News
12/21/2020: Shashank Menon successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations!
11(Nov)/12/2020: Song presented a seminar on modeling failure in unsaturated geomaterials to the Mechanics and Civil Engineering Group at Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France. Thanks for the invitation!
10/26/2020: Prof. Patricia Culligan delivered the 2020 Ardaman-Wissa Lecture.
10/9/2020: Song presented a seminar on modeling unsaturated porous media via novel numerical techniques to the Geotechnical Engineering Group at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thanks for the invitation!
9/2020: Prof. Patricia Culligan will present the 2020 Ardaman-Wissa Lecture at UF. Prof. Culligan is Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering, University of Notre Dame.
Topic: Geotechnics and the Climate Challenge
Time: Oct 26, 2020, 09:30 AM Eastern Time via ZOOM
2/25/2020: Song attended the annual 2020 USUCGER meeting via the ZOOM Meeting. Prof. Olson, thank you for providing the ZOOM meeting. Song registered for Geo-Congress 2020 (full registration).
Song also attended Geo-Congress 2019 in Philadelphia and Geo-Congress 2018 in Orlando, respectively.
2/18-2/19/2020: Song attended the NHERI Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Natural Hazards Engineering at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin. The financial support provided by DesignSafe CI is highly appreciated.
1/31/2020: Song received the NSF CAREER Award. Honored and grateful for the support. Congratulations!
10/22/2019: Prof. Eduardo Alonso from UPC in Spain visited us and presented the 2019 Ardaman-Wissa (Ardaman) Lecture (since 1981) in geotechnical engineering at the University of Florida. The lecture is titled Dynamics of Landslides.
10/21/2019: Mini-symposium for ASCE EMI annual conference in May 2020 - Recent Advances in Unsaturated Poromechanics, by Xiaoyu Song, Ronaldo Borja (Stanford), Marte Gutierrez (CSM), Ning Lu (CSM), and Eduardo Alonso (UPC).
10/1/2019: ASCE's announcement of Song's ASCE live webinar on Strain Localization in Unsaturated Soil and Its Practical Implications. We highly appreciate the support of the ASCE Geo-Institute - Unsaturated Soil Committee.
http://mylearning.asce.org/diweb/catalog/item/id/3397127/q/t=2125&q=strain*20localization*20&c=79
http://mylearning.asce.org/diweb/catalog/item/id/3402851/q/t=2125&q=strain*20localization*20&c=79
7/11/2019: Our paper entitled "Localized failure in unsaturated soils under non-isothermal conditions" published in Acta Geotechnica, 13(1), pp. 73-85, 2018
has been awarded the Springer Best Paper Award for 2018. Congratulations!
6/19-20/2019: Prof. Song attended the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2019 (ASCE-EMI 2019) co-organized by Caltech, Pasadena, CA. At the conference, Prof. Song co-chaired the 4th Mini-Symposium on 4M (Modeling of Multiphysics-Multiscale-Multifunctional) Engineering Materials and Structures, and officially joined four ASCE - EMI Technical Committee:
(i) Modeling Inelasticity and Multiscale Behavior; (ii) Poromechanics; (iii) Granular Mechanics; (iv) Computational Mechanics.
6/9/2019: We welcome Cameron Ketchem from Suncoast Community High School and Brandon Stephens from Suwannee High School to join our group for research experience in scientific computing. Have fun with scientific computing! Cameron and Brandonm.
This is the 4th time Prof. Song served as a faculty mentor for the Student Science Training Program at UF. Summer 2019 marks the 61th consecutive year of the University of Florida Student Science Training Program (UF-SSTP).
5/10/2019: Prof. Song attended the 4th Centrifuge Users Workshop on Friday, May 10, 2019, at the University of California at Davis hosted by the UC Davis NHERI Experimental Facility and Geotechnical Engineering Group. The financial support provided by the UC Davis NHERI Experimental Facility is highly appreciated.
4/2019: Kaiqi Wang successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations!
3/26/2019: Prof. Song's ASCE webinar proposal on "Strain localization (shear band bifurcation) of unsaturated soils and practical implications" was approved by ASCE, which is supported by the Geo-Institute - Unsaturated Soil Committee (GI-USC). Congratulations. The support of GI-USC is highly appreciated.
3/25/2019: Prof. Song attended 2019 ASCE Geo-Congress in Philadelphia, PA, on 3/25/2019. Prof. Song attended the Geo-Institute - Unsaturated Soil Committee meeting during the 1st day of the Geo-Congress.
2/11-2/15/2019: Prof. Song attended the First International Symposium on “COMPUTATIONAL & GEOENVIRONMENTAL GEOMECHANICS FOR UNDERGROUND AND SUBSURFACE STRUCTURES” in Nancy, France.
9/26/2018: Prof. Song is co-organizing the 4th Mini-Symposium on 4M (Modeling of Multiphysics-Multiscale-Multifunctional) Engineering Materials and Structures on behalf of the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Modeling Inelasticity and Multiscale Behavior (MIMB) Committee for the EMI annual conference at CalTech in 2019. Co-organizers: Profs. Yong-Rak Kim (UNL), Chung Song (UNL), Huiming Yin (Columbia University), Qiming Wang (USC), and Xiaoyu Song.
5/22/2018: Prof. Song attended the 2nd Early Career Workshop (the Workshop) at Case Western Reserve University (Case) from May 20-22, 2018 held by The United States Universities Council for Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER), with financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The workshop aims to mentor early career academic professionals and to promote peer-to-peer interactions. In addition to mentoring from successful senior professionals, the Workshop will enable early career professionals to share personal experiences (both successful and unsuccessful) in starting an academic career.
