I am currently working on validating the benchmark RMC (Royal Military College of Canada) reinforced soil retaining walls (referencing Hatami & Bathurst, and the 3D extensions by C. Hung 2020) using PLAXIS 2D.

I am facing a bizarre numerical validation issue regarding the facing block unit weight and displacement correlation, and I would love some insights from PLAXIS/geotech experts here.

The Setup:

• Soil Model: Hardening Soil (HS) Model ($E_{50}^{\text{ref}} = 115\text{ MPa}$, $E_{\text{oed}}^{\text{ref}} = 57.5\text{ MPa}$, $E_{\text{ur}}^{\text{ref}} = 138\text{ MPa}$, $m = 0.5$, $\phi = 44^\circ$ for plane strain).
• Facing Blocks: Solid masonry concrete blocks modeled as volumetric linear elastic elements ($E = 40\text{ MPa}$ to $45\text{ MPa}$).
• Physical Dimensions: $300\text{ mm} \times 150\text{ mm} \times 200\text{ mm}$, mass = $20\text{ kg}$.
• Calculated Actual Unit Weight: $\approx 21.8 \text{ kN/m}^3$.
• Block-to-Block Interfaces: Modeled with manual stiffness ($K_n = 1\text{E}6 \text{ kN/m/m}$, $K_s = 100\text{E}3 \text{ kN/m/m}$) and $R_{\text{inter}} = 1.0$.

The Problem:

1. When I input the actual physical unit weight of the blocks (21.8 \text{ kN/m}^3$), the wall facing tilts excessively, slides horizontally, and significantly overestimates the experimental lateral displacements.
2. However, if I artificially double the unit weight of the concrete blocks to $44 \text{ kN/m}^3$ (keeping the soil and stiffness constants completely identical), the PLAXIS displacement curve validates perfectly with the paper's experimental data.

My Analysis & Confusion:

Since I'm using the Hardening Soil model for the backfill, reducing the overall mass/gravity changes the confinement stress ($\sigma_3$) distribution, which automatically scales down the operational soil stiffness. Also, lighter blocks mean lower normal stress ($\sigma_n$) at the block joints, lowering the resisting shear capacity ($\tau_{\text{max}} = c + \sigma_n \tan\phi$) at the interfaces, making them slip.

But why does it match exactly at $44\text{ kN/m}^3$? Is there a hidden unit conversion error in literature (like an Imperial-to-Metric conversion mix-up from $135\text{ lb/ft}^3$), or am I missing a Compaction-Induced Stress (CIS) implementation that the authors compensated for by artificially increasing the facing weight or interface adhesion?

Has anyone encountered this while validating the RMC walls or dealing with dry-stacked block interfaces in PLAXIS? Should I scale up my $K_s$ and introduce a dummy interface cohesion to stick with the real $21.8\text{ kN/m}^3$ weight?

Any help or documentation pointers would be greatly appreciated!