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Dr. Lindsay Ivey-Burden Civil and Environmental Engineering School of Engineering & Applied Science

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I am a geotechnical engineer.  What that means is that I am a civil engineer who focuses on topics that interact with one of the world’s most abundant natural materials: soil.

Given this, my research covers a wide variety of topics.  I’m interested in how we can tell what’s happening underneath the ground without having to dig it up; I’m interested in how the injection of drilling fluids in fracking operations can change the strength of the underlying soil and cause micro-seismic events; and I’m interested in how natural disasters like earthquakes and landslides affect the functionality of large infrastructure networks.

My research is exciting to me because it always has a direct application that can improve someone’s life.  If I can recommend an appropriate geophysical technique that prevents a road crew from digging up a road just to look at a pipe, then I’ve saved some trouble with someone’s morning commute.

If I can show that particular chemistries of injections into shale actually strengthen the subsurface after fracking and reduce the porosity of the shale, that technique could be used to “heal” rock after natural gas extraction, possibly minimizing the earthquakes resulting from, and controlling the flow of deep well injections.

And, if I can model the worse case scenarios of a natural disaster within a highway network before it ever occurs, I can recommend the most effective mitigation and recovery strategies to state agencies so that the public is as prepared as possible should this disaster ever occur.

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How could I save you some trouble on your morning commute? Exactly how might the injection of drilling fluids in fracking operations change the strength of the underlying soil and cause micro-seismic events? 

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Learn more about Dr. Ivey-Burden’s research and teaching. http://cee.virginia.edu/lindsay-ivey-burden/

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