Earthworks are engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 works created through the moving or processing of quantities of soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

 or unformed rock

Rock (geology)

In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...

.

Civil engineering use

Typical earthworks include roads, railway beds, causeways, dams, levee

Levee

A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels...

s, canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

s, and berm

Berm

A berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier separating two areas. Berm originates in the Middle Dutch and German berme and came into usage in English via French.- History :...

s. Other common earthworks are land grading

Land grading

Grading in civil engineering and construction is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified slope, for a construction work such as a foundation, the base course for a road or a railway, or landscape and garden improvements, or surface drainage...

 to reconfigure the topography of a site, or to stabilize slopes.

Military use

In military engineer

Military engineer

In military science, engineering refers to the practice of designing, building, maintaining and dismantling military works, including offensive, defensive and logistical structures, to shape the physical operating environment in war...

ing, earthworks are, more specifically, types of fortification

Fortification

Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...

s constructed from soil. Although soil is not very strong, it is cheap enough that huge quantities can be used, generating formidable structures. Examples of older earthwork fortifications include moat

Moat

A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that surrounds a castle, other building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices...

s, sod

Sod

Sod or turf is grass and the part of the soil beneath it held together by the roots, or a piece of thin material.The term sod may be used to mean turf grown and cut specifically for the establishment of lawns...

 walls

Defensive wall

A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...

, motte-and-bailey

Motte-and-bailey

A motte-and-bailey is a form of castle, with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised earthwork called a motte, accompanied by an enclosed courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade...

 castles, and hill fort

Hill fort

A hill fort is a type of earthworks used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Some were used in the post-Roman period...

s. Modern examples include trenches

Trench warfare

Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...

 and berm

Berm

A berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier separating two areas. Berm originates in the Middle Dutch and German berme and came into usage in English via French.- History :...

s.

Equipment

Heavy construction equipment is usually used due to the amounts of material to be moved — up to millions of cubic metres (or cubic yard

Cubic yard

A cubic yard is an Imperial / U.S. customary unit of volume, used in the United States, Canada, and the UK. It is defined as the volume of a cube with sides of 1 yard in length.-Symbols:...

s). Earthwork construction was revolutionised by the development of the (Fresno

Fresno Scraper

The Fresno Scraper is a machine used for constructing canals and ditches in sandy soil.It was invented in 1883 by the Scottish immigrant and entrepreneur James Porteous who, having worked with farmers in Fresno, California, had recognised the dependence of the Central San Joaquin Valley on...

) scraper

Wheel tractor-scraper

In civil engineering, a wheel tractor-scraper is a piece of heavy equipment used for earthmoving.The rear part has a vertically moveable hopper with a sharp horizontal front edge. The hopper can be hydraulically lowered and raised. When the hopper is lowered, the front edge cuts into the soil or...

 and other earth-moving machines

Engineering vehicle

Heavy equipment refers to heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing construction tasks, most frequently ones involving earthwork operations. They are also known as, construction equipment, construction plant, earth movers, engineering vehicles, or simply equipment...

 such as the loader

Loader (equipment)

A loader is a heavy equipment machine often used in construction, primarily used to load material into or onto another type of machinery .-Heavy equipment front loaders:A loader A loader is a heavy equipment machine often used in construction, primarily used to load material (such as asphalt,...

, production trucks, the grader

Grader

A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, a blade, a maintainer, or a motor grader, is a construction machine with a long blade used to create a flat surface. Typical models have three axles, with the engine and cab situated above the rear axles at one end of the vehicle and a third...

, the bulldozer

Bulldozer

A bulldozer is a crawler equipped with a substantial metal plate used to push large quantities of soil, sand, rubble, etc., during construction work and typically equipped at the rear with a claw-like device to loosen densely-compacted materials.Bulldozers can be found on a wide range of sites,...

, the backhoe

Backhoe

A backhoe, also called a rear actor or back actor, is a piece of excavating equipment or digger consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm. They are typically mounted on the back of a tractor or front loader...

, and the dragline excavator

Dragline excavator

A dragline excavator is a piece of heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining.In civil engineering the smaller types are used for road, port construction, and as pile driving rigs. The larger types are used in strip-mining operations to move overburden above coal, and for...

.

Mass haul planning

Engineers need to concern themselves with issues of geotechnical engineering

Geotechnical engineering

Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. Geotechnical engineering is important in civil engineering, but is also used by military, mining, petroleum, or any other engineering concerned with construction on or in the ground...

 (such as soil density and strength) and with quantity estimation to ensure that soil volumes in the cuts

Cut (earthmoving)

In civil engineering, a cut or cutting is where soil or rock material from a hill or mountain is cut out to make way for a canal, road or railway line....

 match those of the fills

Fill dirt

Fill dirt is earthy material which is used to fill in a depression or hole in the ground or create mounds or otherwise artificially change the grade or elevation of real property....

, while minimizing the distance of movement. In the past, these calculations were done by hand using a slide rule

Slide rule

The slide rule, also known colloquially as a slipstick, is a mechanical analog computer. The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but is not normally used for addition or subtraction.Slide rules come in a...

 and with methods such as Simpson's rule

Simpson's rule

In numerical analysis, Simpson's rule is a method for numerical integration, the numerical approximation of definite integrals. Specifically, it is the following approximation:...

.

Now they can be performed with a computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 and specialized software

Civil engineering software

There are a variety of software programs which are available for the different specialized disciplines of civil engineering. Most civil engineers practice in specialized subsets of civil engineering, such as geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering, hydraulic...

, including optimisation on haul cost and not haul distance (as haul cost is not proportional to haul distance).

See also

• Cut and fill
  Cut and fill
  In earthmoving, cut and fill is the process of constructing a railway, road or canal whereby the amount of material from cuts roughly matches the amount of fill needed to make nearby embankments, so minimizing the amount of construction labor...
  
  
• Earth movers
  Engineering vehicle
  Heavy equipment refers to heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing construction tasks, most frequently ones involving earthwork operations. They are also known as, construction equipment, construction plant, earth movers, engineering vehicles, or simply equipment...
  
  , construction/engineering vehicles used for earthworks civil engineering
• Spoil tip

External links

• Finding Volume of Earthwork using Simpson's Rule