Dr. Seah Tian Ho had his engineering education at Kings College London and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Faculty Member at the Asian Institute of Technology and later with Moh and Associates. Dr. Seah is a specialist in laboratory and field testing and instrumentation. Since 2000, Dr. Seah is a Geotechnical Engineer with Alfa Geotech Company Limited and worked on interesting major projects in Thailand, Vietnam and other SE Asian countries.

MESSAGE FROM Prof Kwet-Yew YONG

Past President, Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society (2001-2004, 2004-2007)

Past Chairman, Association of Geotechnical Societies in SE Asia (2010-2013, 2013-2016)

I am honoured to write this message to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society (SEAGS) which was founded in 1967 at AIT by Dr Za-Chieh Moh. I was introduced to the activities of SEAGS in 1979 by the late Dr Tan Swan Beng (President 1977-1980) when I returned from UK to take up a faculty appointment at the National University of Singapore. I became more intimately involved in the running of the Society when I assisted Prof Seng-Lip Lee when he was President of SEAGS (1987-1990). Later I became the third person from Singapore to lead SEAGS as President for two terms (2001-2007) and has since remain an active member of SEAGS Council.

Singapore has contributed its share of geotechnical developments in the Southeast Asian region and its geotechnical engineers, academics and researchers have played a key role in the construction and infrastructure development over the past 50 years that has transformed Singapore from a third world country to a first world urban state. SEAGS played an important role in these developments and the Society provided the platform for Singapore geotechnical community to share and learn from other countries in the region and worldwide. Beside many specialty geotechnical conferences, Singapore organized the 2nd SEAGC in 1970, the 11th SEAGC in 1993 and the inaugural 18thSEAGC-1stAGSSEA in 2013 and also organized 2 Asian Regional Conferences in SMGE in 1979 and 2003. SEAGS was the catalyst and is still a catalyst to the establishment of the many geotechnical national societies in Southeast Asia, including the Geotechnical Society of Singapore (GeoSS) which was established in 2008.

While there are many eminent geotechnical engineers and academics who contributed to making SEAGS an internationally respected society in ISSMGE, Dr Za-Chieh Moh, the founder President and Prof A S Balasubramaniam, the longest serving Secretary-General from 1972-2000 (who was also President 1985-87) were the most visible in raising SEAGS standing in the ISSMGE community. Both are synonymous with SEAGS over the past 50 years. In recent years, Dr Teik-Aun Ooi continued the dedicated service to SEAGS exemplified by Dr Moh and Prof Bala.

I am proud to have been a part of SEAGS for the past 38 years and I wish the Society a Happy 50th Anniversary!

PROF. TSUTOMU KIMURA RECEIVED THE JAPAN ACADEMY PRIZE IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS MAJESTY, THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN

June 4th, 2012, Prof. Tsutomu Kimura got the highly prestigious Japan Academy Prize awarded for his long- term studies on mechanical behavior of ground. To celebrate this memorable occasion, an interview was made of Prof. Kimura by the Bulletin.

The Japan Academy Prize was established in 1910 and has been awarded every year to several distinguished people who made remarkable achievements in all the fields of academia. Prof. Kimura started his studies in early 1960s on bearing capacity of two-layered subsoil by means of analysis as well as 1-G model experiments. The experiments quickly developed into centrifugal model tests and his methodology was extended to other fields of geotechnical engineering such as shear failure in slopes, soil improvement, earth pressure on retaining walls, and earthquake problems as well as liquefaction. It was highly evaluated by the Prize that his studies gave rational verification to many empirical knowledge in traditional geotechnical engineering and has been applied to stability of cables of the Akashi-Strait long suspension bridge, stabilization of soft marine clay under Tokyo Haneda Airport, liquefaction mitigation measures of oil storage tanks and many others. The awarding ceremony took place in the Japan Academy with the attendance of His Majesty, the Emperor Akihito and Her Majesty, the Empress Michiko.

