Principal investigator spotlight: Abdolreza Osouli

Abdolreza Osouli, associate professor in the Civil Engineering Department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is currently serving as Principal Investigator on Project R27-157, “Plasticity Requirements of the Aggregates as Subbase, Base, Surface, and Shoulder Courses,” sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation and administered by the Illinois Center for Transportation. 

“Due to concerns raised by IDOT’s Bureau of Research regarding the controlling criteria of fines content in unbound aggregates for base and subbase applications, we proposed this research to identify the proper criteria for plasticity index, dust ratio, and fines content in aggregates used in highway applications,” Osouli said. “The objective of this study is, therefore, to develop the required knowledge for IDOT so that the related sections of IDOT Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Construction be properly modified.”

Osouli is also serving as Co-Principal Investigator on a new ICT-IDOT project aimed to provide guidelines for the use of integrity testing for drilled shafts that considers shaft diameter and length, number of drilled shafts to be constructed, soil and rock conditions, expected wet vs. dry method of construction, redundancy of shafts, and importance of the structure. The project, titled “Evaluating the Accuracy and Use of Drilled Shaft Integrity Testing Methods in Illinois,” (R27-188) is scheduled to be completed by July 2020.

Osouli has been an active player in several other research studies. Those include Project R27-141, “Effective Post-Construction Best Management Practices to Infiltrate & Retain Storm Water Run-Off,” which focused on assisting IDOT in the identification of performance and cost effective Post-Constriction Best Management Practices to infiltrate and retain the first one-inch stormwater run-off; and Project R27-145, “Modified Standard Penetration Test-based Drilled Shaft Design Method for Weak Rocks (Phase 2 Study),” which investigated the load transfer mechanism of axially loaded drilled shafts socketed into weak, fine-grained rocks (e.g. weak shales) and enhanced and verified the method of characterizing weak shales as well as the design procedure developed during Phase 1 of the study. The new design procedure is expected to improve safety and reduce IDOT’s deep foundation costs for future bridge structures.

In addition, Osouli is currently working on evaluating the earth pressures and motion response of retaining structures that have backfills with very low to no cohesions under earthquake loading with different intensity. The goal of this research effort is to provide insight on the probability of damage on retaining walls.

Osouli is a registered professional engineer in Missouri. He received his Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010. He received his BS and MS in civil engineering in 2002 and 2004 from Sharif University of Technology, respectively. His research interests include the deep foundations, soil/rock characterization, seismic performance of geo-structures, soil-structure interaction of buried pipelines, and erosion mechanisms.  Osouli’s research has published in about 20 journals and 40 conference proceedings.