Chairman of the 15th ICSMFE, Professor E. Togrol did attend the 6th Montréal in 1965. Since then, he had been present in all the ICSMFEs, twelve times consecutively. This is an evidence of his self-recognition that Istanbul is the birth place of soil mechanics and he is destined to keep this asset as a guardian.

THE 16TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSAKA, JAPAN, 2005

W. V. Impe

The 16th ICSMGE was held on 12 – 16 September 2005, at Rihga Royal Hotel in Osaka, the second largest and old city in Japan.

The conference attendees reaching Osaka by plane had the opportunity to become acquainted with the recently completed new Osaka International Airport. This airport that opened in September 1994 is located offshore in Osaka Bay, but because of its unforeseen subsoil conditions, and its large settlement due to consolidation, the man-made island for the airport represents one of the most significant challenges of the geotechnical engineered constructions.

During the Opening Session, after the current President Professor W. Van Impe‘s address, Professor Harry Poulos was awarded the Kevin Nash Gold Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to our discipline particularly with respect to theory and practice in the field of foundation engineering. The Terzaghi Oration whose title was ―Associating with Advancing Insight‖ was presented by Professor F. Barends, from the Netherlands.  Development of Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering was the title of the Heritage Lecture and covered issues of prominent interests for the host country. It was delivered by Professor I. Towhata.

H. Poulos

As always, the technical conference program consisted of five plenary sessions assisted by numerous technical sessions, see Tables 1.3 and 1.4, covering topics such as: properties of natural soils by in situ tests, computational modeling of large deformation, environmental geotechnics, offshore geotechnical engineering and pile foundations.

The appeal of the conference was largely enhanced by the newly introduced major project session, Practitioner-Academic Forum and International Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference. These new format of the Conference was due to the great efforts by the Chairman Professor N. Adachi and Secretary General Professor K. Kamon.

In the Council Meeting, Professor P. Seco e Pinto was elected to the next President and Dr. N. Taylor continued as Secretary General.

At the closing ceremony Professor Van Impe introduced to the audience the President elect, Professor Pedro Sêco e Pinto, from Portugal and handed over to him the wooden gavel, symbol of ISSMGE.

Editorial 16
It was delightful and heart-warming to be able to welcome to Osaka the esteemed leader of our profession, Professor R. B. Peck who travelled a long distance at an age of 93 and graced the Conference.

Today, 10 years later, on his 80th birthday, this statement is still highly topical. We – members, board and management of the German Geotechnical Society – are happy to congratulate Prof. Wittke cordially on his 80th birthday. Also the past 10 years were characterized by tireless creativeness, enthusiasm as well as challenging events and projects.

Thus, Professor Wittke was appointed tunneling specialist in the arbitration process for the challenging infrastructure project “Stuttgart 21” in the South of Germany in 2010. As expert of the project proponents he could decisively contribute to the acceptance and feasibility of Stuttgart 21 with good arguments due to his sound knowledge about the local geology as well as the opportunities and risks of tunnel construction.

With the handing-over of the building permission by the city of Weinheim / Bergstrasse shortly afterwards in December 2011, the move of the 1980 founded WBI Prof. Dr.-Ing. W. Wittke Beratende Ingenieure für Grundbau und Felsbau GmbH from Aachen to Weinheim started, a move from Aachen to Weinheim into a 3,000 m2 large company building with attractive offices, geotechnics laboratory and lecture hall. On 23rd April 2013 the new office building was inaugurated with numerous guests from Germany and abroad and the presentation of a lecture program. With the new office close to the Frankfurt International Airport and to the projects of infrastructure development in southwest Germany, Professor Wittke thus made the right decisions for the further corporate development as family business. And the chances are good that, after nephew, daughters and son, also the grandchildren will follow in the footsteps of the visionary and enthusiastic engineer Walter Wittke.

Walter Wittke was born in Hamburg and studied civil engineering in Hanover. After having finished his studies, he went to Prof. Leussink to the Institute for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering at the Technical University of Karlsruhe. There, he graduated in 1962 with his thesis on a soil-mechanic topic and with a rock-mechanic work he got his qualification as a university lecturer in 1965.