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20 to 21 June 2012
Centara Grand Hotel Ladprao, Bangkok, Thailand

The Conference organizer, Prof. D.T. Bergado

The International Symposium on Sustainable Geosynthetics and Green Technology for Climate Change (SGCC) was successfully held at Viphavadee Ballroom C, Centara Grand Hotel Ladprao, Bangkok, Thailand last 20 to 21 June 2012. SGCC also served as the Retirement Symposium of Prof. Dennes T. Bergado – the SGCC Organizing Chairman, Professor of Geotechnical and Earth Resources Engineering (GTE) at the School of Engineering and Technology (SET) of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), President of International Geosynthetics Society – Thailand Chapter (IGS-Thailand), Director of Asian Center for Soil Improvement and Geosynthetics (ACSIG), and Secretary General of the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society (SEAGS). The Symposium was hosted by ACSIG and IGS-Thailand and co-organized by Suranaree University of Technology (SUT) and SEAGS under the auspices of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS).

The Symposium covered topics on geotechnical and geosynthetics engineering for mitigations, applications, and adaptations to changing environments due to climate change and global warming. The wide range of topics included Road Pavements, Railways, and Transport Applications; Flood Control, Reservoirs, and Hydraulic Applications; Mining and Waste Containment and Environmental Protection; Ground Improvement and Remediation, and Case Studies; Reinforced Slopes/Walls and Geohazard Mitigations; Geo-Containers and Geotubes; Behavior of Unsaturated Soils and Rain-Triggered Landslides; Earthquake Engineering and Geophysics; Foundation Engineering and Retaining Walls; Laboratory, Field Tests, and Durability of Geosynthetics; Sustainable Limited Life Geosynthetics (LLGs); Sustainable Geosynthetics Engineering and Applications; Prefabricated Vertical Drains with Vacuum Preloading; Deep Excavation; Deep Cement Mixing and Bio-Cement Stabilization; and, Geo- Disasters due to Tsunami.

SGCC Opening Ceremony: (from left to right) Prof. Suksun Horpibulsuk, Prof. Fumio Tatsuoka, Prof. Loren Anderson, Prof. Dennes T. Bergado, Dr. Peter Brenner, Dr. Teik Aun Ooi, Prof. Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai, Prof. Mitsutaka Sugimoto, Prof. Jian Chu, Dr. Myint Win Bo, and Prof. Buddhima Indraratna.

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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 XVIIIth Károly Széchy Memorial Session on the 17th February, 2012, at the Great Lecture Hall of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest with over 230 persons attending the event.

This series of festive gatherings has been highlighted from the beginning by lectures delivered by the most illustrious professors paying tribute to the memory of the Hungarian professor, Károly Széchy. This year, the guest speaker from abroad was Prof. Dr. Ing. Dr. Ing. E.H. Walter Wittke (WBI Achen). The presentation’s title was “Tunnel Design Verified by Case Histories”.

The speaker from Hungary was Dr. Árpád Deli, director of the HBM LtD (Budapest) and delivered a speech on “What message can deliver the path of life of a big predecessor for the deep foundation specialists of our days?” In keeping with tradition, a young engineer who has excelled as the best junior speaker at the annual national geotechnical conference is offered the opportunity to introduce himself by a lecture at the Memorial Session. This year the candidate was Ágnes Váró from Mott MacDonald M. LtD. The title of the presentation was “The structural design of the Bátaapáti NRHT tunnel driving.”

About the event you can see the presentations and photos in the following website:
http://www.issmge-hungary.net

Again, as it is traditional in these events, the Károly Széchy memorial plaque and prize were delivered. This year the recipient was János Asbóth, and Roger Frank was awarded the honorary Károly Széchy prize 2011.

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Professor K. Ishihara receives the Order of Sacred Treasure

On November 3rd, 2009, Prof. Kenji Ishihara, one of the former ISSMGE Presidents, had the Order of Sacred Treasure conferred upon him by the Emperor of Japan.

This distinction rewards Professor Ishihara’s long and continuous contributions to the development of geotechnical engineering all over the world.

The International Geotechnical community is delighted to share this news.

