Founder Professor of Engineering
Illinois Center for Transportation, Director
Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory, Director
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professor Al-Qadi is the Founder Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He is also the Director of the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL) and the founding Director of the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT). Prior to that, he was the Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor at Virginia Tech.
A registered professional engineer, Professor Al-Qadi has authored/ coauthored around 600 publications and has delivered more than 550 presentations including numerous keynote lectures.
He has led more than 120 projects to completion; in addition, he is managing about 50 projects annually as an ICT director since 2006.
He is the past president of the ASCE T&DI Board of Governors and the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering.
Professor Al-Qadi has received numerous prestigious national and international honors and awards including the NSF Young Investigator Award, the quadrennial IGS Award, the ASCE James Laurel Prize, the ARTBA Steinberg Award, the ASCE Turner Award, and the French Limoges Medal.
He is a Chapter Honorary Member of Chi Epsilon at the University of Illinois, an Honorary Member of the Societa Italiana Infrastructure Viarie, Emeritus Member of TRB Committee AHD25 on Sealants and Fillers for Joints and Cracks, and an Honorary Professor at several universities in Europe and China.
In 2010 he was elected as an ASCE Distinguished Member. Dr. Al-Qadi holds a B.S. degree from Yarmouk University and M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Penn State University, all in civil engineering.
His expertise is on highway and airfield pavement mechanics and evaluation, tire-pavement interaction, GPR, asphalt rheology, pavement sustainability, and forensic engineering and arbitration.
Transportation Sustainability: Looking Forward
Sustainable transportation is vital to ensure a future that preserves all three aspects of the triple bottom line: environment, economy, and society. In 2011, the transportation sector was responsible for approximately 28% of the total energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions in the U.S. While the majority of these environmental impacts are emitted from vehicles, infrastructure also plays a large role in the environmental footprint of the transportation sector with direct implications on the vehicles traversing it. The future of transportation sustainability must be holistic. Thus, the pursuit of a sustainable transportation system requires a life-cycle approach, where each life-cycle stage can be defined, evaluated, and optimized with respect to its environmental impacts. In this presentation, the life cycle phases of transportation systems with emphasis on pavement systems will be discussed; including the environmental impacts of using innovative techniques and more efficient processes at each phase to quantify and identify sustainable strategies. The pavement use phase is the most complex of the life-cycle stages that includes the relationship between the tire, vehicle, and pavement. Rolling resistance is directly related to fuel consumptions and is affected by characteristics of tire and pavement. In addition to discussing pavement life cycle assessment, tire characteristics and pavement’s texture, roughness, and structure and their impact on fuel consumption and emissions will be presented.
President of NB&A, Oslo, Norway
Nick Barton obtained a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from King’s College in 1966, and a Ph.D. concerning shear strength and rock slope stability from Imperial College in 1971. His first employment was at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) in Oslo. Here he worked for two periods. He was Division Director for 5 years and Technical Adviser for 10 years in the Dam, Rock, Tunnel, Avalanche and Petroleum Reservoir divisions. From 1981 to 1984 he managed the Geomechanics Division of Terra Tek (now Schlumberger) in Salt Lake City, USA. Since 2000 he has had his own international rock engineering consultancy, Nick Barton & Associates, based in Oslo and São Paulo. He has consulted in 37 countries during 45 years, has 300 publications, and has written two books, one on TBM prognosis, the other linking rock quality and seismic attributes of rock masses at all scales. He has ten international awards including the 6th Müller Lecture of ISRM. He developed the widely used Q-system for classifying rock masses, and for selecting rock tunnel and cavern single-shell support in 1974. This was later incorporated in NMT (the Norwegian Method of Tunnelling) after updating of the Q-system in 1993 to include S(fr) with Grimstad, while both worked at NGI. He was originator of the rock joint shear strength parameters JRC and JCS and co-developer of the resulting Barton-Bandis constitutive laws for rock joint modelling in 1982, which was incorporated as a sub-routine in UDEC-BB in 1985. He has also developed the Qtbm prognosis method and Qslope for selecting maintenance-free rock slope bench-face angles. His chief areas of consulting activity have been in hydropower tunnelling and cavern construction, nuclear waste disposal site characterization, metro tunnels and caverns, and site characterization at high dams. He has given more than thirty keynote lectures in international conferences, and one or two-day courses in rock engineering subjects in numerous countries.
