NEWS 2012

Posted September 11, 2012

Event: September 25, 2012

GSE: Annual Fall Wine & Cheese Event

Location: Faculty Club, University of Alberta

Time: 5:30pm Reception, 6:30pm Presentations

Cost: $5 Members, $10 Non-members, $5 Students
(Student cost includes membership for the year)

Confirm Attendance (By Sept. 20)

Download in iCalendar format

The 2011/2012 season will begin with the traditional Annual Wine and Cheese event. Come out and connect with students and colleagues in the local geotechnical community.

Daniel Meles, Ph.D. Candidate, Geotechnical Engineering, University of Alberta - Construction of Embankment Fills with Tire Derived Aggregates

A field study is undergoing to investigate immediate and long term compression behavior of a highway embankment made from Tire Derived Aggregate (TDA) and TDA mixed with soil. The test embankment is part of an access road and is 80 m long. It contains four different test sections, each 20 m long: Section 1 contains TDA made from Passenger and Light Truck Tire (PLTT), Section 2 contains TDA from Off-The-Road (OTR) truck tire, Section 3 contains TDA from PLTT mixed with soil with a ratio of 50%:50% by volume and Section 4 (control section) is filled with normal soil. The embankment is instrumented with 30 temperature probes, 25 settlement plates, 12 (Time Domain Reflectometers) TDRs and 6 earth pressure cells. TDA was placed in two layers each 3-m-thick, and with 0.5-m-thick soil cap to separate the two layers and 1-m-thick soil cover on the very top. Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) tests were also conducted at different stage of construction. The presentation will briefly discuss construction process, field observation, results from field instrument and FWD during construction.

Sarah Jubinville, M.Sc. Candidate, Geotechnical Engineering, University of Alberta - Prediction of Rainfall Runoff for Soil Cover Modelling

Net infiltration of water is often the largest factor governing the design of an engineered soil cover. Surface runoff is the biggest factor that reduces the quantity of precipitation that may infiltrate into a soil cover. However, there does not appear to be a proven reliable procedure for predicting surface runoff based on measurable properties at the soil surface.

A 22 hectare water-shedding cover constructed in Tasmania, Australia, limits rainfall infiltration into potentially acid generating mine waste rock. Detailed field and laboratory characterization of the hydraulic properties of the soil at the surface of this cover was undertaken. Rainfall runoff was predicted based on these measured hydraulic properties and measured rainfall intensities using an in-house model and SoilCover software. Predictions were then compared to measured runoff quantities. The presentation will discuss the field and laboratory investigation on the soil cover materials, followed by comparison between the measured and predicted rainfall runoff response.