Geotechnical engineers like to say that soil is the foundation for all civil engineering infrastructure.  This is true, as under every building (left picture), road (right picture), dam, or other piece of infrastructure, is soil.  The geotechnical engineer makes sure that the infrastructure is sitting on soil that will not fail, and this is called the foundation.  Foundations are either deep (10-300 ft) or shallow (as thin as one foot).

Often when building new infrastructure, soil is moved around and new hills are created.  The side of these hills are called slopes, and we want to make sure that the slopes stay in place.  This is called slope stability, and can be achieved by either installing plants, rocks, or building retaining walls to keep the soil from moving.

PHOTO BY: GARVER

PHOTO BY: CRAFTON TULL

There are different ways we can measure the behavior of material and characterize how it is behaving or how it will behave.  From remote sensing (using remote sensing to look at soil movement) to nondestructive material characterization (running a test in-place that does not damage the soil) to using computer simulations, such as Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) to predict how soil behaves.