Well, I'd say this one had just about been trowelled to death.... I'd say the hod is empty... I'd say the wake is over (Tim Finnegan's)...

Soooooo.... How high can you pile a cohesionless homogeneous material consisting of particles of uniform gradation upon a structure such as pile supported marine dock of infinite area and infinite vertical load bearing capacity?

For instance, say you were stockpiling sand on a wooden wharf. You know that the wharf can easily handle a vertical load of a thousand truckloads of sand but, when the 500th load goes on top of the pile, it's goodbye wharf. How did the wharf fail?

John is disqualified from answering this one as it is one of the most common modes of failure analyzed in structural and soils engineering.

Ah... if this is a stunned question, er, ah, not appropriate, ignore it. I just think it's cool. But then, I AM a beaver, damit!