Grant: Engage Grants Program

Technologies to improve the ground in civil engineering earthworks such as retaining walls, slopes andembankments are advancing rapidly. As just one example, retaining walls constructed with horizontal layers ofadvanced polymeric soil reinforcement sheets have been demonstrated to reduce the cost of conventionalretaining wall solutions by up to 50%. Similar advancements have occurred using soil nails manufactured withfibre reinforced polymer rods. Currently the geotechnical engineering community is migrating from methods ofanalysis and design that describe margins of safety in terms of factors of safety to margins of safety describedin terms of probabilities of failure. The latter is a more rigorous approach and brings geotechnical design intoalignment with structural engineering practice. A challenge in geotechnical engineering is to consider thespatial variability in soils that develop as a result of construction activities or natural depositional processes forthe ground supporting man-made structures. While the theoretical framework to describe spatial properties ofsoil has matured in recent years, implementation within existing computer software programs for the analysisand design of reinforced walls and slopes is lagging. Rocscience offers a program called Slide 7 which is usedwidely in Canada and worldwide. The program is familiar to geotechnical engineers, researchers and students.The program can consider constant soil properties and soil properties with random variability within 2Ddeterministic (factor of safety) and probabilistic stability analysis methods. However, the program cannotaccommodate spatial variability in soil for slopes with complex geometry or layered soils. A 3D version of theprogram can carry out deterministic analysis of slopes with constant soil properties but cannot consider randomor spatial variability of the soil. This Engage grant will provide assistance to Rocscience programmers todevelop new versions of their 2D and 3D Slide program to include soil spatial variability. The new programwill be an essential tool for geotechnical engineers to move the state-of-practice to a modern probabilisticframework in which the influence of spatial variability of soil on the design of reinforced soil walls and slopes