Making design of geostructures simple

Comparing to earthworks that rely on soil strength alone for stability, a geostructure is usually defined as a collection of structural components that internally mobilise the strength and stiffness of ground to resist applied loads.

Having involved in many Geostructural projects, I found that formulating of these projects before starting the design (i.e. obtaining a complete picture about the project being undertaken without going to details of either analytical calculations or feasibility study) would be useful and sometimes essential for better understanding the standards, skills, resources and materials that a project needs. It also assists on defining relationships between team players and projects stakeholders in addition of knowing available alternative methods and even probable obstacles that the project may be faced. Additionally, it can help on effectively orienting tasks between team players and to focus on their relationships. The process is also supportive when there is a need for either peer-reviewing, executing a new design, doing a new inspection or retrofitting a project after passing a long period of time since the original design have been executed.

As an example, a peer-reviewing or design process for soil nailing based on Eurocode, British Standard or FHWA may dictate either a design lead or an engineer to study relevant standards and technical guidelines (more than 500 pages) in addition of other contractual documents. Even by having previous experience, this may not be possible for a project leader or a peer-reviewer in a short period of time. However, a project formulation can help the leader to be prepared and focus on the decisions that should be made for the project in advance.

Relying on previous experience and projects I have done, I have been publishing a newsletters in LinkedIn, ‘Geostructural Design Processes’, providing technical summaries about the design of these structures.

The notes are following the available standards and guidelines, and my effort is to provide a general picture for a designer or a team leader, about what should be generally done in feasibility study, analyses and design phases of these projects based on iTwin (i.e. a technology emerged for fulfilling the global needs for avoiding depletion of natural resources to maintain an ecological balance through optimising the lifecycle of an asset). The idea is to make the content of each process as simple as possible and keep the content précis being able to read by a professional in the field in 10 min. Design processes for below topics were published until now:

-Foundations of geographically distributed infrastructures

-Tower cranes’ foundations

-Working platforms

-Tunnelling-induced damage assessment

-Heavy duty rigid concrete pavement??

-Soil nailed walls

Your feedback would be constructive and immensely appreciated. You can find the newsletter and subscribe to it at??

https://www.dhirubhai.net/newsletters/6985944134142283776/