In 1974, exactly 40 years ago, the exceptional academic career continued with his appointment to the Chair and as Director of the Institute of Foundation Engineering, Soil Mechanics, Rock Mechanics and Waterways Engineering at the RWTH Aachen University. As a pioneer of rock mechanics he started already in the 1970’s to record as realistically as possible the load bearing characteristics of rock mainly with numerical models. With the investigation and determination of the load-bearing behavior of buildings in soil and rock he contributed significantly and intensively to the safe and economic design of buildings as impressively shown by a considerable number of national and international projects.

Professor Wittke’s exceptional position in rock mechanics and geotechnics is also reflected by the fact that he was elected President of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) from 1979 to 1983 and Chairman of the German Geotechnical Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geotechnik, DGGT) from 1990 to 2002.

Already from 1972 to 1991 Professor Wittke was the head of the Special Section for Rock Mechanics (Fachsektion Felsmechanik) of the German Geotechnical Society and his name is inseparably linked with the Symposium for Rock Mechanics and Tunneling (an event of the DGGT section for rock mechanics), which will be held for the 21st time this year. As internationally recognized leading scientist in rock mechanics, he was able to host the 7th International Congress of the ISRM 1991 in Aachen and to bring the 14th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ICSMGE) of the ISSMGE 1997 to Hamburg.

Due to his outstanding merits for the DGGT Professor Wittke was appointed Honorary Chairman of the DGGT in 2002. This is one of many appreciations of his wide-ranging merits and activities in national and international professional societies and committees. A special honour for him was the awarding of the honorary doctorate by his Alma Mater, the Leibniz University Hanover in 1998.

The exceptional international charisma of his work is documented by the Rock Mechanics Award of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (1977), the Ruper H. Myers Award in Material Engineering of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (1983), the appointment as member of the Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1989), as Professor honoris causa of the Escuela Militar de Ingenieria, La Paz, Bolivia (1989) and the bestowing of the Manuel Rocha Award in Lisbon, Portugal (2002).

His wide experience in the field of geotechnics is also reflected in a large number of publications, in the “Taschenbuch für den Tunnelbau” and as co-editor of the renowned magazine “Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics” as well as in his standard work “Rock Mechanics” which will appear in a new edition after translations into English, Chinese and in extracts into Russian.

We wish Professor Wittke good health and that his enthusiasm and vigour will be with him for a long time yet. For him personally and for the WBI Prof. Dr.-Ing. W. Wittke Beratende Ingenieure für Grundbau und Felsbau GmbH all the best and a lot of success for “Worldwide Engineering”.

Georg Heerten
Prof. Dr.-Ing., Chairman of the German Geotechnical Society (DGGT)

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MESSAGE FROM THE NEW ISSMGE PRESIDENT

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Roger Frank

Dear Members of ISSMGE,
Dear Colleagues,

It is a great honour and privilege for me to have been elected by the Member Societies of ISSMGE as your President for the 4-year term from 2013 to 2017. The election took place during the Council meeting, just before the opening of the 18th International Conference on Soils Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (18 ICSMGE) in Paris, 2-6 September 2013.

Before updating you with the various matters which might be of interest to you, I would like to acknowledge the great work and achievements of my two predecessors, President Pedro Sêco e Pinto and President Jean-Louis Briaud. I was a member of the Board during their two mandates and it was a real pleasure to work under their leadership, with the efficient assistance of our Secretary General Neil Taylor. My deep gratitude also goes to many officers of ISSMGE and to all of you who made ISSMGE what it is. Now, I am “in charge”… I feel that it is truly a great challenge for which I shall devote all my possible energy and enthusiasm.

I have chosen to express my news, comments and ideas in these columns of our ISSMGE Bulletin because I feel that is the natural channel for communication between us. It will be my main channel of communication during my mandate.

