Graduate Students - Transportation and Geotechnical
Engineering
The
graduate program in Geotechnical Engineering provides specialized
training and research in soil mechanics, foundation engineering,
design of earth structures, soil-structure interaction, and
groundwater movements through and around earth structures. The
program may be oriented toward professional practice or research
applied to practical engineering problems.
Research opportunities are available in the areas of behavior of
soft clays including offshore deposits, constitutive models for
soft and stiff clays, static and dynamic finite element analysis
of foundations, embankments, slopes and earth supported
structures, earth reinforcement, flow in fractured rock, observed
behavior of structures founded on soft clay, soil stabilization,
development of improved design techniques, use of waste materials
in construction, and application of reliability and artificial
intelligence to geotechnical engineering.
Graduate courses are offered in advanced soil properties,
shallow and deep foundations earthwork design,
earth
retaining structures, thermal soil mechanics, and ground
improvement techniques. Students in geotechnical studies usually
work closely with faculty in the structural, groundwater, and
water resources programs offered by the Department.
Starting in 1995, the professors and graduate students in
geotechnical engineering have been involved in a major project in
Brunswick and Topsham, ME. This project used tire chips as a
lightweight fill behind a rigid frame structure, bridge abutments,
and for the bridge approaches. Part of the project used bitumen
coatings on H piles to prohibit bridge settlement. Bitumen, an
asphalt-type material, lubricates the pile so that soil cannot
adhere to the pile and cause downdrag. The University of Maine
installed monitoring devices in different phases of the project to
observe the performance of the tire chips and the bitumen coated
piles.
This project was a collaboration between the civil engineering
firm Haley & Aldrich, Inc. from South Portland, ME, the Maine
Department of Transportation, and the University of Maine. For
more information about this project, check out the September 1997
issue of ASCE's Civil Engineering magazine for the article titled
"Rubber Meets the Road in Maine," on pages 60-63. The article was
written by two professional engineers from Haley & Aldrich, Inc,
Nathan L. Whetten and James Weaver; and two University of Maine
professors,
Dana N. Humphrey and
Thomas C. Sandford.
If the name is bold, click the student's name to view their
2005 abstract.
Geotechnical Engineering Current Graduate Students:
- Nathan Belz
- Jonathan Bussiere
- Austin Harrell
- Meredith Kirk-Lawlor
-
Jeremy Labbe (PDF)
- Nathan Seguin
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