MINIMIZING USE OF CONCRETE IN TUNNELS AND CAVERNS
For many decades a tunneling method has been in use which effectively minimizes the use of concrete, which should be one of the goals in our CO2 producing planet. We call the method NMT (Norwegian Method of Tunnelling) and emphasise its ‘single-shell’ characteristics, to distinguish it clearly from double-shell (shotcrete, membrane, concrete) NATM which is inevitably several times more expensive, takes longer to build, and requires at least a 10 x larger labour force. The single-shell tunnels for road or rail or hydropower or water transfer, or caverns for storage or hydropower, are made stable by judicious application of a well-used (> 2000 case record based) Q-system. The latter encompasses a rock mass quality scale from 0.001 (equivalent to a serious fault zone – where we also may need a local concrete lining) to 1000 (equivalent to massive unjointed rock, where careful blasting will remove the need even for shotcrete). In general rock masses where we need tunnels or caverns will lie closer to ‘mid-range’ (i.e. closer to Q = 1 which is ‘poor quality’) where we need combinations of corrosion-protected rock bolts and stainless-steel (or polypropylene) fibre-reinforced shotcrete. We may also need systematic high-pressure pre-injection, which may add 20% to the (low) cost of the NMT excavation. Written as B + S(fr) in short-hand, NMT has c/c spacing in meters and shotcrete thickness in centimeters, as specified by the range of Q-values. At our Olympic cavern of 60m span, B = 2.5m c/c + S(fr) 10cm were the stabilizing measures, where deformation monitoring and numerical verification all showed 7 to 8 mm of maximum deformation in the arch, and where the Q = 2 to 30 and RQD = 60 to 90 well-jointed UCS = 90 MPa gneiss correlated with the 4 to 5 km/s P-wave velocities measured in cross-hole tomography. The Q-system has been used for 40 years for core-logging, exposure-logging, and tunnel-face logging, each to assist with selection of the appropriate reinforcement and support classes. The first four parameters RQD/Jn x Jr/Ja representing relative block size and inter-block joint friction have been used for three decades in principal mining countries for mine-stope dimensioning. The Q-value correlates with deformation modulus, P-wave velocity, and with deformation, where Δ (mm) ≈ span/Q is the central trend of hundreds of data. It is wise to check ‘plastic-zone-prone’ numerical continuum models, and distinct element UDEC or 3DEC models, in case of exaggerated joint continuity, against such empiricism. The motto ‘a posteriori is more reliable than a priori’ needs to be constantly remembered when viewing the remarkably complex equations which may lie behind the ‘a priori’ assumptions of some popular and colourful FEM methods.
Full Professor, University of Minho, Portugal
António Graduated in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Lisbon - IST in 1977, and received a Doctor-Engineer Degree by “Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées”- Paris in 1985. In 1987 he received the Doctor degree in Civil Engineering by the Technical University of Lisbon – IST and also in 1998 the “Habilitation in Civil Engineering. In 1987 he gained the specialist degree at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC), distinguished with Manuel Rocha Award. In 2001 he gets the degree of specialist in Geotechnique attributed by the Portuguese Association of Engineers. In 1998, he created the Geotechnical Research Centre at the Technical University of Lisbon – IST and he was its President until 2000. He is since 2003 Full Professor at the University of Minho and from 2010 to 2013 Director of the Research Centre of Territory, Environment and Construction. He is also from 2010 chair of the Doctoral program in Civil Engineering and from 2013 Vice-Dean of School of Engineering of the University of Minho. He participated in over 35 national and international research projects. He was Vice-Chairman of COST 337 – Unbound Granular Materials for Road Pavements, member of CEN TC227/WG4/TG2 on test methods for Unbound Granular Materials and was also a member of COST 348 - Reinforcement of Pavements with Steel Meshes and Geosynthetics. He was an evaluation member of COST 351 WATMOVE “Water Movements in Road Pavements and Embankments”. He is since 2013 expert (external member) of "Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior" (Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education - A3ES) for the scientific area of Civil Engineering being enrolled in 2013 as a panel member in the evaluation of undergraduate and graduate courses for three institutions in Portugal. He was from 1998 to 2001 Chairman of the ISSMGE - European Technical Committee - ETC 11 - Geotechnical aspects in design and construction of pavements and rail track and from 2001 chairman of the International Technical Committee - TC 3 – Geotechnics for pavements of the ISSMGE, renamed from 2009 as TC 202 – Transportation Geotechnics. He was serving TC 202 until 2014 and continue as member. He is involved in research, teaching and consulting in the general field of geotechnics and pavement engineering for 38 years. His work embraced transportation geotechnics, particularly soil and pavement geo-material properties and modelling, compaction, soil improvement, foundations, geotechnical design and management. He has over 380 technical papers and 240 reports published on these subjects, with an h index of 9 (Scopus) and an h index of 17 and more than 1100 citations (google scholar). He supervised over 116 graduated students, being 31 PhD students (3 ongoing). He is from September 2013 Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Transportation Geotechnics.