This workshop was organized by Professor Xiong (Bill) Yu (CWRU), Professor Amy Cerato (UO), Professor Ed Kavazanjian (ASU), and Professor Scott M. Olson (UIUC). Thanks Profs. Yu, Cerato, Kavazanjian, and Olson for organizing such a wonderful workshop. Also thanks for the NSF travel fellowship.
4/2/2018: Prof. Song was invited to be a guest speaker for 2018 Gator Computing Program. The Gator Computing Program is for high school students entering 10th and 11th grade and offers an incredible opportunity to learn from UF’s preeminent research facilities. During this two-week program, student participants have the chance to discover and explore several scientific applications and environments – including tours of campus laboratories – and use what they learn to tackle real-world problems as part of a project team.
3/30/2018: Prof. Song will serve as faculty mentor for the UF Student Science Training Program (SSTP) in 2018. As a faculty mentor, Prof. Song will host 2 minor high-school students in his research lab this summer. This is the third time Prof. Song serves as a faculty mentor and hosts high-school students in his research lab for SSTP.
Summer 2018 will mark the 60th consecutive year of the University of Florida Student Science Training Program (UF-SSTP). More than 5,000 academically talented students from around the world have completed this rigorous summer residential research program since its inception in 1959.
The UF-SSTP is a seven-week residential research program for selected rising juniors and seniors who are considering medicine, math, computer, science, or engineering careers. The program emphasis is research participation with a UF faculty research scientist and his or her research team.
Students engage in the on-going research of the faculty-mentor for 28 hours each week, attend a lecture series on current research topics, and participate in a UF honors seminar class. Students enrolled in a Florida high school have the option to earn dual credit enrollment credit.
3/12/2018: Professor Ed Kavazanjian from ASU visited our group and presented the ESSIE Distinguished Lecture in 2018 - Geo-Alchemy (Turning Sand into Sandstone) and other Biogeotechnologies.
Biogeotechnical engineering is based upon the premise that through 3.8 billion years of trial and error (i.e., evolution) nature has developed efficient and sustainable solutions to many of the problems that vex geotechnical engineers. The biogeotechnology that has gained the most attention over the past 15 years is bio-mediated calcium carbonate precipitation, wherein microbes are used to induce precipitation of calcium carbonate (calcite) in granular soils, turning cohesionless sand into a sandstone-like material. Successes in laboratory testing and limited field trials suggest that this technique can non-disruptively improve the behavior of cohesionless soils. Applications of carbonate precipitation technology include fugitive dust control, tunneling in running and flowing sands, enhancement of foundation bearing capacity, and mitigation of the potential for earthquake-induced liquefaction. Other biogeotechnologies currently being explored by geotechnical engineers include the development of root inspired earth reinforcement and foundation systems, in situ creation of barriers to contaminant transport, enhanced soil penetration systems, and motile subsurface investigation probes and excavation systems.
Edward Kavazanjian, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, NAE, is a Regents Professor and the Ira A. Fulton Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU).
12/07/2017: Prof. Song received a Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) research project - RFRP-17/18-002 – Determining Bearing Resistance of Cantilever Sheet Piles.
The total funding is ~$360,000 for three years (1/1/2018-12/31/2020). For this project, the technical approaches involve numerical modeling via the nonlinear finite element method and laboratory experiments. Congratulations and we are grateful for the support of FDOT.
9/25/2017: Prof. Song joined the GEER team led by Profs. Nick Hudyma (UNF), Melissa Landon (UMaine) and Radhey Sharma (WVU) to Document Sinkhole Damage in Central and Northeastern Florida from Hurricane Irma on 9/25/2017, as recommended by Prof. Jonathan Bray (UC Berkeley, Chair of GEER), Prof. David Frost (Georgia Tech, Co-Chair of GEER) and Prof. Ellen Rathje (UT Austin, Co-Chair of GEER). Profs. Bray, Frost, and Rathje, thank you very much for your recommendation.
Hurricane Irma was a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Irma made landfall in the U.S. on Cudjoe Key (near Big Pine and Summerland Keys) on the morning of September 10, still being a category 4 hurricane, and made a second landfall on Marco Island, south of Naples, on the same day as a category 3 hurricane. Two teams from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association, supported by the National Science Foundation, were deployed to investigate geotechnical impacts of flooding, storm surge, and wave forcing in Florida in response to Hurricane Irma in September of 2017. The teams worked collaboratively with federal, state, and local organizations in Florida (from http://www.geerassociation.org).
The full report can be found at GEER Association Report No. GEER-056b.
9/7/2017: Prof. Song gave a seminar sponsored by the ASCE Geo-Institute - Unsaturated Soil Committee ($750) to the ASCE chapter in Gainesville, FL, on September 7th, 2017. The title of the seminar is "Computational Modeling of Unsaturated Fluid Flow and Deformation in Geological Materials". We thank the ASCE Geo-Institute - Unsaturated Soil Committee for the seminar grant.
7/27/2017: Prof. Song was invited by the Organizing Committee of the PanAm Unsat 2017 - Second Pan-American Conference on Unsaturated Soils (Unsaturated Soil Mechanics for Sustainable Geotechnics) to be the chair of a session entitled "Numerical Modeling - Flow and Deformation 2". Thanks for the invitation! I am glad to fulfill this assignment.
PanAm-UNSAT 2017 will feature the latest research advances and engineering-practice innovations with a focus on characterization, modeling, design, construction, and field performance. Researchers, practitioners, students, and policymakers from around the world, particularly the Americas, will share the latest technical advances, engineering applications, and pedagogical approaches in the discipline of unsaturated soil mechanics.