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Reminiscence

Prof. W. D. Liam Finn

Professor W.D.L. Finn has been for many years Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he has also been Head of the Department of Civil Engineering and Dean of Applied Science. He has made significant contributions to the development of soil dynamics and to the mitigation of seismic and liquefaction disasters all over the world. This interview was made during the Seventh International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering in May, 2013, that was organized by Prof. Shamsher Prakash in Wheeling, Illinois, USA.

RECENT ACTIVITIES

Prof. Finn’s most important activity in the recent times has been the seismic retrofitting of school buildings in British Columbia. This is a 15- year project with initial funding of $1.5 billion that attempts to ensure life safety in schools for students during an earthquake. Cost-effective retrofitting is a very significant issue and the program relies on seismic performance-based design to achieve its goals. The standard of satisfactory performance is that the probability of school collapse should be less than 2% in 50 years. School buildings were classified into 32 generic types with up to 3 floors. The performance of each generic type was assessed by nonlinear dynamic analysis for 30 different earthquake motions representing crustal, sub-crustal and subduction motions and for a variety of soil conditions. In all 9 million analyses were conducted. The results of the analyses were assembled into a data base that can be accessed by a web- based “seismic analyzer”. The designer does not have to conduct any nonlinear analyses. He can get all significant retrofit data from the analyzer. This approach speeds up the retrofit process and achieves uniform level of seismic resilience for the buildings. Professor Finn has received 3 provincial and 2 national awards for his work on the schools project.

BEST MEMORY IN GEOTECHNICAL CAREER

In early 1990s Prof. Finn investigated the seismic damage of levees of the Kushiro River in Hokkaido, Japan. Being situated on peaty subsoil, the Kushiro River levee was heavily damaged by liquefaction during the 1993 Kushiro-oki earthquake and unexpectedly many months were spent on their remediation. Prof. Finn studied the prioritization of remediation. He was interested in the correlation between the levee height and the thickness of liquefiable subsoil as well as that of the unliquefiable surface crust, and a later study by Japanese engineers showed a wonderful agreement between his prediction and reality.

In 2000s, Prof. Finn was a professor of Kagawa University in Takamatsu, Japan, for 5 years and worked as the chairman of TC4 of ISSMGE on earthquake problems. He has very fond memories of this city and, in particular, loves the Ritsurin Park. Some information on this park is available in the appendix of this article.

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INTRODUCTION OF IMPORTANT CANDIDATES (Prof. Auvinet)

New momentum for ISSMGE

Professor Gabriel AUVINET
Professor, National University of Mexico, UNAM (since 1970)
Head, Geocomputing Laboratory,
Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM
ISSMGE Vice-President for North America (2009-2013)
Chair, ISSMGE TC 36 (2001-2009)
President, Mexican Society for Geotechnical Engineering (1991-1993)

Office phone: +52(55)56233500, ext 8324, Cell: +525554122915
http://www.gauvinetg.org/
gauvinetg@iingen.unam.mx

President of ISSMGE Candidate (2013-2017)
Nominated by Sociedad Mexicana de Ingeniería Geotécnica, and supported by: Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Paraguay, Spain, USA, Venezuela

ISSMGE celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2011. It was an opportunity to acknowledge the awesome work performed by our members during this period. To be able to stay on this path of excellence, our Society must remain faithful to the principles of scientific rigor, realism and engineering relevance of our work that were defined by the founders of Soil Mechanics. An Honorary Consultative Group constituted by former Presidents and Vice-Presidents of ISSMGE will be created to perform a technical and scientific audit of our Society and provide advice on general policies of ISSMGE. During the 2009-2013 period, a great effort was accomplished by ISSMGE board and its president to implement a new working structure involving a much larger number of members in ISSMGE management activities. The challenge for the new president during the 2013-2017 period will be to keep this new structure working harmoniously and efficiently. This will require an important input of energy. I am ready as a president to spend most of my time dedicated to the Society during the coming four years. This will imply transferring a large part of my professional and academic duties to my collaborators but I am ready to do that.

