NATIONAL GEOTECHNICAL EXPERIMENTATION SITES

The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Geotechnical Research Program strives to develop practical, cost-effective technology for bridge foundations, retaining walls, and embankments. A major focus of this program is the development of a designated system of national geotechnical experimentation sites (NGES) to improve the ability to find and evaluate new techniques for constructing safer and more economical highways and bridges. With this objective in mind, the FHWA teamed up with the National Science Foundation to establish a system with a national management board and individual site managers. This article describes the system to accelerate geotechnical research to solve many serious, foundation-engineering problems and difficult, soil-support problems facing the highway community today. Sidebars provide site descriptions of the five NGES locations: Treasure Island Naval Station, Texas A&M University, University of Massachusetts--Amherst, Northwestern University, and University of Houston.