Order of Sacred Treasure

Prof. and Mrs. Ishihara during the celebration party

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Interviewer: Mr. Helvio Falleiros, journalist of Brazilian
Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering

Academic titles: Electrical Engineer, Sao Paulo University, 1938; Civil Engineer, Sao Paulo University,
1942; Special Student, Harvard University, 1946; Emeritus Professor, Sao Paulo University Polytechnic
School, 1988.
Career: IPT – Researcher at State of Sao Paulo Technological Research Institute ‐ (1938‐1952), Member of Research Council ‐ IPT (1952‐1987), and President IPT (1987).
Founder of THEMAG Engenharia Ltda, in 1961.
Pubications: more than 140 papers on soil mechanics, foundations, earth dams, etc.

Milton Vargas smiles in a reserved way when he starts to tell his story. He is ninety five years old. He dedicated his life to Engineering. This vocation started to show up when he was a kid, because the boy grew up surrounded by engineering civil works, following his family. By that time, one of the plays he liked most was building dams. Later, he was one of the first to study Brazilian residual soils. He believes in the Chinese proverb: “knowledge comes from the hands”. Milton Vargas introduced his country’s
soil to the most important name of international geotechnical engineering – Karl von Terzaghi. In almost a century of life, Vargas
developed three passions – Engineering, Philosophy and Literature. But when someone asks which one is the most important to him, he does not hesitate: “Engineering, I have no doubt”.

IPT (State of Sao Paulo Technological Research Institute) was something very important in your life, wasn’t it? Can you talk a bit about it?
I started my career at IPT, in 1938, when I was 24. By that time, I was completing studying Electrical Engineering at Sao Paulo
Polytechnic School. My first position was at the Foundations and Soils Session of the Institute. I went there because they organized a geophysic team. I studied electrical engineering, so I knew about electrical phenomenon.

Did you have any challenge or contribution at IPT?
Well, once my boss asked me to sound the ground. After that, I published an article about this technique being used in civil engineering works, as it was only used in mining jobs.

How did you choose electrical engineering?
My father, Abel Vargas, was a medical doctor and worked at Light and Power – electrical company. We used to live at dam´s sites and we were always close to the civil engineering works of the company. I have spent my childhood seeing dams and playing with sons of other engineers. We used to play building dams. I recall once adults come to destroy our dam because it was disturbing their job. It was indeed blocking their way, because it was well built. Growing up surrounded by engineers made me like them, rather than like my father, a physician.

You also studied civil engineering…
Yes. I graduated in 1942 from the same engineering school. I was still working at IPT.

You studied in Harvard University. What took you there?
It happened in 1946. I always had a scientific curiosity and a strong will to know Brazilian soils. The characteristics presented in studies and techniques did not correspond to the reality. So I decided to go to Harvard University, which was the main soil mechanics school at that time. By the way, professors Karl von Terzaghi and Arthur Casagrande were there, and were the two most important names in soil mechanics then.

I did not arrive there with empty hands, however. I took along me the experience I gained when doing research with tropical soils, at IPT. As a result of researchs in Brazil and at Harvard, it was possible to explain the differences between tropical soils, in Brazil, and sedimentary soil, elsewhere.

However during classes I did not hear about tropical soils. They only talked about sedimentary soils, which was what people knew about then. They were very interested in Boston’s clay and I knew Brazilian soils were different.

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Monsieur Michel (Mike) Gambin, France.

Interviewer: Roger Frank, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC) and Vice President (Europe), ISSMGE (Email: frank@cermes.enpc.fr)

Personal history of Mike: Civil Engineer (ENPC, 1954) MA (Harvard, 1955). Born 2 Dec. 1930. EDUCATION: Lycée Janson de Sailly, Paris (1936 – 1951), ENPC, Harvard. CAREER: Director Les Pressiomètres Ménard (1958 – 1962), Director Techniques Louis Ménard (1962 – 1978), Division Head Solétanche (1982 – 1992), Adviser Apagéo (1992 to date). PUBLICATIONS: more than 200 papers on in situ testing, PMT, Dynamic Compaction, vibrations in soils, soil liquefaction, etc. E-MAIL: mgambin@magic.fr

Frank: Dear Mike, we thought that as your education was completed more than 50 years ago in several countries, France, UK and USA, and that you have worked all over the world, you could bring an unusual perspective to the Geotechnical community. This interview will be a stone in the arch of your Golden Jubilee.

