September 1, 2023
Geology faculty partners with Kansas Department of Transportation
Submitted by Behzad Ghanbarian
A challenge in geotechnical engineering is measuring geomechanical properties of rocks on crushed samples.
To address this issue, Behzad Ghanbarian, associate professor of geology, proposed applying atomic force microscopy, a new methodology adopted from petroleum engineering, and received funding from the Kansas Department of Transportation.
In collaboration with the civil engineering department at K-State as well as the University of Kansas, Nelsy Osorio, a geology graduate student, will experimentally link limestone geomechanical characteristics, e.g., Young's modulus to other rock properties, such as mineralogy, porosity, permeability and nuclear magnetic resonance measurements on core and crushed samples under completely dry and full saturation conditions.