ENGINEERING FROM THE GROUND UP

CONSULTING SERVICES

Guides to a hidden world

The ground beneath our feet is ruled by the principles of soil mechanics and NorthWest Geo Solutions can navigate the subterrain.  Unless your project floats or flies it will be built on the ground and ultimately transmit the forces imposed on it to the soil that supports it.  We specialize in earth bound projects and are happy to provide our consulting services to cast light on the character and competence of what lies beneath.   The illustration below displays a simplified example of some stresses that inhabit the soil mass below a retaining wall on a slope.  Call or email to discuss your project.

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NATURAL GROUND

Geology

Native soils and rock are naturally placed by geologic processes.  Soil and rock in the Pacific Northwest can be billions of years old.  It could have traveled thousands of miles over hundreds of millions of years as part of an island archipilego before being accreted to the North American continent.  It may have been degraded by wind, ice, or water into particles smaller than a fraction the diameter of human hair.  It may have been taken to the depths of the earth's mantle, partially melted and mixed and then spewed upward again as a metamorphic transformation.    It can be placed by geologic processes such as plate tectonics, glaciation or catastrophic flooding that gives no apparent order to the deposits and can appear chaotic and messy. Those same energetic flood waters can leave flat, neat, horizontal layers that sequentially settles heavier particles first when the turbulence subsides.  Or it could have been shoved up and tilted in tremendous blocks of terrain on such a large scale that the fracturing and stacking of the earth's crust was hard to see from the human perspective until pioneering geologists were bold enough to challenge conventional theories with their seemingly preposterous ideas.  Plate tectonics and Glaciation and the Missoula Floods are now staples of Northwest Geology but were not readily accepted by most geologists for decades.   

The Pacific Northwest is home to an amazing geologic story.  Geologists have been piecing that story together since  Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to find and document a Northwest passage over 200 years ago.  They did not bring a geologist as part of their "Corps of Discovery" but their notes did shed some light on the land and the geologists soon followed.  Over time geologists pursued the perplexing puzzle and pieced together the geologic origin of our land.  Now we have an abundance of literature explaining much of the terrestrial formation of the Pacific Northwest and geologists continue to seek answers to the new questions that inevitably sprout from the answers of discovery. 

Geologic data provides big picture information as most geologic processes occur over large areas.  But geologic data alone may not be enough to define the properties and competence of your project's subsurface.  Anomalies, underconsolidated native soils or human activity can affect the engineering properties of the soil.  We conduct site specific investigations and use laboratory testing and field observations combined with years of experience and education to make sense of a material that can be unruly.  

ENGINEERING COMMUNITY

Collective Knowledge

The engineering community is a network of scientifically oriented individuals striving to better society  through the practical application of accumulated engineering knowledge.  Civil engineers collectively assure that  sound principles are used throughout the design and construction of a wide array of projects.  Today we stand on the shoulders (metaphorically speaking of course) of the great engineers and scientists of history. There are many who have contributed, but Karl Terzaghi is widely recognized as the father of Modern Soil Mechanics for his contributions that have significantly advanced the field.  NorthWest Geo Solutions is excited to be a part of that community.

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GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

Art and Science

Geotechnical Engineering requires an understanding of fundamental soil mechanics with a scientifically informed intuition of soil performance under field loading conditions.  Soil is the most used construction material but its constituents can vary widely over short distances.  No two projects are identical.  That variability and nature's innate complexity creates special challenges for geotechnical engineers.  Site investigations are used to identify the unique surface and subsurface conditions of each project.  Subsurface explorations reveal soil properties, but the data is limited and are only snapshots into a much larger underground reality.  Experience and judgement allow Northwest Geo Solutions to form conlusions and recommendations for your project and  from the data  into practical information that we can confidently use to predict soil response to the new conditions of your project.

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Below are Leonardo DaVinci's hand written notes of his study of friction.  Although his insights were not specifically regarding soil and were not influential in further  understanding of the subject, he is often regarded as the first Tribologist.  He was a harbinger of the period of enlightenment in which science and art flourished and new ideas revolutionized civilization. 

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The simple diagram next to Da Vinci's notes displays a block on an inclined surface with gravitational and frictional forces acting on it.  Friction between soil particles is often an important property for design.  The simple diagram illustrates fundamental principles.