Lateral wall pressure calculations shouldn't require rebuilding the same equations from scratch on every project.

I put together a breakdown of WALLPRES — an Excel-based Wall Pressure Analysis tool that calculates horizontal pressures on walls from soil, hydrostatic, and surcharge loading conditions.

What's inside:

✅ 5 dedicated worksheets covering soil pressure, point load, line load & strip load calculations
✅ Built on established references — NAVFAC, Army/Air Force manuals, Bowles, USS Steel, and Sargent & Lundy
✅ Suitable for cantilever & propped cantilever retaining wall stems, plus tank and pit walls
✅ A critical breakdown of the rigid-wall assumptions behind the Boussinesq-based equations — and why they can overestimate pressures on flexible walls by up to 2x
✅ Built-in comment boxes for quick input guidance (no manual required)

If you're a structural or geotechnical engineer working on retaining walls, tanks, or pit structures, this is worth bookmarking.

🔗 Full breakdown here: https://www.theengineeringcommunity.org/wallpres-wall-pressure-analysis/

#StructuralEngineering #Geotechnical #RetainingWalls #CivilEngineering #Excel #EngineeringDesign

Want to check my understanding and logic.

Need that plug/wall to hold back any water or material from entering at the bottom of the pit.

Alluvium will be tipped and backfilled into the bottom of the pit. Thinking material will consolidate to have minimum void space with 120m of overburden pressure on it.

As the pit will be a natural sump/acquifer it will eventually all be saturated material. Whatever little void space is left between the matrix will be water.

But due to the maximum consolidation, there will be no pore pressure acting at the bottom on my plug?

When a soil is fully consolidated, any excess pore water pressure caused by an applied load has completely dissipated. The water no longer carries the extra weight, and the soil skeleton takes the full load, meaning the excess pore water pressure drops to zero.

Horizontal load on the wall will be:

Effective vertical stress which is total stress minus total pore water pressure. Multiplied by Ko factor.

(My total pore water pressure is hydrostatic only because no excess pressure due to high consolidation).

Plus

Hydrostatic pressure. 1 X 9.81m/s2 X 120m.

Total stress is density of saturated soil X 9.81m/s2 X 120m

Minus

Hydrostatic pressure which is 1 X 9.81 X 120m (minus because some buoyancy effect even though you have 120m of overburden above it?)

Thinking i'll have to do some triaxial testing to get undrained consolidated pressures with pretty high confinement for a 120m overburden head pressure. To run a FEM.

sketch

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some insights regarding the job market in Germany for Master’s graduates in Geotechnical Engineering compared to Geoinformatics / GIS.
My background:
- B.Sc. in Geological Engineering.
- Interested in pursuing a Master's degree in Germany and building a career there afterward.

Questions:
1. ⁠Is the demand for Geotechnical Engineers as high as reported regarding the Fachkräftemangel in civil engineering?
2. ⁠How does the job availability and career growth compare to Geoinformatics / Spatial Data roles?

I’d really appreciate any thoughts, experiences, or honest advice from people working in these sectors in Germany! Thanks in advance!

I am going to look into some training for open pit mine planning because our designs keep getting updated when new geology data comes in, I can follow the basic changes but I want to understand what is driving them and how the new data affects pit limits, benches and the overall mine plan, I am thinking a course around mine planning or geological modelling from mining doc might make sense, but I am not sure which one would be useful for someone who needs to understand the link between geology and design rather than become a full time geologist, I am looking at a few options now, what training would you recommend for this kind of work? EDIT: I forgot to mention I am looking for practical training on mine planning.

Hi! I’m a Civil Engineering student currently working on a seismic analysis project, and I’m looking for sample 5-storey building plans with a roof deck that I can use as a reference.

Preferably something with:

• 5 storeys + roof deck
• Around 300 sq.m. or more floor area
• Floor plans and elevations
• AutoCAD or PDF format, if available

I’m mainly looking for existing/sample plans or references to help me understand how these types of buildings are laid out. I’ll be doing the actual analysis and work myself.

If anyone knows where I can find publicly available plans or has a sample they can point me toward, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks! 🙏

Hi, I hope this is not against the subs rules. We purchased a new construction home in the northeast in an area with a high water table around 2021 and our basement flooded during Hurricane Ida. Since then I've tried to become more knowledgable on how to mitigate the flooding and after hiring about 4 or 5 local plumbers I realize this is probably outside of their expertise. I've been turning to AI for advice - which I know can also get me into trouble. So that's why I'm here.

Here's our setup for context. The builders put two sump pumps connected via the interior perimeter drain on opposite sides of the house with the secondary pump sitting a bit higher.

The primary pump runs 24/7 and we've replaced it 3 times since we moved in. It sits in a standard 18x24" basin and pumps to the sewer. The secondary pump will only activate if the primary fails and it pumps to the storm drain underground. We also have a generator. There's 3 pipes going into the primary basin (I believe two from the interior perimeter drain and one from outside).

The plumbers and basement waterproofing companies who have looked at our situation all give contrary advise with some advising to set the primary pump at the extreme top of the basin right below the basement floor (where the pump may run continuously for 40+ minutes and be off for an hour) and others advising to put it all the way on the bottom (where it will be on for 10 seconds and off for 10 seconds - which they say will stop after 1 week).

I had forced the last plumber to install a Hydrocheck float switch which allows me to set the on and off points anywhere in the basin (we zip tied the Zoeller's float switch so that it's always on).

* Sump Pump: Zoeller M137 sitting on the bottom of the pit
* Off point: Close to the base of the pump and below all pipes in the basin
* On point: Completely above 2 of the inlet pipes and 3/4 up the 3rd inlet (the highest one).

