Annual Report Year 2010 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

PROGRAM AREAS
Geotechnical Engineering
Active, vibrant faculty excels in teaching, research, and service
The Geotechnical Engineering Program continues
to excel in teaching, research, and service,
and continues to grow.
The group welcomed Adrian Rodriguez-
Marek in August as an associate professor with
tenure.
Also, Tom Brandon, who manages the
graduate applications and admissions for
the group, reports that the group is seeing its
largest number of graduate applications and
matriculated students since the inception of the
program. This is likely a result of an increasingly
active and vibrant faculty combined with
continual enhancement of the teaching and
research facilities.
Brief descriptions of each faculty member’s
26 | VIA REPORT | 2010
activities over the past year are presented
below.
T.L. Brandon’s research and consulting in
the past year focused on projects with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is sponsoring
research at Virginia Tech investigating
topics such as the undrained strength distribution
of soft clays, the use of the cone penetrometer
for soil classification and undrained strength
determination in New Orleans area clays, assessment
of the seepage conditions for the London
Avenue Canal full-scale load test, and strength
and compressibility correlations for lower Mississippi
valley soils.
Brandon is a member of the Mississippi Valley
Division Geotechnical Criteria Application
Team and the geotechnical and construction QA
team.
During the past year he has been active in the
analyses conducted for the New Orleans area
outfall canals and is currently involved with the
group that is writing a new edition of the Corps’
levee design manual.
Joe Dove continued his collaboration with
Patricia Dove of geosciences and CEE
students Craig Shillaber and Kyle Blakley, both
Via Fellows, Tim Becker, and Erin Haymes to
develop a novel, biologically inspired method to
improve the engineering behavior of soil. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) supports this
project.
See Geotechnical, page 27