Geostatic Stress & Strain: Beyond the Classroom


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Geological engineering encompasses the majority of the work related to geostatics. However geostatics is only a basic part of many larger engineering issues. As mentioned before slope stability is a more complicated off take of geostatics. Also geostatics is used in determining settlement of ground for civil projects.
Civil and geological engineering goes hand in hand for almost every major building project. For example the new Life Sciences building that will be built on UAFs West Ridge is going to place a great amount to pressure on the ground that it sits on. The bearing pressure of the ground will have to be evaluated to determine the overall size of the building that can be constructed. If the building is too heavy or the added weight of the building is more than the amount the ground can handle settlement will occur. This is what happend to the Tower of Pisa as seen in Figure 4.

leaning tower of pisa
Figure 4.

The deformable properties of geostatics belong mainly to soils where as rocks are much less deformable. However, in rock mechanics, the geostatics will include calculations for deformation of rockmass and jointing strength, for example.

Geostatics is used in many different fashions, building projects, road construction, underground mining, pit mining, hydrology and many more applications.