About This Course

This course includes four lectures, by Jean-Louis Briaud (USA), Zenon Medina-Cetina (USA) and Marco Uzielli (Italy), An Bing Huang (Taiwan) and Marc Ballouz (Lebanon). The titles and the summaries are as follows:

Bridge scour depth prediction and levee topping erosion, by Jean-Louis Briaud (96 min)

Erosion of soils related to scour and measurement of erodibility are illustrated and analysed from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge case history. Levee overtopping is then introduced with development of design charts. Third, learned lessons from two disasters US case histories related to overtopping are formulated.

Risk and Geotechnical Engineering, by Zenon Medina-Cetina (USA) and Marco Uzielli (Italy) (100 min)

First, the basics and applications of Risk Assessment to GE are introduced. Then, an overview of the principles, methods and implications of framing GE practice within a Quantitative Risk Assessment is given. The proposed approach is based on common established practice. The homogenization of technical terms of Risk, a quantitative framework reference of Risk and corresponding Risk estimation methods are discussed. Illustrative case studies of various degrees of complexity are presented.

Landslide risk mitigations with a special emphasis on observation with fiber optic sensors, by An Bing Huang (34 min)

The fiber optic sensors technique (FOST) is first introduced. How this technique can be performed is then explained in case of slopes subjected to rainfall. The study of illustrative case history highlights the benefits of FOST and observational method to mitigate landslides.

Challenges in Shoring Deep Excavations in Urban Areas, by Marc Ballouz (74 min)

Basics related to limit equilibrium methods for the study of deep excavation stability are introduced. Focus is made on the mechanism of reinforcing effect when rigid inclusions are used. Focus is given on the role of water flow under shoring excavation. Some illustrative case histories show how the challenging situations can be overcome.