Landslides and slope failure are common in the US and rest of the world. The landslides cause significant damage to infrastructure and millions of dollars are required each year to fix the slope. A sustainable and costeffective option to stabilise the slope can have significant benefits, as it will reduce the cost of maintenance and when using recycled pins, it may help the environment at the same time. The recycled plastic pin is made from recycled plastic bottles and other plastic waste. Several demonstration projects already proved the effectiveness of RPP as an alternative option to fix slope failure, with a maximum failure depth of 7-8 ft. In this book, every detail of the slope stabilisation technique using recycled plastic pins, including the design techniques and several case studies, are included. This will help to explain the basics of this important technique and will be used as reference to design the slope stabilisation scheme using recycled plastic pins.
About the Author: Dr. Sahadat Hossain is a Professor of Civil Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Hossain has completed his B.S. degree (1994) in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, India, Master of Engineering (1997) in Geotechnical Engineering from Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand, and Ph.D. (2002) from North Carolina State University (NCSU) at Raleigh, NC, USA.
Dr. Hossain has more than 20 (Twenty) years of professional and research experience in geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering. His experience includes design and construction of solider pile, sheet pile, contiguous bored pile, scant pile, diaphragm wall, and mechanically stabilised earth (MSE) wall, slope stability analyses. Dr. Hossain had worked on more than 100 (One Hundred) geotechnical design and construction projects in Bangladesh, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. His experience also includes working with various numerical analysis and design tools including the Finite Element Program PLAXIS, the Finite Difference Program FLAC, L-PILE, DRIVEN, ct-SHORING, gINT, STABL, MODFLOW, HELP, and few other programs.
At present, Dr. Hossain is working with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) on different geotechnical engineering projects. Dr. Hossain was interviewed by local TV (ABC News, CBS News, Fox News) and national newspaper Atlantic Cities on the utilisation recycled plastic pins for slope stabilisation. Recently (July 2016), Star Telegram of North Texas had an editorial article of RPP stabilised slopes and endorsed the method to be used for highway slope repair.
Dr. Hossain has contributed to the literature by being the author/co-author of more than 100 (one hundred) research papers that have been published in international journals and conference proceedings. Dr. Hossain has presented his research work in many national and international conferences. Dr. Hossain is active committee member of two committees sponsored by the National Academies Transportation Research Board (TRB), Deep Foundation Institute's (DFI) Slurry Wall Committee and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He is also actively involved with International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) and Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA).
Dr. Sadik Khan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Jackson State University (JSU). Dr. Khan has completed his MS on August 2011 and PhD in Geotechnical Engineering on December 2013, from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Before his graduate studies, Dr. Khan had 2.5 years of industry experience in Bangladesh and worked with the top management team in several projects to construct single and multi-storied residential and factory buildings, 150 kV power plant foundations and 132/33 kV substations. During his PhD dissertation, he conducted extensive research in the slope stabilisation using recycled plastic pin in Texas. He also worked in different research projects on failure investigation of highway slopes and MSE wall and geophysical evaluation of existing highway sub-structures. Dr. Khan has extensive experience in the instrumentation of highway slopes and pavement sites. He also conducted extensive numerical studies using Finite Element Method (FEM) in highway slope stabilisation. Dr. Khan has several publications in prestigious civil engineering journals and presented in local, national and international conferences such as Transportation Research Board Meeting, Geo-Congress, Geo-Frontiers, etc. Dr. Khan is a member of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a professional engineer (P.E.) at the State of Texas.
Golam Kibria, Ph.D., P.E. is a Senior Staff Engineer in Drash Consultants, LLC (A TTL Company) San Antonio, Texas. He started his career as a Junior Engineer in the Institute of Water Modeling, Dhaka, Bangladesh in the month of May 2009. He served in the Coast, Port, and Estuary Management Division of the institute till December 2009. Dr. Kibria enrolled the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 for graduate studies and graduated with his Ph.D. in 2014. During his graduate studies, Dr. Kibria worked with Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) on failure investigation of highway slopes, MSE wall and geophysical evaluation of geo-infrastructures. He was active member of TxDOT featured project on Sustainable Slope Stabilisation Using Recycled Plastic Pin. The project was nationally recognised as a major contribution on cost-effective sustainable solution for shallow slope failure by many television channels and newspapers.
After his Ph.D. he started working as a Geotechnical Engineer in California and then moved to Texas. As a consultant, he has extensive experience in the laterally loaded foundation of power transmission structures, slope stability, pavement, and retaining structures. In addition to his consulting activities, Dr. Kibria is actively involved in research and collegial activities. He is an accredited reviewer of many scientific journals. Dr. Kibria is an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Geological Resource and Engineering. He is a member of Geophysical Engineering and Computational Geotechnics technical committee of ASCE.
Dr. Kibria has several publications in many high impact factor engineering journals and presented his scholarly researches in local, national and international conferences. He is a professional engineer (P.E.) at the State of Texas. Dr. Kibria strongly believe in innovation and application of green technology to resolve existing geotechnical problems.