Mike: Yes, I did receive my education from some famous Engineers. Jean Kérisel who was President of the ISSMFE from 1973-1977 was my teacher at ENPC in Paris (1952-1953). Secondly I studied with Arthur Casagrande and Karl Terzaghi at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Harvard University where I was the recipient of the Augustus Clifford Tower Fellowship for the year 1954-1955. I was also granted a partial enrollment at MIT where I received additional lectures from two distinguished teachers, namely Prof. D. W. Taylor in Soil Mechanics and T. W. Lamb on clay mineralogy. I was also trained in the UK with the contracting firm McAlpine in 1953 working on the foundations of Broms Hall II Power Station near Birmingham and, at Easter 1954, I visited Egypt, landing at Alexandria from a Lloyd-Triestino regular steamer to visit Aswan Dam III under construction some years before the High Dam started. Nowadays young students get scholarships to foreign countries very easily, and fly everywhere. In 1954, I reached New York City on SS Ile-de-France and the trip back to my home country in 1955 was on the brand new MS United-States. Casagrande and Terzaghi I still remember well, both were great men. Casagrande was a marvellous teacher: every student easily understood his courses and his English was good. He would often refer to the experiences gained from his German colleagues before WWII and to the theories of Prandtl, Hvorslev and others. His course on pore pressures and sand liquefaction was unforgettable. Karl Terzaghi was teaching Engineering Geology which included site investigation. He was presenting his own expertise from dam sites all across the world. He also talked about SPT and CPT and explained how the cone penetration test results could be improved by various unusual techniques, such as slurry flushed upward above the tip. His English was awful and I had to give my notes to my classmates for them to get a better understanding. What surprised me most was the following advice: “Do not buy my book on Theoretical Soil Mechanics; what you really need to know is in my second book written with Prof. Peck”. He would also say “These days, I spend more time and effort preventing design engineers using my theories wrongly, especially that on the consolidation of thin normally consolidated clay layers, than I do on new research work”. I never asked Harry Seed (class of 1947-1948) or Jim Mitchell (class of 1952-1953) if they remembered he had said so in years before. These statements, however, are supported by a personal communication from Prof. Peck to the authors of a Technical Note in Volume XXXII of “Géotechnique” (December 1982): “[Terzaghi] was not, as he was the first to admit, a theorist beyond the extent that seemed necessary to understand the behaviour of earth material. (…) It might well be that, in Vienna, when Frölich and Terzaghi were cooperating on their book, Terzaghi was more than happy to let Frölich elaborate on and manipulate the theory as much as he desired.

Frank: You then spent 30 months in the French Army for your National Service, being, during the last year, a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, partially acting as an instructor at the French Army School of Engineers in Angers. What then ?

Mike: I had been contacted by Prof. Kérisel to work with him at his newly opened Consulting Firm Simecsol in Paris, but the shareholders of the recently incorporated company Les Pressiomètres Louis Ménard convinced me to join my younger ENPC classmate Louis Ménard who had yet to perform his military service. In this way my professional life started and I am still in the same business, more than 50 years later. After his initial military training period, Louis got a good position with my help at the Army Fortification and Building Design Office in Paris for the rest of his 30 months obligations and we could meet every day to run the company. I knew about the patent that Louis had been granted for a new instrument to test the soil by borehole expansion, his pressuremeter, but I had never seen the equipment. As a man of vision, in the draft of the patent he had said: “the equipment is used to characterize the ground by a bearing factor” (see the facsimile of the handwritten draft in ISP5, Volume 2, p.55, lines 5 & 6 of the introduction). This is what he demonstrated as early as 1962.

