I was watching the final season of The Bear, when one of the characters mentioned "we need a geotech" to deal with their sink hole problems.

Yes, its just a tiny silly moment. But it's the first time I've ever heard our profession on TV or in popular culture. It has me overly excited.

Have you heard shout outs to Geotechs on any other show or movie?

Hi all, I am studying for the PE and am very confused. I looked up Nordlund method for a problem requesting skin friction/uplift capacity in the NCEES Geotech practice exam and followed FHWA - NHI - 06-088 closely and got it wrong. I noticed FHWA - NHI - 06-088 has a sine function in the equation, however the solution indicates that you are supposed to use tangent. Which one is correct? Does the practice exam have a mistake in the solution or if not, where do I find the equation with tangent function in it in my references?

Problem

Reference

Solution

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some honest career advice from people working in geology, especially those outside Greece.

I'm a geology graduate from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece) and I also hold an MSc in Water Resources from the National Technical University of Athens.

I originally wanted to work in hydrogeology and water resources. However, the job market in Greece has been quite discouraging. There are relatively few positions for geologists, salaries are generally low and many jobs that geologists could do are often given to civil or geotechnical engineers because engineers have stronger professional recognition and licensing.

This has made me wonder whether I should transition into geotechnical geology.

My questions are:

Is geotechnical geology a better long-term career than hydrogeology?

Which field has better opportunities internationally (Europe, Australia, Canada, etc.)?

Would someone with my educational background be competitive in geotechnical consulting, or would I need additional qualifications?

I'm willing to relocate abroad if there are better opportunities. I would really appreciate hearing from people working in these sectors.

Hi All,

I created a soil boring volume calculator after noticing there wasn't one that was readily available online. A user can input multiple borings with various depths and soil types. I figure it will be useful for quick in field estimates for drilling and soil disposals. Check it out and let me know your thoughts!

https://borcalc.com/

Anyone a geotechnical engineer in the Coquitlam area want to help look at something for me?

Hi everyone, Hope all are doing well.

I have a question regarding inclinometer installation for monitoring lateral (horizontal) deflections of shoring systems such as king post walls and diaphragm walls.

How deep should the inclinometer casing typically be embedded below the excavation level to obtain a reliable fixed reference? Is there a recommended rule of thumb (e.g., based on excavation depth or expected failure mechanism), or does it depend entirely on the geotechnical conditions and design?

I'd appreciate any guidance, relevant standards, or practical experience.

Thanks!

Hello there, I’ve been a senior field tech for the last 6 years. I’ve done an absurd amount of HA/DCPs to determine the bearing pressure for retaining walls etc. do any engineers in here know of an alternative to gather useful data? Or at least using a gas powered augur to get to the depths to run a DCP.

Any help would be appreciated, my back and shoulders appreciate it too.

Hello everyone,

I am trying to calibrate a PLAXIS 2D model of a rubble mound breakwater constructed on soft marine clay.

The overall settlement magnitude is reasonably close to the reference, but I still cannot reproduce the deformation pattern.

Model information

• Breakwater materials: Mohr-Coulomb
• Soft clay: Soft Soil Creep (SSC)
• Sandy layers: Hardening Soil (HS)
• Geogrid element with interfaces on both sides (Rinter = 0.9)
• Staged construction using Consolidation phases
• Final consolidation period: 800 days
• Updated mesh enabled during large deformation stages

Soil profile

• Soft clay layer over sandy layers.
• Sandy layers are classified as silty sand (SM-ML and SM-CH).
• SPT values range approximately from 40 to more than 50.

What I have already checked

• SSC parameters (λ*, κ*, μ*)
• OCR
• Unit weights
• HS stiffness parameters (E50ref, Eoedref, Eurref)
• Sandy layer permeability
• Drained and Undrained A behaviour
• Geogrid axial stiffness
• Interface properties
• Mesh refinement
• Construction sequence
• Consolidation time

Current problem

The maximum geogrid axial force in my model is about 153 kN/m, while the reference model reaches about 170 kN/m.

More importantly, my geogrid axial force distribution has a dip at the center, whereas the reference model has a clear peak beneath the center of the breakwater.

Also, my settlement profile is much flatter and does not develop the expected bowl-shaped settlement.

At this stage I feel that the issue is probably not only related to soil parameters.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem in PLAXIS?

Which aspects would you investigate next?

Could it be related to:

• Initial stress generation (K0)?
• Interface implementation?
• Geogrid activation?
• Consolidation settings?
• Something else?

PLAXIS 2D model geometry of a geogrid-reinforced rubble mound breakwater constructed on a soft clay layer over sandy deposits.

Vertical displacement (Uy) contours after the final construction stage. Although the settlement magnitude is reasonable, the deformation pattern is not bowl-shaped as reported in the reference study.

Current PLAXIS 2D results showing the axial force distribution in the geogrid. The numerical model is under calibration to achieve better agreement with the reference design.

Reference axial force distribution obtained from the design report, used as the target response for numerical model calibration.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everyone, my company has been using Geokon 8940 Tiltmeters on a project for the past few years taking measurements of the deflection and rotation of concrete columns at ten minute intervals. Recently, my coworker has become to busy with other projects to retrieve the data so I have been tasked with retrieving the data. After download the Geokon agent software and transferring the project files I recently took my first round of readings. However, when going through the data I noticed that my deflection data is three orders of magnitude greater than what my coworker was getting (For example,he was getting 0.038 millimeters I am getting 38 millimeters). I thought this was a unit error at first but after confirming with my coworker we both are getting readings in millimeters. The deflection values are near identical with the exception of the order of magnitude difference and this issue occurs immediately upon my readings starting so I am confident this is some glitch with the software/hardware that is causing my readings to be incorrect. Has anyone else had this issue or a similar issue before and have any advice/insight into why this is happening? If there is another subreddit/forum that could help me answer this question I would also appreciate being directed there.

How are you guys staying on top of 811 ticket renewals when you've got multiple crews going at once? We're running four excavation teams right now and last month two tickets expired before the work wrapped up. One crew went ahead and dug anyway because they assumed the locates were still good, and now I'm sweating a possible fine if anything got nicked.

We're tracking it all in a shared spreadsheet and it's turned into a mess. Tickets slip through, nobody's clear on whose job it is to call in the updates, and positive responses get missed constantly. Is there a smarter way to manage this, or is everybody just white-knuckling it manually?

neighbour's excavation crack on my driveway pretty straightforward. is it still moving? i've taken photos but that doesn't tell me much.

i've been reading about crack monitors and tell-tales. seems like something i could install myself but i don't know what's actually useful vs what's just cheap junk.

what's the minimum monitoring setup that would actually hold up if this goes to dispute? i'm in sydney, reactive clay soil. excavation is maybe 2m deep, about 1.5m from fence line.

do i need a surveyor with a total station? or will crack gauges do the job? council and insurance are both useless so i need something that counts as evidence.

anyone dealt with this?