Soil - An Ambiguous Material
Abstract
Soil is a multiphase granular material that can behave like a frictional solid or a fluid, depending partly on its inherent character and partly on its circumstances. The science of soil mechanics has to encompass all these possibilities. But “circumstances” include the uses to which the soil is put, and this takes us from science into engineering, and specifically into geotechnical engineering. It might alternatively take us into soil science and thence into agriculture or ecology. On the boundaries between these material conditions and technological goals there are both scientific challenges to understanding soil behavior and challenges in the selection of robust engineering solutions capable of bridging the remaining uncertainties.
In this lecture, two applications will be explored: the engineering of slopes to counter rain-induced flowslides, and the design of hot oil pipelines that will squirm around on the ocean floor but which must not rupture.
About the speaker
Prof. Malcolm Bolton received his MSc in Structural Engineering from University of Manchester and his PhD in Soil Mechanics from University of Cambridge. His academic career in Geotechnical Engineering started in University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where he helped to develop the UK’s first geotechnical centrifuge. He returned to University of Cambridge in 1980, where he ultimately becoming Professor of Soil Mechanics, Director of the Schofield Centre for Geotechnical Process and Construction Modelling, and Head of the Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group in the Department of Engineering. In accordance with University Statutes he retired in 2013. Prof Bolton was also the former IAS Senior Visiting Fellow of HKUST.
Prof. Bolton is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and holds various prizes of the UK Institutions of Civil and Structural Engineering, the British Geotechnical Association and the Canadian Geotechnical Society. He was the founding chairman of the ISSMGE Technical Committee on Geo-Mechanics from Micro to Macro (GM3). He has collaborated on piles with the Giken company of Japan for 18 years, and is the founding chairman of the International Press-In Association. He served on the Slope Stability Technical Review Board for the Hong Kong Government, and acts as a consultant in relation to soil-pipeline interactions on the sea bed. He helped to draft BS8002 Earth Retaining Structures, and has over 220 publications on topics ranging from fundamental soil mechanics to a wide variety of geotechnical engineering applications.