I found him drilling holes – 60 mm in diameter – with a hand auger up to 10 metres depth to insert his rubber clad pressuremeter probe, and that by hand too. We soon started developing a drilling technique involving mud circulation to create a non-caving cavity to perform pressuremeter tests (PMT) in loose sandy soils below water table. We tested the technique at various locations using portable hand pumps as for plant treatment in gardens. We also tested larger probes in larger holes but we then got too many bursts. After that, we started using conventional drill rigs with drag bits and also compressed air drifters since our aim was not to retrieve core samples before testing but to get a borehole wall as intact as possible in all types of ground. I had to educate young farmers to become drillers and pressuremeter operators. The fact that I had enlisted as a private in the Army helped me a lot. I had learnt how to control men and equipment. We had more and more clients for site investigations with PMTs, mostly brought by the same shareholders, since they had good contacts with the Paris Ministry of Public Works, with architects and with contractors. At the same time as we improved the testing techniques, we had to develop the derivation of the parameters, the E-modulus, derived from a G-modulus and now called E M and the limit pressure p LM . Then the theory behind these parameters had to be refined, and the method of using these results in foundation design to be worked out. Louis Ménard’s main concern was to develop a foundation design based on allowable differential settlement between footings by following the advice of Prof. Terzaghi (as in Article 54 of his book with Prof. Peck) and using the results of our tests. For this reason the first papers were written on “the E-modulus as a function of the stress or strain level” (Paris 5 th ICSMFE, 1961) and “Settlements, New Trends” (Sols-Soils, 1962). They incorporated the decline (the American Geotechnical Engineers would say: degradation) of E M as a function of strain level (with the first diagram of that sort in the geotechnical literature) and the importance of the shear effect on the settlement of footings on relatively homogeneous soils. Unfortunately, these papers were written in French and were barely noticed in the Anglo-Saxon world. Still, it was the start of a new vision of soil “elasticity”. We undertook a large number of full scale vertical bearing capacity and settlement tests on shallow footings and piles in the basement of our newly built office building at our Centre d’Etudes Géotechniques near Paris, using its huge specially designed beams to provide the required reaction. The whole building would hiss each time the ultimate load was reached. Then papers on “bearing capacity at failure from PMT” were published (Montreal 6 th ICSMFE, 1965) where the replacement was proposed of the Terzaghi bearing capacity equation by one involving (1) the soil reaction to borehole expansion as defined by p LM and (2) a “relative depth” concept. A paper on the “Settlement of piles” (Sols-Soils No.7) followed based on a totally new concept far from that of Gorbunov-Posadov. Geotechnical Engineering was greatly changed. Not only were clients flocking into our offices but Engineers from all over the world came to listen to us. Prof. J. Schmertmann probably wrote his paper on settlement prediction from CPT results after his meeting with Louis in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, old habits remained and only a few adopted our views, which were before their time. At this time we submitted geotechnical reports based on the results of PMTs to design most of the underpasses and overpasses of the well-known Boulevard Périphérique of Paris, the riverside Voie Express Georges Pompidou, and the A1, A7, A10, A11, A13 motorways radiating from Paris. Our partners did the same in the other regions of France. Among them, the network of the LPC (our FHWA), was very active. They undertook research work, either on theoretical points or on more load tests on prototype foundations. You will remember, Roger, your PhD work at that time on modelling pile settlements and its further developments.

Frank: Your team was one of the first to undertake full scale horizontal loading tests on piles and on sheet piles ?

Mike: Yes we were. After a first series of lateral loading tests on piles performed in the quicksands of Mont St. Michel Bay by Louis Ménard, a second series was undertaken at the Centre d’Etudes, and completed by tests in Japan by Dr. H. Mori. That was only a few years after Ken Roscoe had said “[at that time] Soil Mechanics theories did not contain any mention of displacement, except for vertical settlement. Presumably the designer was meant to assume that the foundation did not move until the soil failed and then the movements were catastrophic”. The research work on the application of the results of PMTs to the design of laterally loaded structures lasted until the late 1960s with several papers, among them “Lateral loading of short piers” and ”Lateral loading of flexible piles”. The “Design of Sheet Pile Walls” followed involving new computer programs developed by our team.

