He graduated from the Technische Hochschule (TH) in Vienna with a civil engineering degree in 1924, after which he carried on working there as a full-time assistant to Professor Schaffernak in the hydraulics laboratory.
Following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after World War I, there was little construction work around, leaving employment scant prospects in the civil engineering field.
Casagrande stayed in a YMCA hostel for ten days after arriving in New York in 1926, and decided to go to New Jersey and work as a draftsman for a few months.
Aided by his latest advances in experimental techniques and apparatus, Casagrande was able to make fundamental contributions to the understanding of soil mechanics.
There he rapidly established a school of postgraduate teaching and research that would see the number of students steadily grow from 12 in 1932 to over 80 after World War II.
[citation needed] Casagrande's passionate interests in earth dams can be seen in the extensive research work he has carried out on seepage as well as soil liquefaction.
It was also through the study commissioned by the Corps of Engineers (who after WWII became concerned about the influence of a possible atomic blast on the stability of embankments of the Panama Canal) that led Casagrande to become one of the first persons in the world to investigate the dynamic strength of soils.