Advanced tools and techniques to add value to soil stabilization practice
The aim of this lecture is to demonstrate the advanced tools and techniques used for add value to soil stabilization practice. The tools are used for macro characterization of mechanical behaviour and for micro characterisation of chemical components and pozolanic reaction evaluation. The laboratory results obtained with these tools were the base of the hydro-mechanical behaviour interpretation, ranging from short term to long term behaviour of silt stabilised with lime. Furthermore, a test method recently developed EMM-ARM (Elasticity Modulus Measurement through Ambient Response Method) is also applied allowing the measurement of stiffness of reconstituted stabilised samples or intact samples from the field with continuous measurements from the early ages. These tools are able to:
1.Characterise and predict the evolution of hydro-mechanical behaviour of the stabilised soil from the early ages;
2.Make early decisions of eventual corrections in the field to achieve the project target values, mainly in terms of mechanical properties;
3.Incorporate long term performance in design making more economic and sustainable solutions.
President and Principal Engineer of Geodata, Italy
Grasso graduated from the ‘Politecnico di Torino’ of Italy in civil engineering, he began his engineering career in 1975. He is the founder, President and Principal Engineer of Geodata, which is a consultancy firm specialised in the design consultancy of underground infrastructures, both in urban environments and in mountain areas. Based in Italy and operating world-wide since 1984, today Geodata is active in over 25 countries with companies and subsidiaries. It has designed and supervised the construction of over 4,000 km of tunnels and more than 3,300 projects.
Mr. Grasso is a Vice President and Co-Founder of ITA-CET, Foundation for Education and Training on Tunnelling and Underground Space Use.
Risk-Reduction Driven Design in Tunnelling
Risk management became an integral part of most underground construction projects during the late 1990s, also considering the increasing requests in term of safety, environmental and socio-economic sustainability coming from citizens, owners, lenders and insurers. The application of risk management procedures, today widely applied, ensures that design’s team efforts can be concentrated in critical areas, focusing the project team's attention on actions and resources where there is a major risk exposure, or where the greatest time/cost savings can be made through appropriate engineering solutions. Risk Management not solely is intended as a tool for risk avoidance and mitigation, but also as a means to value creation, technically improving the overall project.
At present Risk Analysis and Structural Design remain independent items. On the contrary, they must be intended parts of one, unique, rational process, supported by probabilistic methods.
Professor, Bogazici University, Turkey
Dr. Erol Guler is a full professor of geotechnical engineering at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey since 1989. He acted as the Director of Environmental Sciences Institute of Bogazici University between 1996 and 1999 and as the Chairman of the Civil Engineering Department between 2004 and 2010. He was a visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Maryland between 1989 and 1991. Prof. Guler is the leading geosynthetic scientist in Turkey, having been an IGS Member since 1989. He founded the IGS Turkish Chapter in 2001 and served as its president until 2005, and was reelected as President again in 2011. He was the organizer for the first two national geosynthetic conferences in 2004 and 2006 and is currently the chairman of the organizing committee of the 2016 European Regional Conference of IGS, EuroGeo6. Prof. Guler has been a member of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical committee on geosynthetics as a representative of the Turkish Standards Institute since 2002. He is currently the Convener of the WG2 of ISO/TC221 (Technical Committee on geosynthetics) and is also the Convener of the WG2 of CEN-TC189 (European Committee for Standardization’s Technical Committee on geosynthetics). Prof. Guler is currently an international member of the USA TRB Committee on Geosynthetics. Prof. Guler’s research has focused mainly on geosynthetic reinforced walls and specifically he conducted research on the use of marginal soils in such structures and their behavior under earthquake loading conditions. His research work includes numerical studies as well as shaking table tests and full scale tests. In addition to his research work, Prof. Guler has extensive practical experience, including design work for numerous projects where geosynthetics were used as reinforcement or liners.
GEOSYNTHETICS: A MATERIAL WHICH STARTED A NEW ERA IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
The opportunities that can be provided by geosynthetics will be introduced. Many examples will be given to show explicitly that geosynthetics can provide effective engineering solutions for a variety of projects ranging from extremely important to very simple projects. In order to illustrate the benefits of the geosynthetics, two application areas will be highlighted. These were chosen from the applications where geosynthetic products are used most frequently, namely: reinforced walls and slopes and barrier systems. The most important research papers are referenced in these two subjects and examples from projects in Turkey are given.