Frank: In the same time you became busy at sea ?

Mike: Yes, in the mid 1960s Insurance experts started to ask us to check the security of exploratory jack-up drilling barges at sea for the oil industry. The soil response to a pressuremeter test was very similar to the soil response under each jack-up barge spud leg when the whole barge is ballasted so long as each leg is forced down in turn to refusal. I remember that once we predicted a spud depth penetration below mud line, not knowing the platform was of a new design where the 4 legs are pushed together. Further, the barge was tugged to its location as the monsoon was starting. The soil liquefied simultaneously under all the spuds due to the effect of the ocean swell and the oil company had to return the barge to port, and wait for the next dry season. For that sort of soil investigation, we developed a hydraulic vibro-hammer which could drive the PMT probe deep enough below the spud depth penetration and could easily work from any ship. We also used the pressuremeter for many other types of off-shore jobs: not only for oil production platforms in the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Gulf, or the South-East Asian Seas, but also for floating-storage-and-offloading buoy anchors. The vertical forces on these piles and the tractive efforts on the anchors is up to ten times that which we find on land. Dimensions are according, i.e. piles of 2 metres and more in diameter. Soil liquefaction could occasionally occur. Off-shore Tunisia a pile designed for an embedment of 45 m sank in seconds to 100 m below mud line. In the Macassar Strait the owner followed our recommendation. He stopped driving piles at the recommended depth and without observing refusal. Next month, none of the piles would move when re-driven.

In 1969 I was also involved in the design of one of the first submarine off-shore oil reservoir in the Trucial States – now the United Arab Emirates. Not a single private automobile on land but one traffic light. To cross the creek, you had to whistle the ferryman. Then, we slept on the floating pontoon in portacabins. One night, a strong gale arose, the anchors and the electric generator failed and then no radio. We finished stranded along the Sir Bu Nu’air Island, a territory claimed by Iran… Next afternoon, a search boat found us. Piers for bridges crossing straits can also raise problems. I remember arriving at the Messina Strait in 1969: “- Where is the platform ?”, “ – Oh, my gosh, it has disappeared !”. It was a monopod platform resting in 100 m of water and tied by 12 anchors. One failed and the monopod crashed to the sea bottom. We returned a few months later for PMTs up to 160 m depth under a 4 leg platform. The bridge is not yet constructed, but it is now designed for piers on land. I must say, each off-shore site investigation was a real adventure.

Frank: Coming back to land, what about Dynamic Compaction ?

Mike: This is another series of patents of Louis Ménard’s, which might have been based on two Soviet processes, one to treat loess where you tamp the soil with a heavy pounder and the other to densify thick layers of granular fills below water level – as sea dikes – by using explosives. The second method had been tried during the construction of Franklin Dam in the USA in the 1930s but with no follow up. The secret was to have discrete tamping points on the ground surface and to tamp a defined number of blows at each spot. Prints can be more than 2 metres deep, the car gives the scale of the prints on the photograph. Densification is not just obtained by compression, but more by the shear effect, a point which is not always understood. Success came immediately because Louis checked the resulting improvement by using his pressuremeter. Had he not be able to, it would have taken years before international recognition. Dynamic compaction is mostly aimed at increasing the E M yielded by PMTs. Bearing capacity at failure can also be increased but generally at a lesser rate. CPT is not a suitable tool for that sort of quality control, since it only yields a failure parameter q c . Further, when the soil went through a liquefaction phase, liquefaction may re-appear and q c dramatically decrease during acceptance tests. I designed many big jobs in France and around the world: the new air-strip at Nice on French Riviera, on crushed rock, the first phase of the new Changi Airport at Singapore on sand fill over marine clay, new ship-building yards in Sweden, Nigeria, Iran, etc. Also the soil treatment for large factories or warehouses in Sweden again, in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Korea, mainland China, etc. I was involved in the design and construction of the Chek Lap Kok airport of Hong-Kong, and various dams foundation in Mexico, Thailand, etc. I remember having to design a soil improvement scheme in South-East Asia based on a soil report submitted by a Western firm. Identification parameters were fine, except everyone forgot about quoting bulk density. The first time I visited the site I was horrified for it was pumice and we never could have achieved the expected E M . However, the owner was so satisfied that I worked for him as a consulting engineer on many other big projects.

