Geotechnical engineering is the discipline of reading the ground — characterizing soil and rock and predicting how they behave under load, water, and time so that foundations, slopes, and earthworks can be designed with confidence.
I work from boring logs, lab data, and in-situ test results to classify soils per USCS/AASHTO, develop index and engineering properties, and translate field observations into design parameters. Atterberg limits, grain-size distribution, moisture-density relationships, and consolidation behavior all feed the picture I hand to designers.
For bridge abutments, embankments, and cut slopes, I run limit-equilibrium analyses (Bishop, Spencer, Morgenstern–Price) in Slope/W with site-specific shear strengths, groundwater regimes, and surcharges. On US-54 / East Kellogg Phase 1 in Wichita, KS, I analyzed slope stability for 28 bridge abutments and developed subsurface profiles to support deep foundation recommendations.
I compute ultimate and allowable bearing capacity using Meyerhof/Hansen/Vesić approaches, paired with elastic and consolidation settlement checks. The deliverable is a foundation recommendation that designers and contractors can build to — shallow vs. deep, depth of embedment, allowable pressures, and constructability constraints.
Using Seep/W and field piezometer data, I model steady-state and transient seepage for slopes, cofferdams, and excavations. Pore-pressure assumptions are the single biggest swing in stability outputs, so I treat the groundwater model with the same rigor as the strength model.