To keep improving ISSMGE and its modus operandi and adapting it to our evolving profession, priority will be given to fostering scientific and technical advances and ensuring their dissemination within and outside ISSMGE. In particular, I will focus on the following 13 areas:

Technical Committees. ISSMGE’s Technical Committees (TCs) are the strongest vehicle involving our members. Their mission should be clarified. Their main objective should be to establish a clear and compact State-of-the-Art reports on their main topic through review of literature, and organizing lectures, workshops and conferences. TCs and Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) operation rules will be reevaluated. TCs will be enabled to keep working in the ISSMGE President interim. Renewal of TC Chairs will be a continuous process based on the TC’s performance. Information shall be made to flow seamlessly from TCs chairs to TOC and to Vice-Presidents and the Board. The creation of new TCs will be welcome as long as there is a need for them and people willing to champion them.

Conferences. The International and Regional Conferences, with their professional and friendly content, will remain the main events of our Society. Specialized technical meetings will also be strongly encouraged. However, emphasis will be placed on relevance and quality rather than number of conferences. Conferences will also be better distributed among the six ISSMGE regions to ensure effective technology transfer.

Dissemination within and outside ISSMGE. The web page of our Society will become a hub with steady flow of information among members and potential users. It will include links to the key geo-journals, and academic and professional web pages and easy access to State-of-the-Art ISSMGE reports. The ISSMGE bulletin founded in 2005 will continue, as well as the “Geoworld” professional network.

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The Board of ISSMGE discussed during its meeting in Melbourne in 2012 a proposal to acknowledge the existence of some laboratories where significant contributions to geotechnical engineering had been made. As the first example to practice that decision, a plaque of recognition of Burmister Laboratory as a Historical Geotechnical Heritage Laboratory was made with the ISSMGE and Member Society logos inscribed on it.

The Donald M. Burmister Laboratory at Columbia University (New York, USA) has been recognized for its contributions to the advancement of soil mechanics by the ISSMGE and ASCE Geo-Institute. The current laboratory was constructed with the aid of an endowment by Prof. Burmister upon his retirement.

Prof. Askar Zhussupbekov, the Vice President of ISSMGE for Asia, during his occasion of delivering the 13th Burmister Lecture in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics of Columbia University on April 22, 2013, presented the plaque to Prof. Hoe I. Ling, who is the Geotechnical Professor at Columbia University.

The late Prof. Donald M. Burmister (1895-1981) is one of the pioneers in the field of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. He received his B.A., B.S., C.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. He joined the faculty as an instructor of civil engineering in 1929 and soon became involved in the field of soil mechanics. He established one of the first soil mechanics laboratories in the United States in 1933. He became world famous as a teacher, researcher and consultant in this area. He was on the faculty for 34 years before retiring in 1963. During his tenure at Columbia University, he investigated earthworks and foundations for over 400 projects. Most notably among these were the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Throgs Neck, Tappan Zee and Verrazano Narrows Bridges, the First New York World Fairs at Flushing Meadows, and the reconstruction of the White House in 1950. Many of his graduate students gained important experiences through working with him on these projects and he provided financial supports to many of them from his own funds. He was a pioneer in the development of tests to determine the engineering properties of soil, and his soil classification system is still widely used. He also contributed to the first use of digital computer in conjunction with his theory of the layered pavement systems.

Photographs in this article show the detail of the plaque and its presentation ceremony.

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XIXth Károly Széchy Memorial Session,
First Young Geotechnical Engineering Meeting, and
XXIInd Geotechnical Evening Forum
Budapest, 15th of February, 2013

The Hungarian National Committee of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) jointly with the Engineering Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Geotechnical Section of the Hungarian Chamber of Engineers celebrated the XIXth Károly Széchy Memorial Session on the 15th February, 2013 at the Great Lecture Hall of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, with 200 persons attending the event. In the morning the inaugural meeting of the Association of Young Geotechnics was held at the central building of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

The members who have founded the association came from three Hungarian Universities; they were PhD and MSc students. The association is closely related to the ISSMGE HNC, and they plan quarterly meetings to discuss the results of their research, support and inform each other, listen to lectures of guest speakers, and workshop-like meetings are held. In the inaugural meeting 70 young people participated, and listened to Professor John Burland’s answers to their question, and then listened to the presentation of three young people.

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Invited speakers

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