Geotechnical Engineering

Dr. Zeynep Yıldırım’s research interests include sustainable geotechnics, characterization and utilization of recyclable materials, design of deep foundations, soil improvement, environmental geotechnics, seismic behavior of slopes and retaining structures, designing with geosynthetics and tunneling. To date, her major contributions have been relevant to the utilization of recyclable materials and recyclable material mixtures in geotechnical applications. Her experimental research included the evaluation of mineralogical, morphological, physical, and mechanical properties of BOF, EAF, and ladle steel slags. Her experimental research work lead to instrumented field implementation studies that include: (i) the construction of an embankment with fly ash and bottom ash mixtures, (ii) subgrade stabilization of clayey soils using EAF steel slag and fly ash mixture. She also contributed to the design of partial-displacement piles.  Her current research projects include numerical investigation of two-dimensional (2D) & three-dimensional (3D) effects on stability analysis of slopes and slopes stabilized using piles; numerical investigation of seismic behavior of slopes and MSE walls. Her research group also studies the behavior of NATM tunnels constructed in weak soils with the umbrella-arch method.   

Geotechhnical faculty perform research in the following fields:

Engineering properties of soils
Laboratory and field tests to measure constitutive properties and strength of soils, development of theoretical and empirical relationships, identification and selection of design parameters.

Soil behavior
Investigation of the relationship between different phases and the granular matter, time dependent behavior, compression and swelling, stress history effects.

Constitutive modeling
Modeling of stress-strain behavior of soils. Investigation of the parameters that characterize continuum response.

Physical modeling
Physical modeling in geotechnics, 1g and centrifuge modeling, small scale and full scale modelling. Use of modeling in research.

Soil improvement

Investigation of the techniques that are used to change the characteristics of soils. Physical improvement and chemical improvement methods.

Geosynthetics
Research into the behavior, performance, testing and design of geosynthetic reinforced soils and development of geosynthetic products.

Foundations and soil-structure interaction

Design methods of different geotechnical structures. Shallow and deep foundations, static and dynamic soil-structure interaction. Terramechanics problems.

Soil dynamics and geotechnical earthquake engineering
Behavior of soil under dynamic loading. Determination of dynamic soil parameters, liquefaction phenomenon, seismic design of geotechnical structures.

Environmental geotechnics
Waste management projects, utilization of byproducts in geotechnical applications, use of geosynthetics for environmental purposes, determination of the engineering properties of wastes.