Location
Arlington, Virginia
Date
15 Aug 2008, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Abstract
The case histories of Beirut geotechnical practice is an important teaching example concerning deep and specialty foundations. Micro-piles, tie-back retaining structures, and sheet pile-walls are common practices around Beirut. The city, having reached its saturation potential and real estate prices escalating, is moving vertically to optimize investments and toward deeper exploration of underground space. The diverse geology poses also real challenges to the geotechnical practicing engineers with karstic terrains and cavities, liquefiable sandy zones and high salt water table. The geographical constraints are pushing the city toward a better exploration of land reclamation solution over a large surface of the sea. In front of this challenge, geotechnical companies have reached a high level of know-how. Their expertise, skills, equipment and laboratories positioned them at a very good standard of professionalism in the Middle East. University laboratories are working hand in hand with industry in creating many opportunities to expose students to existing case studies. Therefore, geotechnical instruction is illustrated by several case histories on interesting projects around Beirut. Field trips, laboratory testing, and guest speakers are complementing traditional classroom instruction. This paper exposes the geotechnical case histories of Beirut and its impact on students’ instruction and early experience. For the past three years, it was found that as a result of continuous exposure to specialty courses, field trips, guest speakers, laboratories and case history analysis in geotechnical engineering, more than 30 % of students selected their profession either through graduate school or industry, in geotechnical engineering.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Harb, Jacques, "Addressing the Geotechnical Case Histories of Beirut" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 1.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/6icchge/session11/1
Addressing the Geotechnical Case Histories of Beirut
Arlington, Virginia
The case histories of Beirut geotechnical practice is an important teaching example concerning deep and specialty foundations. Micro-piles, tie-back retaining structures, and sheet pile-walls are common practices around Beirut. The city, having reached its saturation potential and real estate prices escalating, is moving vertically to optimize investments and toward deeper exploration of underground space. The diverse geology poses also real challenges to the geotechnical practicing engineers with karstic terrains and cavities, liquefiable sandy zones and high salt water table. The geographical constraints are pushing the city toward a better exploration of land reclamation solution over a large surface of the sea. In front of this challenge, geotechnical companies have reached a high level of know-how. Their expertise, skills, equipment and laboratories positioned them at a very good standard of professionalism in the Middle East. University laboratories are working hand in hand with industry in creating many opportunities to expose students to existing case studies. Therefore, geotechnical instruction is illustrated by several case histories on interesting projects around Beirut. Field trips, laboratory testing, and guest speakers are complementing traditional classroom instruction. This paper exposes the geotechnical case histories of Beirut and its impact on students’ instruction and early experience. For the past three years, it was found that as a result of continuous exposure to specialty courses, field trips, guest speakers, laboratories and case history analysis in geotechnical engineering, more than 30 % of students selected their profession either through graduate school or industry, in geotechnical engineering.
