Geostructures

The effects of societal and demographic demand changes, coupled with climate change has highlighted the problems with our ageing transport and infrastructure assets – leading to significant negative impacts globally. Particularly vulnerability is associated with ground assets, where failures at key points can catastrophically cascade. For example, embankment failures and flooding affect both transportation and urban structures, and inundating our water supply and discharge systems, all can have huge consequences far beyond initial impacts. Adding the drive for carbon and cost reduction in infrastructure projects underlines the need for us to fully understand how structures, soils and water interact with each other to enable innovative solutions to improve infrastructure performance, safety and long-term integrity in as cost-efficient way.

At NBIF we combine structural engineering with geotechnical expertise to investigate, monitor and improve understanding of how structures and the earth interact with each other. The stiffness of the structural elements influences the behaviour of the soil while the behaviour of the soil influences loading in the structural elements. Working with industry, we investigate these complex load paths and potential failure mechanisms for geostructures including foundations, earth retaining structures such as basement walls and tunnels, ground improvements and reinforced slopes using near full-scale or full-scale elements, fully instrumented and under controlled conditions.