Dear All,
Below is a reminder of the lecture on Monday the
10th of March 2014 at Loughborough University,
organised by the ICE's East Midlands Geotechnical Group (EMGG) :
Date :Monday 10th March 2014, 6.00 for 6.30pm
Subject : State Parameter-It is older than you think and widely applicable
Venue: Room RT037, Sir Frank Gibb Building (Civil
Engineering Building) Loughborough University.
Loughborough LE11 3TU (Map shown at the following
link : http://www.lboro.ac.uk/about/findus.html ).
Light refreshments will be available from 6.00 pm.
Speaker : Mike Jefferies (Golders Associates)
Abstract :
One of the most cited contributions of the past
twenty-five years, the state parameter is a
soil-type independent approach to characterizing
sands and silts (and, potentially, clays). The
approach can be used as a simple, but
fundamental, “normalizing” parameter for various
soil behaviours and there is quite a literature
on this form of use. But the greatest power comes
from recognizing the state parameter as a
fundamental ‘rate variable’ for particulate
materials, and it is in this application that it
has become ubiquitous in good constitutive soil
models; adopting the state parameter as an
internal variable allows constitutive models to
be nearly as simple as Cam Clay and yet capture
detail in stress-strain response in as situations
as diverse as extreme brittle failure through to
gentle fatigue-like response under cyclic loading.
Like most developments in engineering science,
the state parameter is based on earlier work, and
this talk will trace the development of
understanding of particulate physics starting
with Osborne Reynolds (1885) through Franklin
Falls Dam (1935) to Dan Drucker’s insights (1952)
and ending in offshore hydraulic fill
construction in the Canadian Beaufort Sea
(1980’s). Few equations will be shown, with the
focus being on historical evolution of ideas
explored through understanding the observations
in the various case histories and experiments.
Speaker's Biography :
Mike is a civil engineer with 35 years of
experience, mostly in consulting but ten years of
that with “owner” companies. It was this ten
years with owners, and in the Canadian Arctic
with Gulf Canada Resources in particular, that
provided an enormous opportunity to “push the
envelope” and which led to the most significant
of his contributions to engineering (or, more
accurately, engineering science).
A keynote speaker at international conferences on
Arctic offshore engineering, hydraulic fill
construction, and liquefaction, Mike has
published some seventy-five papers ranging across
ice loading of offshore platforms through to rock
fracture grouting. But he is generally most
known for the state parameter approach to soil
characterization – an approach that has become
one of the most cited innovations of the past
twenty-five years of geotechnical engineering.
The state parameter work led to an invitation to
write a book on soil liquefaction, now sold-out
with a second edition pending. As will be
evident from a quick glance at the book, Mike is
an exponent of the heresy that geotechnical
engineering must be based on applied mechanics,
not geology, and that the critical state is
fundamental, readily measurable, unique, and
something every geotechnical engineer should appreciate.
If you would like to be on our mailing list,
please send me an e-mail. More information may be
obtained about the various talks at :
http://emgg.lboro.ac.uk/
Regards,
Ashraf
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Dr A. El-Hamalawi BEng,(Hons) PhD (Cantab), MASCE,MCGS,MILT,PE
Senior lecturer in Geomechanics
Civil and Building Engineering Department,
Loughborough University,
Loughborough LE11 3TU
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-1509-223206
Fax: +44-1509-223981
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