Bentley Systems Written

Written

Course Information
Cristian de Santos is CEO and co-founder at SAALG Geomechanics, an engineering software company that applies the insights of his academic research at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia to the problem of geotechnical uncertainty.

“The reality is, nowadays, we are capable of building almost everything we can imagine, such as metro lines, cities in the middle of the desert and even artificial islands in the middle of the ocean,” he says. “However, many of those big infrastructure projects are losing money, or we are paying too much for them, both financially and environmentally. And part of the reason, in many cases, is because of geotechnical uncertainty.

“At the end of the day, everything is built on the ground or under the ground,” adds de Santos. “When we don’t know how the ground is going to behave, many of our designs are over-engineered with more steel and concrete than needed or excess excavation which contribute to excess CO2 emissions. By not knowing how the ground is going to behave during construction, we suffer delays, accidents, malfunctions, and, in the worst-case scenario, even the failure of our projects.”

Learning Objectives
This article focuses on the unique considerations required for three-sided, prefabricated concrete structures installed below grade along with general site considerations for bridge construction. At the conclusion of this article, the reader should be able to:

• Understand the sources and costs of geotechnical uncertainty.

• Understand weaknesses of traditional geotechnical investigation and how these tend to increase geotechnical uncertainty.

• Understand how and why analyzing data to enrich numerical models reduces geotechnical uncertainty.

• Understand how back-analysis of geotechnical data with genetic algorithms can improve project outcomes.