Any advice would be very much appreciated - MSc project titles

[stevehop]

Hi

I am currently wracking my brain to come up with a project title for my MSc dissertation. I have until September to decide - but as I am working on it part time (I work full time as an engineering geologist in the quarrying industry) I am keen come up with an idea this summer and begin reading around it.

Given my background, I am looking for something field based and probably relating to slope assessment / stability. Or possibly dewatering effects.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks

Steve

 

[BigH]

I've a good mate who is a very competent engineering geologist - I'll discuss this with him on Monday and see what he might suggest. One problem that we experienced was a "mudstone" layer sandwiched between a peridotite (jointed) and a massive conglomerate - when the toe was steepened for a river channel, the mudstone started creeping - and hence "failing". The movement was very slow. You might want to think about the effects of "hidden" zones such as this in rock masses. On many projects you don't have enough money or time to thoroughly investigate a large area - so you must rely on geological history, possible ancient occurrences - slides damming rivers that then create these sandwiched mudstone layers. Maybe then look into how such occurences might affect mining slopes or road slopes, etc. - just thinking off the top of my head.

 

[oldestguy]

In line with BigH, when slopes in soil fail, water conditions are frequently tied to the situation. Does water enter into rock failures?

Can you come up with some field sites where that situation may exist and then invent or demonstrate methods to assess the water conditions if they are important or not? It may take having to get some donated drilling services, or you might cogitate how to invent some procedures to get around having to drill, piezometers, etc. There is nothing like solving some field problems with practical methods, rather than sitting in an office and running a batch of fancy calculations. It gets you farther along when that work is in your resume.

Any tunnels in the area where stability of the rock affects progress, etc? How to predict them? How about trenching in rock also? What about affects of blasting on stability? Any trouble with quarry faces falling on the equipment below? Can logging of blast holes tell anything? Are there standards for quarry safety?

 

[BigH]

My Geologist friend wrote something and I am putting it in verbatim:
"I have always been interested in landslides from rock slopes adjacent to major roads. I have strong distyrust of numerical slope stability analysis of rock cuts as they are super-sensitive to certain input values: - phi, cohesion, m value, s value, RSI, etc. These parameters are difficult ifnot impossible to measure and small variations of input values can cause big variations in the safety factor. This is unstable situationlike Chaos Theory. People accordingly fiddle their input values to arrive at credible result of safety factor. It is all smoke and mirrors.

"30 years ago I made a reseearch proposal to the Western Cape Roads Authority in South Africa. I would survey all their major roads in mountainous terrain in order to identify existing rock slides that occurred in the past, those that were enventually remediated. My objective was to get a regional rock slide data base, with entries for slide volume, slope hiehgt, slope angle, slide angle, water condition, geology, slide plane geometry, drainage measures, etc.

"With such a systematic data base I though I would be able to produce guidelines for new roads to prevent future rock slides from occurring. Guidelines would be applicable for different scenarios based on geology/topography/slope orientation. I regret never doing this research.

"Title of my MSc Thesis (or Ph.D) would have been EMPIRIC METHOD FOR DESIGNING ROCK SLOPES ALONG MAJOR ROADS IN MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN OF THE WESTERN CAPE - or something like that.

"Good luck with your MSc."

Hope this gives you another - geologist - perspective.

 

[InDepth]

for a MSc How about
1) Slope stability of excavation corners (shoring) and the forces produced on bulkhead walls. I believe that there is arching effects that reduce the load on corner piles (a 3D effect).

2) Effects of friction pile foundations on slope stability. Several cases could be studied..varying the load to the length of the pile...and maybe even determining the critical points where pile load and length start having an effect. An additional study could be conducted where one determines the required shear/bending strength a pile should have if it intersects the "failure plane"... Kind of a soil structure interaction problem since the pile stiffness determines the force, but the stiffer the pile the greater the effect on the failure plane.

3) Berm stability for excavation shoring...I really think there needs to be a summary of current research performed and then FEM analysis performed to fill the gaps in understanding.

I would highly recommend writing your thesis as if it was a design guide...so industry can directly apply the research. There's plenty more ideas...

 

[InDepth]

For items 1 and 3, if you find the right projects you can possibly add load cells and monitoring to numerous projects to build a database.

 

[stevehop]

Thanks guys

there is some really good advice here. I quite like the idea of the 'design guide' thoughts.

I'll have a mull over things and I'll let you know what I come up with.

Thanks for spending the time to have a think and write something down.

Steve

 

[InDepth]

If you have the courage, you could call up 4 or 5 of the biggest geotechnical companies and set up a lunch meeting (buy the food for them) and then have an open forum where professionals provide you with ideas where research is needed. (or get a group of students to join). You may find that there are gaps or needs specific to your area. With the contacts you make, you'll be able to obtain mentors, peer reviewers, Possible materials/funding, and best of all... Possible access to databases and reports that are not available to the typical researcher. With your MSc you may be able to have an impact. Providing research that can be directly applied to practice is highly useful...there already is an unbelievable amount of great research that is difficult and not easy to apply. With professional mentors you'll be able to simplify or modify your recommendations to suit their needs.

If you gather a list of ideas and post it to this forum, it may be useful for other MSc or PHDs.