Frank: What about your experience as a Managing Director overseas ?

Mike: In the mid-seventies I was in charge of Ménard Techniques Ltd, in Aylesbury, North-West of London and I designed several dynamic compaction jobs over old fills for new roads projects around London. I was helped by Malcolm Puller and Turlough Bamber. We had Joint Venture agreements with Cementation Piling and GKN who later bought up Keller. In the late seventies, especially after the untimely death of Louis Ménard, I managed Ménard Inc. in Pittsburgh, at that time the heart of soil improvement, with the head offices of Vibroflotation Inc. and Hayward-Baker Inc., which later was also bought by GKN-Keller. There, Techniques Louis Ménard Company had a joint venture with Elio D’Appolonia Inc. and we got much support from his son David. I undertook 3 jobs then, one in Santa Cruz south of San Francisco for the State of California, one east of Chicago along Lake Erie for a large tank farm and one in Baltimore, all based on the experience of a first job in Jacksonville, Florida. American Engineers did not waste time and started imitating us, initially for densification of old fills on FHWA projects. Now, several big American firms offer this method which has become public property.

Frank: Mike, I think that during all these years you always had extra-curricular activities ?

Mike: You are right, Roger. Already, at high school, I was editing a weekly newspaper Le Lycéen on mimeographed sheets and which included an editorial, detective stories, games, a movie chronicle, etc. Some years later I was involved in many student associations. This is how I was in the French delegation invited by Frei Universität Berlin in 1951 to counterbalance the gigantic World Peace Youth Meeting organized by the USSR in Berlin. There I was really impressed by the power of the USSR and decided to learn more about it. This is why I learned Russian during my military service, which helped me much later to win a court case for patent infringement as a defendant, since the patent method on which the plaintiff based his action was partially described in the Soviet Geotechnical Magazine the year before his patent application. I was an active member of the UGE, the French Engineering Students Association, and I represented the UGE at the first meeting of the European Federation of Engineering Students in 1953 in Ghent. I rapidly became Vice-President of the Paris Division of the Mutuelle Nationale des Etudiants de France (MNEF) which was running the social security for students and later I became Secretary General at the national level of the MNEF. I don’t know whether my involvement in the editing and publication of Sols-Soils magazine from 1962 to 1980 can be considered as extra-curricular or not. The 35 issues not only contained prominent papers either in French or in English on Geotechnical Engineering but also included abridged translations of papers published in German, Russian and even Japanese. The same question occurs with my introducing an additional Working Group (No.5) to CEN TC341 to write the EN ISO Standards on Expansion Tests in Boreholes, which naturally includes the Ménard pressuremeter test. During all my years of demanding professional activity from 1958 to 1992, I could not commit myself to participate in associations on a voluntary basis. We could simply entertain friends and clients in our flat overlooking the River Seine on the Isle Saint-Louis. Among many others, delegates of Japan, USSR and China would often visit me. Frank: Now, what about your involvement within ISSMGE ?

