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At Aalto University, master’s theses in technology are often completed in collaboration with companies, allowing the company to access the latest research and gain fresh perspectives on its operations through a student nearing the end of their studies.

Eden Telila, a recent graduate of the Master's Programme in Geoengineering, completed her master’s thesis with the geotechnical engineering department of the global engineering, architecture, and consultancy company, Ramboll.

The thesis deals with the undrained shear strength of soil, a key concept when designing underground structures that describes how well the ground can withstand short-term loads. Results of field vane tests form the basis for undrained shear strength calculations, which are often done manually: a time-intensive and error-prone process, made especially laborious when dealing with large amounts of data and multiple cross-sections.

In her master’s thesis, Telila developed an application to automate parts of this processing workload. The geotechnical issue was thus accompanied by a Python programming task to implement the application. Here, the work was helped along by what Telila learned during elective courses she completed at the Department of Computer Science.

'The work demonstrates that tailored independent software solutions can be developed in geotechnical design to meet specific needs with results that are efficient, affordable, and user-friendly. The application is likely to become a fundamental tool for the company's geotechnical engineers,' says thesis advisor and Ramboll Team Leader Matias Napari.