Upcoming Events Include:

ASCE Regional Competition:

In Spring of 2011 the CalGeo/ASCE Geotechnical Group will be participating in a mechanically stabilized earth wall competition.

National Geo-Institute MSE Wall Competition:

March 15, 2011: The national competition between the top sixteen United States schools in the Mechanically Stabilized Earth Wall competition will be held during the Geo-Institute annual conference 'Geo-Frontiers 2011' in Dallas Texas. The selection of schools to compete was based on the design report for a Mechanically Stabilized Earth Wall with a horizontal load. UCLA's report ranked in the top sixteen in the nation and will compete with a team of four undergraduate students consisting of Cale Crawford, Pavlo Chrysovergis, Sean Ahdi, and Johnathan Wright.

Previous Events:

Info Session with David Hamilton of Hamilton & Associates:

Thursday, January 27, 2011 in BH 4275 at 6:00 PM: Calgeo held an extremely successful info session with Dave Hamilton, a seasoned Geotechnical Engineer who started his own company, Hamilton & Associates, Inc. Over twenty student gathered for delicious Socko's Sub sandwiches and Dave's talk about careers in geotechnical engineering. The info session was a refreshing experience that dealt with his experiences in geotechnical engineering.

Dave Hamilton focused his presentation on his projects and the difficulties some of the sites have exhibited. Specifically, he went over three developments that showed very different aspects of geotechnical engineering. The projects included a major residential development in the central valley of California, landslide mitigation, and a major tunneling project for the LA
County Sanitation District. Throughout his presentation, Dave was happy to answer any questions with knowledge from his experiences in the industry. The message overall was when faced with complex problems, think clearly and decide on the most efficient course of action to save money and increase the speed of the project. It was great to walk through a principal
engineer's thought process in solving these problems from the beginning to the end to understand how to approach problems we may come across during our own careers. At the end, Dave left us with an inspirational video of his cover band, the 'Wayward Sons' playing a cover of Queen, and one final message, “Don’t Stop Believing”.

CPT/DRILLING Expo 2010:

Due to the success of CalGeo at UCLA's first CPT/Drilling demonstration it was important to create a tradition of it and try to increase involvement each year. We had Gregg Drilling and Hamilton & Associates out to demonstrate the use of their soil exploration equipment once again and Dr. Alberto Salamanca to explain the large scaling research going on at the UCLA/Caltrans site.

Fall BBQ - 2010

In October we hosted our annual barbeque, an opportunity for professors, graduates,undergraduates and industry professionals alike to gather for good company. Our own officers, John (VP) and Evan (PR), manned the grill so the rest of us could relax and enjoy the great food. Students enjoyed the opportunity to talk with insiders of industry and their professors outside of the classroom. With food as the foundation, games of Frisbee and pick-up football popped up as grounds for friendly competition. The event provided an amazing opportunity for students of all years to casually meet with industry members and it allowed industry members to keep updated on what UCLA CalGeo does as it continues to grow.

UCLA Geo-Expo:

At UCLA, we had our own Geo-Expo to showcase the talents that reside at our school. We had eight talks by students of geotechnical engineering. There were seven PhD students speaking about the research that they have been doing throughout their career and the 09-10 President of CalGeo at UCLA, Jay Merani, gave a presentation about the things that have gone on with the CalGeo student group over the year.

There were many industrial affiliates in attendance from Stoney-Miller Consultants, Shannon & Wilson, Base Geotech, Exponent, Praad and others. They were able to see the vast talent of students at UCLA from the undergraduates to the PhDs. We then enjoyed a catered dinner by Socko’s and then had a social hour with coffee and tea where we were able to really get to know each other and learn about the different geotechnical engineering projects going on in the Los Angeles region.

ASCE LA Section Geo-Group Anuual Conference:

On April 21, 2010, the UCLA CalGeo chapter, including 10 undergraduate and 10 graduate students, attended the 13th LA Geo Expo at the Queen Mary Hotel. Also attending the event were members of ASCE, professors, CalGeo chapter members from various local universities, and geo-technical industry members.

As the main focus of the event, three guest speakers, Professor Richard E. Goodman, Dr. Wolfgang Roth, and Dr. Randall W. Jibson, presented different geo-technical topics. Dr. Randall W. Jibson discussed his research and knowledge with earthquake-triggered landslides, and Dr. Wolfgang Roth’s discussed about his experiences with various tunneling projects in the Los Angeles area. The last speaker, Professor Richard E. Goodman from UC Berkeley, presented topics of geological issues that are concerned with the design and maintenance of concrete dams, describing specific dams having safety and foundation problems associated with different types of rocks. Professor Goodman was also awarded the annual Ken Lee Lecturer Award.
Overall, the event was a success with its friendly and engaging environment, constant interaction, and it’s educational and motivational lectures.

