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UTA Geowall Team

The University of Texas at Arlington’s first attempt at competing in the national GeoWall challenge proved to be a success. Two graduate students, Minh Le and Aravind Pedarla and two undergraduate students, Bobby Gaddis and Jeff Philipp made up the first GeoWall team from UTA to ever participate in the national GeoChallenge. Their hard work and dedication paid off when they received 5^th place national recognition in their design report and by being one of only five schools in the competition to have a successful GeoWall.

Each year at the GeoCongress the ASCE Geo-Institute sponsors a Geo-Challenge. The GeoChallenge is composed of three different student competitions highlighted by the GeoWall competition. The objective of the GeoWall competition is to design and build a model of a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining wall using paper reinforcement taped to a posterboard wall facing. The design objective is to use the least amount of reinforcement needed to support the retained soil plus both vertical and horizontal surcharge loads. The 2013 Geowall introduced an impact load which is uncommon in most retaining wall designs.

The UT Arlington team came up with an innovative design for reinforcement to counteract the impact force and withhold the wall from failing. Their design report was awarded 5th place nationally and qualified them for participation in the 2013 national GeoWall competition in San Diego, CA, back in March. Only 16 teams qualify nationally to compete at the annual GeoCongress. The top four teams are awarded $2000 in travel awards along with their registration, the next four are awarded $1000 in travel awards along with their registration, and the remaining eight teams are awarded their registration fee. The team from UT Arlington was surpassed in their design report only by four teams; Cal Poly Pomona, University of Delaware, UCLA and CSU Fullerton. The execution of their design was accomplished dexterously at the GeoCongress, where their wall ranked third of only five that withheld all the forces and avoided catastrophic failure.  First place was taken by defending champions, Cal Poly Pomona with the University of Kansas coming in second. This was the first time a GeoWall team from UT Arlington was selected to compete in nationals which made this a huge accomplishment for the team. 

Next year’s competition will be held late February in Atlanta, Georgia. Having the experience and success of this year’s national competition, UTA’s team is anxious to return. Although much of their trip was paid for through the awarded scholarship in the design report and financial backing from UT Arlington and the civil engineering department, many of the materials, tools and additional expenses were supplied by the members themselves. UTA’s members have several ideas they wish to implement for next year’s competition to improve testing and construction to put them in a more competitive position, but they will require items that were not used this year. If you would like to be a sponsor, donate or inquire about ways you can help the 2014 UTA GeoWall team, we encourage you to contact Dr. Anand Puppala, Associate Dean of Research, CE Geotechnical Dept. ([email protected]) or Dr. Jim Williams, ASCE student body Faculty Advisor ([email protected]).