Geotechnical Research Overview at UNH

Unless you plan to spend your career working on the space station, everything you design as a civil engineer has to eventually be connected to the earth. Research in geotechnical engineering at UNH concentrates on field and laboratory measurements of the material properties required to predict how different soils will behave under the static and dyanamic loads. In some cases, the structure will be made of soil (earth dams, for example) so you will need soil properties to design the structure itself. As computer models of soils grow more sophisticated and complex, more and different soil properties have to be fed to them as input, including not only stresses and strains at failure, but also at working-stress levels. The geotechnical research at UNH covers a wide variety of topics including:

In-Situ Testing and Measuring While Drilling

SMART Rock in Debris Flow Modeling

Harvestiong Wind Energy From Bridges 

Centrifuge Physical Modeling

Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Seismic Soil-Structure Interaction 

Geo-Environmental Engineering

Laboratory Dynamic Material Characterization

Annual de Alba Lecture in Geotechnical Engineering

Current Active Research Projects