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GSI’s Koerner to host webinar on slope stabilization using nailed or anchored geosynthetics

Products | July 19, 2018 | By:

The Geosynthetic Institute (GSI) will sponsor a webinar entitled “In-Situ Stabilization of Soil Slopes Using Nailed or Anchored Geosynthetics,” on Aug. 15, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT. The webinar will be hosted by Dr. Robert M. Koerner. GMA member companies and their employees receive discounted rates on all GSI webinar and short course registrations.

The sliding of soil slopes in the form of localized landslides represents an annual loss of $2–5 billion in property and infrastructure damage in the United States and an associated 25–50 casualties. Theoretically, such failures are readily analyzed using such methods as simplified Bishop’s for rotational surfaces and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wedge method for translational surfaces. For existing slopes, which cannot be reconstructed due to structures at the top or toe of the slope, however, an in-situ remedial method is necessary.

This webinar will focus on a geosynthetic placed on the existing soil’s surface and then nailed or anchored into the soil beyond the potential failure surface. Originally called “anchored spidernetting,” this remedial method provides several benefits, each of which increases the factor-of-safety (FS), including:

  • Increases soil friction
  • Increases soil cohesion
  • Nails penetrate the failure plane
  • Geosynthetic force is added along potential failure plane
  • Moment due to geosynthetic at ground surface exists

Numeric examples including these benefits will be given illustrating the resulting increases in FS values. Original field trials in the 1980s will be shown using a gathered knit geotextile and hand-driven soil nails. Interestingly, all activity then ceased for some 20 years, perhaps due to the 1986 patent on the technique thwarting the method’s implementation. Since 2010, however, at least ten manufacturers, contractors and developers have taken up the concept using different soil-covering materials, as well as various nailing or anchoring systems. Each of these newer methods will be illustrated and compared.

Participants will become familiar with details of this in-situ soil slope stabilization method that is a juxtaposition of geosynthetics and ground modification. The FS improvements are illustrated through theories and examples, as well as descriptions of the commercially available approaches to the technique. This webinar will seek to lead to the mitigation of a large number of shallow soil slope failures along highways and near structures on private and public lands.

This webinar will be beneficial for owners of sensitive or quasi-stable soil slopes in both the public and private sectors; federal, state and regional geotechnical, transportation and environmental engineers; engineers from municipal districts and townships; private and municipal land developers, architectural and landscape designers; general civil consulting engineers; testing laboratories servicing these organizations; manufacturers of geosynthetic materials; ground modification contractors and installers of in-situ soil slope stabilization methods; academic and research groups; and others desiring technically related information on this important aspect of our constructed infrastructure.

The webinar’s instructor, Dr. Koerner, is professor emeritus of civil engineering at Drexel University, and founder and director emeritus of the Geosynthetic Institute.

Webinars cost $200.00 for GSI and Geosynthetic Materials Association (GMA) members, and $250.00 for nonmembers. Successful completion of a multiple-choice test after the webinar carries 1.5 professional development hours (PDH).

For more information or to register, visit www.geosynthetic-institute.org/webinar.htm.

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