ASCE Regional Annual Conference (UNLV):

This year’s ASCE conference was hosted by UNLV, and for the first year the geotechnical MSE wall project was implemented into the competition. The project is essentially the same as the Geo-Institute conference except that there was no report needed to compete. We created a poster board and gave a presentation.
We prepared for this competition months in advance and had the construction down to a science. In Las Vegas we were the first team to finish constructing the reinforcements, leaving plenty of time for our fellow ASCE members to start several UCLA 8-clap cheers. Along with our production line-type construction techniques, we had innovative ideas when designing the reinforcement strips. However, the sand that was given in the competition was completely different from what we were told so we prepared for different sand which was significantly weaker. The wall was supposed to hold a minimum of 50 pounds, but our design was so strong that we were able to hold nearly 600 pounds! Unfortunately we did not place, most likely due to our over-engineering, but we know that we can build on what we learned this year and place in next year’s conference.

Left: Geotechnical Group MSE Box designed with spirit ; Right: Geotechnical Design Group with vertical loading appplied

SF/Bay Bridge Field Trip:

in early 2010, the CalGeo team at UCLA decided to take a trip up North to visit UC Davis’s soils laboratory. Alek Harounian, a grad student from UCLA, had been doing research on San Francisco Bay Mud, and we were invited to tour the lab at Davis. To test his ideas, Alek was using Davis’ centrifuge, a massive machine with a 61 ft arm, capable of spinning to several hundred RPM. Needless to say, we were all impressed.

After departing from Davis, our team made our way over to San Francisco to take a tour of the new Bay Bridge. Our tour guide, Jordona Jackson, was extremely knowledgeable of the construction taking place. After a brief presentation, we boarded a small boat and got a close up tour of the construction from the water. Unfortunately, we were not able to see any of the foundations that had been constructed (it is, after all, very difficult to see pile foundations once they are in place, especially when they are onehundred feet below the surface of the water), but Jordona was more than capable of answering all of our questions regarding the geotechnical design.

Left: CalGeo at UCLA group with UC Davis' Centrifuge testing device; Right: UCLA CalGeo with the new Bay Bridge.

CPT/Drilling and Sampling Demonstration:

On November 20, 2009 the UCLA chapter of CalGeo organized a field trip for interested undergraduate and graduate Civil and Environmental Engineers. We also contacted Cal State Fullerton to see if they had any interested students. There were approximately 40 students from UCLA and 15 students from CSU Fullerton that were present at the event. The field trip was located at the NEES (Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) UCLA/Caltrans site under the intersection of the 405 and 105 freeways near LAX.

The event comprised of 4 stations that the students walked through. The participants were split into 4 groups that took turns at each station. The first was a CPT Truck, demonstrated by Gregg Drilling. Each group was able to watch the CPT cone pushed through soil and the use of the seismic indicator from outside. Then the group went inside the truck to watch the instantaneous displays of the results from the CPT cone. Gregg Drilling also explained the meanings of the output given by the CPT tests, including the tip and sleeve resistances as well as pore water pressures and how they are used in engineering practice. The second group was directed by Professor Stewart and was about his research with NEES. The project was about the behavior of soil behind freeway bridge abutments during earthquakes. He explained to us the purpose of the hydraulic jacks lined up to push against a soil wall and how the effects of the tests were quantified through visual inspection across the entire depth.

The third station was hosted by David Hamilton of Hamilton and Associates. He brought out his truck mounted drill rig (CME45 on the back of a Ford F-550) to show the students about SPT sampling. He explained the how effective it is to have a truck mounted rig because of the ease in portability and its ability to access isolated sites. The last station was demonstrated by Gregg Drilling and went more in depth about SPT sampling. They also explained the California Modified sampler and the samples ascertained from that test. The team demonstrating that truck rig also described the inaccuracies inherent in the Cal-Mod sampling.

The event as a whole was about 2 hours long and from the informal survey of the participants, was a great success. Plans were immediately in the works to keep this an annual field trip.

FALL BBQ

Last fall, CalGeo at UCLA held a barbeque up at the Sunset Recreation Center of UCLA. The CalGeo officers, along with their industry liaison, Dave Hamilton, invited undergraduates, graduates, professors, and industry professionals alike to gather on a Tuesday afternoon to enjoy some good food and good company. There was a large turnout of over thirty people and students had the opportunity to speak with members of industry and their professors outside of the classroom setting.

The club BBQ’d some food and provided drinks for the attendees. Our own Project Manager and to-be 2010-2011 President, Cale Crawford, manned the grill while games of Frisbee and pick-up football broke out to provide for some friendly competition.
The event provided a great opportunity for students through all classes to informally get to meet each other and many of the industry members. It also provided a chance for industry professional to see what is happening at UCLA and see how the Geotechnical program continues to grow and expand.

Open House

The open house was the first event ever for the CalGeo at UCLA chapter. We held a dinner event where many companies from the Los Angeles area attended and Stoney-Miller Consultants gave a talk about their landslide mitigation in Laguna Beach. This was a majorly successful event and led to a much greater involvement with the chapter from both the students of UCLA and the industry around the Los Angeles area.