About our Sessions

Transportation infrastructures in Texas face diverse geotechnical challenges including soft soils, expansive soils, soil erosion, and extreme climate patterns such as prolonged droughts and heavy rainfalls. This puts at risk the safety and durability of transportation infrastructures above ground, including embankments and pavements.

Our work focuses on evaluating 1) the design methodologies of geosynthetic-reinforced pile-supported embankments in soft soils and 2) the impact of expansive soils on pavement systems in changing climates. We leverage information from well-known case studies to validate our theoretical models and state-of-the-practice models, which subsequently all be used to further explore insights into these soil structures and their resiliency against geohazards and extreme climates.
We also investigate the impact of soil variability on these soil structures, exploring how the variability in soil strength and hydraulic conductivities affect the consolidation settlements of the infrastructure systems. We also study how climate variability impacts the soil-structure interaction. Insights on the performance of practical design procedures in various scenarios are provided.

In summary, we merge fundamental geotechnical knowledge with emerging modeling technologies like advanced numerical analysis and probabilistic analysis for informative practical analyses. This synergy enhances our insights into these practical and scientific challenges with the goal of improving infrastructure standards and codes, thereby raising the grade.