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Fabricated Geomembrane Institute (FGI) presents the webinar – Migrating from the Simplified Method to the AASHTO Stiffness Method for Internal Stability Design of MSE Walls – on July 18, 2024 at noon CDT. Pre-recordings are also available:
July 19, 2024 at Noon AEST (Pre-recorded – Australia)
July 19, 2024 at Noon CAT (Pre-recorded – South Africa)
July 22, 2024 at 5 p.m. JST (Pre-recorded – Japan)
The presenter is Richard J. Bathurst, GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC, it is free to industry professionals and students, a 1.0 PDH is available, and you can register here.
The 2020 edition of the authoritative AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications in the USA has adopted the “Stiffness Method” for the internal stability design of geosynthetic mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. The differences between the legacy Simplified Method (which appears in earlier editions of the AASHTO code) and the Stiffness Method are explained in the lecture.
The Stiffness Method approach represents a paradigm shift on how reinforcement loads are calculated for internal stability design of MSE walls under operational conditions.
The Stiffness Method, as the name implies, includes the tensile stiffness of the reinforcement as a key factor determining the loads developed in reinforcement layers under operational conditions.
The Simplified Method is a strength-based approach which cannot distinguish between reinforcement materials falling within the same classification.
The Stiffness Method has the additional benefit of being seamless across relatively extensible (geosynthetic reinforcement materials) and relatively inextensible materials (steel grids and steel strips). Practical impacts on design outcomes using the two approaches are identified.
Dr. R.J. Bathurst (P. Eng., Ph.D., FRSC, FEIC, FCAE, FCSCE) is professor emeritus of civil engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada where he has taught since 1980. He has authored or co-authored more than 400 papers in referred journals, conference proceedings and research monographs. He has made contributions in the areas of micromechanics of granular soils, railway ballast and track dynamics, pavements, unsaturated soil-geotextile behavior, constitutive modelling of geosynthetic soil reinforcement materials, new test methods and the development of transparent granular soil surrogates for geotechnical laboratory-scale testing.
Dr. Bathurst’s primary research activities are focused on the use of geosynthetic and metallic reinforcement in earth retaining wall systems, numerical modelling, seismic performance and design of these systems, probabilistic design of reinforced and unreinforced soil structures, reliability-based design, load and resistance factor design (LRFD) calibration of soil-structures, and LRFD code development.
Dr. Bathurst is editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed technical journal Geosynthetics International, published by the Institute of Civil Engineers in the UK, associate editor of the journal Geotextiles and Geomembranes and will shortly begin a three-year term as the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Geomechanics published by the ASCE.