Professor John Atkinson is holding a public lesson on the questions „What is failure and why do failures occur“ next Wednesday, 30. 01. 2008, 16:40 o’clock at the seminar room Neufferbau. This is by invitation of the „Institut für Geotechnik„, but open to all interested students and members of the faculty. Here’s the abstract:

„Ground engineering is a risky business; there is much that can, and does, go wrong. Failures of construction in the ground can be more than just slips, excessive settlement or ooding. Sometimes failure of the ground is a requirement of the design.

The talk will consider the nature of geotechnical failures in a wide sense. Examples will be used to illustrate some of the main causes of problems in the ground including unforeseen ground conditions (or inadequate ground investigations), mis-understanding of basic soilmechanics,

inappropriate analyses and workmanship.“

Professor John Atkinson has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Civil Engineering and in Soil Mechanics from Imperial College. He was promoted to the Chair in Soil Mechanics at City University London in 1985. Professor Atkinson has worked as a consultant and contractor in the UK and in Australia for many years. He is currently Visiting Senior Principal with Coffey Geotechnics. He has advised on many projects including caisson sinking in Cairo, the Great man Made River project in Libya, problems during shield tunnelling in Leicester and extraction of jack-up rig legs from soft soils in the North Sea.

Furthermore, he will give a “Workshop on Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice” for geotechnical engineers from academia and practice on January 29th. This workshop is by invitation only.