Research

Research areas include important topics of foundation engineering, tunneling, soil and rock mechanics, and environmental engineering. Current projects focus primarily on:

• Geotechnical design (typically including tunneling, soil–structure interaction, foundation engineering, geosynthetics-geosystem engineering, transportation geotechnics, flood-protection works, earthquake engineering);
• Stability analysis (natural and engineered soil slopes and rock walls);
• Sustainability of geo-structures (for example, in environmental geotechnics);
  
• more complex coupled processes often active within natural and anthropogenic hazards (such as radioactive-waste disposal, including important aspects of clay mineralogy and problems relating to unsaturated soil mechanics).

Primary methods used include:

• Modeling (physical, numerical, constitutive/material);
• Laboratory element testing and mineralogical analytical methods;
• In situ testing (field-site investigation);
• Field measurements in soil and rock;
• Advanced sensors and measuring techniques.