Category: Blog Post (Page 1 of 4)

The University of Oklahoma’s Geotechnical Engineering research group has a close relationship with many of the local geotechnical engineering consulting firms in the area.  These firms donate drill rig time and in situ testing demonstrations for class exercises as well as provide student event and conference sponsorship.  In addition, Terracon has been supporting select OU Geotechnical Engineering graduate students with scholarship monies for the past TEN years.  We appreciate their scholarship support of our students and encourage more companies to join our consortium. 

I’m giving a webinar about the seismic behavior of helical piles in dense sands for the National Council of Structural Engineers Association (NCSEA), Tuesday, June 5th at noon central.

https://www.pathlms.com/ncsea/courses/6884/webinars/3332

Join me!

Come hear some great speakers and learn interesting information about deep foundations at SuperPile 2018 in NYC June 27-29.

http://www.dfi.org/dfieventlp.asp?13324

The technical committee meetings start on Wednesday, June 27th (the Helical Pile and Tieback Committee (HPTC) meeting is at 3:15-4:45 pm in Ziegfeld).

I’m speaking about the damping characteristics of grouped helical piles in dense sands on Thursday, June 28th at 11:50 am in Parallel Session B, Session2: Helical Piles, which is to be held in Salon 2 on the 5th Floor.   There are many other great topics to learn about.  Come out and see us!

http://www.dfi.org/update/DFI%20SUPERPILE%202018%20-%20Full%20Conference%20Program.pdf

Thanks to the sponsors, National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) for sponsoring the 2nd Early Career Workshop at Case Western Reserve University (Case) on May 20-22, 2018.

https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/2018earlycareergeotechfacultyworkshop/

With 40 junior faculty and post-doctoral research associates in attendance, we had some lively discussions and great speakers. The goal was to help these young faculty learn to navigate the academic system and be resilient in their academic journey.

Here are some good links to resources that came out of that workshop.

Don’t forget about all the great resources for faculty at the USUCGER website!  http://usucger.org/

Mentoring Best Practices: http://suadvance.syr.edu/initiatives/networking%20initiative/MentoringResources.html

Bergey Windpower and Dr. Amy Cerato will work together on a Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Competitive Improvement Project (CIP) grant to design a helical pile foundation for the 15kW turbine and self-supporting lattice tower to increase the speed of installation and lower the cost.  Bergey and Dr. Cerato have worked together before on a successful OCAST project when they studied helical anchor behavior under long-term cyclic loading for use with their guyed towers and found that the 3- and 4- helix configuration worked well.

Read the article to find out more!

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/small-wind-turbine-makers-bolstered-by-energy-department-grants#gs.qQQcVZ0

Did you miss my keynote presentation?  I’m sure you are disappointed – but while I work to video capture the presentation and release it to a wider audience, check out this great video cut of our helical pile seismic research project at the University of California San Diego.  Thanks again goes to Aaron Wheeler of Torcsill Foundations for not only vetting, hiring and overseeing the videographers onsite, but also cutting and editing all the documentaries of our test!

Enjoy!