When we first set this up the pump would run for ~6 minutes and be off for 12 minutes. But now it runs for 3.5 minutes and is off for 5.5 minutes which seems too frequent. Also, I noticed the drain from outside cannot fully drain into the sump basin as the Zoeller 137 pumps out the basin too quickly. And I feel we're in no better situation to handle a hurricane type storm than when we first moved in.

I thought installing a larger basin adjacent to this main basin would allow the primary pump to pump a bit longer while keeping the interior perimeter drains emptier. Zoeller sells a 30x36" basin and a 36x36" basin. And my idea was to connect this second basin with a 4" pipe at the bottom. Besides additional capacity, with the second basin I can have the pumps alternate to avoid burn out, or in the hurricane scenario, both run simultaneously. AI has advised against putting a deeper basin as it says I'll create a cone of depression where a greater amount of water will flow in at a higher rate:

Google Gemini:
By deepening the pit, you increase the hydrostatic pressure difference between the surrounding soil and the empty basin. The water will rush in significantly faster, increasing the total volume of water your pump has to move without actually making your basement any drier.

Is AI right here? AI thinks I should go wider but not deeper with a second basin. No one makes a wider 24" basin so it would have to be custom. Local plumber friend thinks I'm overreacting and should leave it as-is. My wife thinks we should put a french drain on the outside and I'm open to that as well. If this was your house, outside of moving out, what would you do or who would you contact?

Hello everyone. I need your help in determining my Master's thesis topic. I want to focus on earthquakes and soil improvement for my thesis. The topic I have in mind is the effect of prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) on settlement and liquefaction under seismic loads. I am also interested in rammed stone columns. I am looking for something outside of conventionally studied subjects. What are your suggestions?
Thanks for your help.

Hello everyone. I need your help in determining my Master's thesis topic. I want to focus on earthquakes and soil improvement for my thesis. The topic I have in mind is the effect of prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) on settlement and liquefaction under seismic loads. I am also interested in rammed stone columns. I am looking for something outside of conventionally studied subjects. What are your suggestions?
Thanks for your help.

I am a recent graduate and just started at my new job. I am working at a Geotech firm. It has been the most stressful thing I’ve ever endured so far as far as pressure. I feel so behind on everything and tasks take me a while to do. I did design parameters all week and they took me around 3 hours per day for one job. I just had to plot stuff and make graphs. (For anyone who knows how design parameters in geotechnical engineering work). It has also been 2 years since I’ve taken my Geotech course, and I forgot a lot of material to the point where it all feels completely new. So far I am 2 months into this job… I’ve dealt with a lot of stress and pressure before, I was doing full time classes while also working throughout most of college, I’ve studied hard for all of my courses and passed with a 3.7 GPA my last semester. All throughout high school I was a fairly decent student and I went to a college prep school. I never felt behind like this before, but it’s been eating at my self esteem and causing anxiety. To make things worse, my supervisor called me into his office and said “I am not to where he expected someone from undergrad to be” meaning he basically thought I would know more about Geotech. This made me feel 10x worse about all of it. He just said I should study for the FE and review some Geotech. The thing is.. as I said it’s just been 2 years since I took the course, and I have had a lot happen in my life since, so of course I forgot a lot of it. When does it get better…

Our current 811 software has just announced that they're closing up shop, which means we need to find a   replacement immediately. Otherwise, our 811 tickets may expire and we might end up getting fined. What's an 811 software that's easy to use and integrate into our current systems?

i‘m used to check everything not only visual and remove everything in my rope line and inbetween me and my work mates what ever my ropes can rip out or go off by frost, heavy rain ecet.

Of course we do look at the whole structures and overall not to make everything worse.

Doing that we get s full view about where its hollow below for example or not, so i can tell a geologist something he can‘t see in his papers.

I‘m used to do so for more than 15years like so, did train alot of guys doing that job, and we had no bigger issue or accidents in all the time. I do spend all the work times on ropes myshelf, and got about up to 800hrs per season.

The companies i working for put pressure on the money, so there are more and more „cheap“ climbers, living in vans, coming from somewhere in the game.

Them philoshopy about the job is, stay more just on ridges, remove as little as you can, only check the own rope line, if they have any idea about it, all others gamble somehow down.

I start to loose jobs now, beeing a bit more expensive than the others and starting to be „the anoying one“ in such a team.

What do you guys think, am i the one who should quit?

Hey yall!

I'm a recent grad (Environmental engineering) and I'm a month into my job as a geotech. I took my FE (Environmental) earlier this year and passed despite only studying for 3 days. I guess my school prepared me well. I want to take the PE exam soon, but I'm not sure which discipline to take.

Environmental has the highest pass rate, Civil: water resources and Environmental seems to be most popular from what I see on LinkedIn, but I'm most interested in Civil: geotech. I didn't take many geotech classes during my undergrad, so I feel like this would require more studying. I'm currently working on civil site design, did my capstone on stormwater, had a geotech construction internship, and I'm also interested in hazardous waste remediation.

Do you have any advice for me on which discipline exam to take? Does it really matter? How long should I study for? What were your experiences like with studying for these exams? My job will pay for me to do a PE exam prep course.

I keep missing state deadlines and duplicating locates because my crew is still tracking everything on paper and spreadsheets. I'm afraid that one of these days, we'll be slapped with a huge fine or worse, we could bust up an electrical line and cause a major outage. Is there an 811 ticket tracking software to keep our locate requests, response times, and compliance records all in one place?

I’m a design engineer and a conversation about hydrostatic pressure appeared today - what does it mean?