New geosynthetic products are brought to the market every day. To highlight this aspect, a relatively new, however well-established technique was chosen: Geosynthetic Encased Columns. Basic concepts of this technology will be given. Many similar developments in the Geosynthetic Industry necessitates that engineers are up to date with the new developments in this field.
It is well known that besides providing very efficient engineering solutions, use of geosynthetics also allows to reduce the construction time and cost. Recently survivability issues are becoming as important as the other concerns. Therefore at the very end an example has been given on how to use Geosynthetics to reduce the Carbon dioxide footprint.
Distinguished University Professor - Civil Engineering & Associate Dean – Research in College of Engineering.
The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, USA
Dr. Anand Puppala currently serves as Associate Dean - Research in College of Engineering since 2012 and is a Distinguished Teaching and Scholar Professor in the Civil Engineering department at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in Texas, USA. Dr. Puppala is the current Chair of Soil Mechanics section of Transportation Research Board (TRB)’s Design and Construction group and is a member of ASCE - GI’s Technical Coordination Council (TCC). He served as a President for United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) from 2007-2009. Dr. Puppala has been serving as the director of an organized research center of excellence, Sustainable and Resilient Civil Infrastructure (SARCI) at UTA since 2014 and this center also hosts NSF’s Industry University Cooperative Research Program’s Composites in Civil Infrastructure Site (CICI) at UTA. Both SARCI and CICI research groups have been conducting research on sustainable utilization of recycled materials, dams and embankments, stabilization of expansive soils, and others in fields related to transportation. His on-going research studies focusing on remote sensing applications using LIDAR on bridge infrastructure monitoring to earthen embankment systems as well as developing asset management strategies incorporating advanced statistical principles of risk and reliability concepts. Dr. Puppala has been a recipient of several major research grants totaling well over $12.5 Million from federal, state and local government agencies. Currently, he is co-PI on a USDOT-FHWA’s Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program (DDETFP) - Hispanic Serving Institutions Fellowship grant to recruit both graduate and undergraduate students to work in various fields of Transportation sector. Dr. Puppala has supervised 23 Doctoral and 52 Masters’ thesis students and published well over 330 papers in fields close to highway infrastructure. Dr. Puppala received many teaching and research awards including 2013 UTA Distinguished Researcher award and 2010 UT System’s Regents Teaching Award. Dr. Puppala is the current Chair of Soil Mechanics section of Transportation Research Board (TRB)’s Design and Construction group and is a member of ASCE - GI’s Technical Coordination Council (TCC). He served as President of United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) from 2007-2009. He also serves as an editorial member of several esteemed journals including ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering and ASCE Journal of Materials.
Innovative Ground Improvement Techniques for Expansive Soils
Annual infrastructure damage costs arising from problem soils including expansive soils are millions of dollars. These damages signify the need to study the treatment methods in a much more comprehensive manner with a focus on sustainability elements. Many advances are made in recent years with respect to their stabilization methods. This paper highlights a few of these studies soil stabilization designs incorporating chemical mineralogy and durability principles. Both shallow and deep ground improvement techniques will be addressed. In the case of deep treatment methods, deep soil mixing technologies will be extensively covered. For shallow stabilization, new research advances focusing on clay mineralogy based design to novel additives as well as durability principles will be presented. Also, sustainability improvements of all these stabilizations will be reviewed and presented.
Paul F. Kent Endowed Faculty Scholar and Director of International Programs
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 N. Mathews, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
Dr. Erol Tutumluer is a Professor specializing in Transportation Geotechnics in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Tutumluer has research interests and expertise in characterization of pavement and railroad track geomaterials, i.e., subgrade soils and base/ballast unbound aggregates, modeling granular foundation systems using innovative techniques, and sustainable use of foundation geomaterials and construction practices for transportation infrastructure. Dr. Tutumluer is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Transportation Geotechnics Elsevier journal and Chair of the ISSMGE Technical Committee 202 on Transportation Geotechnics. Dr. Tutumluer served as the Chair of the ASCE Geo-Institute’s Pavements Committee in 2006-2012. Dr. Tutumluer is currently the Chair of the AFP70 Mineral Aggregates and an active affiliate of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).
He was the 2000 recipient of the TRB’s Fred Burgraff award for Excellence in Transportation Research; he also received TRB’s Geology and Earth Materials Section Best Paper Awards in 2009 and 2012.
