Safety and serviceability in geotechnical engineering

Edinburgh, Sunday 13 September 2015

Invitation from ISSMGE TC205, ETC10, TC304 and ETC7

A day of workshops related to safety, serviceability and numerical analysis with presentations by leading practitioners and lots of discussion and debate. Please come and contribute or just listen to the programme of workshops.

Venue: Fintry room in the Pentland suite of Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

10:00 Ground anchors and foundations – do they need two different safety philosophies?

• Piles are designed by calculation, largely, whereas anchor design (in EC7) relies only on testing.
• Virtually no testing is carried out for spread foundations.
• Are anchors and tension piles really so different?
• Reflections on Eurocode 7 Section 8, as revised in 2013.

11:30 Design dominated by water pressure

• Are factors of safety useful when designing for water pressures?
• Do factors of safety really increase safety? How should they be applied?
• Do they give ridiculous conservatism?
• What is the alternative?

13:00 Numerical analysis (ETC7, Ochil rooms)

15:00 Characteristic values (with ISO 19900)

The Technical Committees organising these events are:

TC205 – Safety and serviceability in geotechnical design
ETC7 – Numerical analysis
ETC10 – Evaluation of Eurocode 7
TC304 – Engineering Practice of Risk Assessment and Management
ISO 19900 – General requirements for offshore structures

For further details or to offer to speak please contact Brian Simpson Brian.Simpson@Arup.com,
Colin Smith c.c.smith@sheffield.ac.uk, Trevor Orr torr@tcd.ie, Cesar Sagaseta
cesar.sagaseta@unican.es (ETC7) or Lovisa Moritz lovisa.moritz@trafikverket.se (k-values).