Mike: As I said, my activities would not permit any large commitment to any type of Association or Learned Society. However, as early as 1987 I initiated a European Regional Technical Committee No.4 on Pressuremeters which produced a report for the European Conference held in Florence in 1991. This Committee became ISSMGE Technical Committee No. 27 (see the photo) which produced another report for the first International Conference on Site Characterisation in Atlanta (1998). TC 27 was merged with TC 16 which thus became devoted to all types of in situ testing. I was a member of TC 16 until 2001, and I remain a friend. From 1998 to 2002, I was Vice President of CFMS, the French Geotechnical Society and from 2001 to 2005 I was an appointed member of the ISSMGE Board. Being a francophone Engineer, I thought it my duty to transfer our Geotechnical knowledge to our friends in Africa and to some other, more isolated places, I am thinking of Haïti for instance. So, with the help of the newly formed CFMS Committee for a Francophone Cooperation, which included academics and engineers from Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, we collected the addresses of francophone higher education establishments overseas. The first Francophone Geotechnical Libraries partially funded by ISSMGE were distributed during a first meeting held in Marrakech, Morocco, in September 1996. In the meantime I had started to translate the “ISSMFE News” and mail it. Then from December 1995 on, I edited, with the financial help of ISSMGE, a quarterly Lettre de la Géotechnique which is still in existence and now posted on the ISSMGE website. After that, I thought it necessary to set up an ISSMGE Member Society representing the French speaking African Geotechnical Engineers and Academics: the CTGA or Trans-national African Geotechnical Society which gathers those dwelling in the 20 African francophone countries – excluding the 3 North African ones who have their own Society. Finally, in 1998, with the help of my former college ENPC, and with you, Roger, I set up a yearly 3-week program of Continuing Education for African Engineers, held in Paris. Along the same line, I tried to bring francophone lecturers to the Annual General Meetings of the CTGA to help the development of sound geotechnical engineering in Africa.

Frank: And in conclusion ?

Mike: My task, I think, will last as long as my life. It is difficult for me to see that the message from Louis Ménard dating back to the early 1960s has not yet been accepted by the whole Geotechnical Community, although the number of instruments sold has now passed the 1000 mark. Sometimes, I hear “what is new with foundation design using PMT ?”. The answer is “The whole basis was set up in the 1960s and only refinements can be worked on”. A few books were devoted to the pressuremeter and its use in design, but none of them really stressed the basis on which Louis Ménard developed his 2 simple equations on soil displacement and soil failure under load based on PMT results. Even now, teachers and students are still much too happy to work on mathematical theories they enjoyed so much during their college years and forget about the reality of soil. Use of more and more effective computer software makes them think that soil behaviour is in the memory of their electronic devices. I was very puzzled when I saw the cover of an ASCE magazine on student theses showing a young student in front of a computer key-board ! Last year I wrote a paper on the fallacy of the Terzaghi (or Frölich ?) equation for footing bearing capacity (ISC‘3). This was already implied in the Terzaghi and Peck book, page.420-422 (1948 edition). Since 1994, J.-L. Briaud has worked on this subject and has reached the same conclusion. This year or next year, health permitting, I shall write a paper on “Settlement and shear”. For the first International Conference on Education in Geotechnical Engineering, in 2000, I have written a paper on the history of defunct Soil Mechanics theories. I would like the theories of the first half of the 20 th Century to be at least limited to their own region of application and, better, superseded by newer concepts in these days of sustainable development.

Kazuya Yasuhara is Professor Emeritus of Ibaraki University in Japan; His academic career started in Kyushu University where he was from 1968 to 1978, earning a Doctoral Degree as well. He was then a Professor at Ibaraki University from 1990 to 2007.  Prof. Yasuhara was the International Project Coordinator at the Institute of Global Change Adaptation Science from 2010 to 2015. He was also a Review Editor for IPCC AR 5 from 2010 to 2014. Since 2015, Prof. Yasuhara is a Specially appointed researcher at Ibaraki University.

Prof. Yasuhara was at University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign in Illinois, USA from 1979-1981 and was a Post Doctorate Research Fellow at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute from 1986 to 1987.

Prof. Yasuhara was the recipient of several prestigious awards: ASCE Best Paper Award in 1994; JGS Award for Meritorious Service in 1999; Groundwater Science and Technology Award (IAHR) in 2000; JGS Award for the Best Research Achievement in 2004; Best Paper Award from Japan Chapter of International Geosynthetics Society in 2006; and JGS Meritorious Research Award for Ground Environment in 2008.

His current research interest is in Climate change-induced compound geo-disasters in Asia-Pacific regions and their adaptation countermeasures against earthquake-induced settlements of infrastructures. Prof. Yasuhara is the author of a very large number of publications in this field and others in Geotechnics.