Sustainable Applications of Recycled and Large-sized Aggregates and Quarry Waste Fines
Unbound aggregates are a critical component of flexible pavement foundations. However, local sources of aggregates are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. Shortages can stem from gravel mines and rock quarries being used for other purposes, lack of high-quality materials in a particular area, or land-use policies restricting access to aggregates. This keynote presentation will cover important ways to improve the supply of locally sourced aggregates and make better use of what is considered as aggregate by-product wastes. Reducing the amount of wasted aggregate by-product, determining how to save on transportation costs by using locally available aggregate, and designing the most durable pavements possible are all key steps to ensuring sustainability. Recent Illinois Center for Transportation projects have focused on developing improved characterization techniques for much larger in size, recycled, and nontraditional aggregate subgrade materials in terms of source, composition, and particle size/shape properties. The researchers have evaluated field performance of the most commonly used subgrade replacement and granular subbases with the goal of allowing use of more economical and locally available aggregates and developed innovative methods to use product fractions that are currently being wasted and to lower costs while extending the product life of aggregate resources. The goal is to assist pavement designers in determining the best value with the available virgin and recycled/by-product materials through the use of mechanistic based characterization and end performance based optimized solutions.
Professor, CNR-IRPI, Italy
Dr. Janusz WASOWSKI is a research geologist at CNR-IRPI (National Research Council - Institute for Geo-hydrological Protection) in Bari, Italy. He is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Geology. Since 2011 he has held the positions of Visiting Professor at the Research School of Arid Environment and Climate Change, Lanzhou University, Gansu, China and of Science Officer of the Natural Hazards Group Programme, European Geosciences Union (EGU).
He is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of engineering geology, natural hazards and applied remote sensing. For over 25 years Dr. Wasowski’s work has covered a broad spectrum of research topics ranging from slope instability and landslide assessment, collateral seismic hazards, geotechnical field investigation and in situ monitoring, to exploitation of air/space-borne remote sensing and geophysical surveying in engineering geology. He has also served as a consultant for the National Department for Civil Protection, Italy, the Government of Gansu Province, China, and the Centre National de l'Information Géo-Spatiale, Haiti, focusing on landslides and other geohazards and on the application of high resolution satellite multi-temporal interferometry for monitoring terrain deformations and infrastructure instability.
Since 2007 Dr. Wasowski has been a member of the Editorial Board of Engineering Geology (Elsevier) and the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology (The Geological Society, London). He is the author/co-author of over 100 articles/book chapters and the guest editor of several special issues published in international scientific journals.
High resolution satellite multi temporal interferometry for monitoring infrastructure instability hazards
We foresee an increasingly greater use of remotely sensed data by engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers. This stems from the recent availability of the new generation high resolution (meter to sub-meter) optical and radar sensors and the improved image processing techniques developed in this new century. Indeed, the advanced remote sensing techniques are now capable of delivering more rapidly high quality information that is sufficiently detailed (and costeffective) for many practical engineering applications. Here we consider synthetic aperture radar (SAR), multi-temporal interferometry (MTI), which can now be profitably used for engineering structure instability hazard assessment and monitoring. With radar satellites periodically re-visiting the same area, MTI can provide information on distance changes between the on-board radar sensor and the existing targets on the ground (e.g., humanmade structures such as buildings, roads and other infrastructure). The detected distance changes are thus interpreted as evidence of ground and/or structure instability. In settings with limited vegetation cover, MTI can deliver very precise (mm resolution), spatially dense information (from hundreds to thousands measurement points/km2) on slow rate (mmcm/ year) deformations affecting the ground and engineering structures. Radar satellites offer wide-area coverage (thousands km2) and, with the sensors that actively emit electromagnetic radiation and thus can “see” through the clouds, one can obtain deformation measurements even under bad weather conditions.
Since 2008 the application potential of MTI has increased thanks to the improved capabilities of the new generation radar sensors (COSMO-SkyMed constellation and TerraSAR-X) in terms of resolution (from 3 to 1 m) and revisit time (from 11 to 4 days). Although MTI techniques are considered to have already reached the operational level, it is apparent that in both research and practice we are at present only beginning to benefit from the high-resolution imagery that is currently acquired by the new generation radar satellites. Here we emphasize the great potential of high resolution MTI and explain what this technique can deliver in terms of detection and monitoring of infrastructure instability hazards. This is done by considering different areas characterized by a range of environmental conditions, and presenting selected case study examples of MTI applied to detect and monitor stability of highways, railroads and other major infrastructure including dams, harbor facilities. We also stress that the current approach to the assessment of instability hazard can be transformed by capitalizing more on the presently underexploited advantage of the MTI technique, i.e., the capability to provide regularly spatially-dense quantitative information for large areas where engineering structures may currently be unaffected by instability, but where the terrain and infrastructure history may indicate potential for future failures.