| NEWS | (click on images for enlargement) |
 Kevin Mumford |
Recent Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funding helps in developing strategies for addressing the flow of all types of fluids into soil and groundwater. Queen’s civil engineering assistant professor Kevin Mumford was recently awarded a Leader’s Opportunity Fund grant for $116,000 to continue his research. With a government focus currently on brownfield development, which is often a costly endeavour, the funding will allow the development of new strategies and optimize existing strategies. Brownfield development is the redevelopment of old, unused industrial properties.“There is a focus right now on sustainable development. Cleaning up a site is a major barrier to getting these projects off the ground. Our research will help with that,” says Dr. Mumford. The funding will be used to build large tanks, similar to aquariums, which will be filled with a variety of soils. Liquid will be added to these tanks allowing researchers to study how different liquids move through different soil types.The experiments allow researchers to re-create subsurface conditions (clay, sand, gravel) before moving to computer simulations. “There are others working on this problem but work at this scale is not that common,” says Dr. Mumford.The Leaders Opportunity Fund is designed to help universities attract and retain researchers. The funding provides an opportunity to acquire infrastructure and create research support. The Canada Foundation for Innovation is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to fund research infrastructure. CFI’s Leaders Opportunity Fund program, begun in 2006, was designed to give Canadian universities the flexibility to both attract and retain the very best researchers, at a time of intense international competition for leading faculty. A complete list of LOF projects, by university, can be found on the CFI website. |
Mr. Jeff Oke, Tunnel in Patras, Greece. |
Mr. Jeffrey Oke, PhD candidate with supervisors Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos and Dr. Mark Diederichs, won second place at the Canadian Geotechnical Society’s Graduate Student Presentation Competition. |
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Congratulations to Dr Richard Bathurst who was selected at the annual board meeting as President-elect of the Canadian Geotechnical Society, to start his two year term as President on January 1st, 2013. Dr Bathurst has previously served the society for two years as Vice-President, Technical, and the international and North American geosynthetics communities as President of the International Geosynthetics Society and President of the North American Geosynthetics Society. |
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The Canadian Geotechnical conference was held this year in Toronto in conjunction with the Pan Am conference of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (held once every four years) . Each Pan Am conference opens with the Arthur Casagrande Lecture. This year, the International Society selected Dr Kerry Rowe to deliver the 2011 Casagrande Lecture. In his presentation titled "SHORT AND LONG TERM LEAKAGE THROUGH COMPOSITE LINERS", Kerry discussed new findings related to leakage through composite landfill liners, reporting on work conducted with his colleagues, students, and other research collaborators. In particular, the work provides important guidance on landfill barrier construction to minimize the significant potential impact of wrinkles developing in the liner. |
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A highlight of the Canadian Geotechnical Conference each year is the Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium. This keynote lecture is given by a member of the society between the ages of 35 and 40, who is funded to prepare a state of the art address and article on a topic involving new or changing practice. At the Canadian Geotechnical Conference banquet it was announced that Dr Andy Take has been selected to give the 2012 Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium at next year's conference in Winnipeg. Andy is being funded by the Canadian Foundation for Geotechnique (the non-profit charity that supports this event) to prepare his colloquium titled "Looking Deeper: Harnessing the Power of Digital Image Analysis to Gain New Insights into Geotechnical Failure Processes". Andy joins other members of the centre who have given past Colloquia: Kerry Rowe in 1987, Bernie Kueper in 1997, Ian Moore in 1998, Mark Diederichs in 2003, and Richard Brachman in 2006. |
 Scott Sloan |
Dr Scott Sloan delivered the fifth Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Geotechnical stability analysis" on September 20. Scott Sloan is the Laureate Professor and Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Geotechnical Science and Engineering at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and was the 2011 Rankine Lecturer for the British Geotechnical Association. Funding for the Victor Milligan Lecture series is generously provided by Golder Associates.
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Congratulations to Greg Siemens and Richard Bathurst for their Honourable Mention for the best paper published in Geotextiles and Geomembranes in 2010. The paper "Numerical parametric investigation of infiltration in one-dimensional sand–geotextile columns" , is in Volume 28, Number 5, on pages 460-474 . Geotextiles and Geomembranes is the geoengineering journal with the highest impact factor, and published 50 articles during 2010. |
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Graduate Field Trip: Engineering Geology and Geomechanics Geological Engineering is a challenging discipline combining an understanding of the geological makeup and history of an area with engineering skills to remediate natural hazards, to manage earth resources and to build with, on, over and through earth materials. Twelve graduate students from the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering at Queen’s spent much of this past June travelling over 3300km through Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria and Germany, visiting and studying key geo-engineering project sites, numerous natural hazard examples and learning about Alpine geology. This technical tour, supervised by Queen’s Professors Mark Diederichs and Jean Hutchinson, was part of a graduate field course related to engineering geology and rock engineering. The graduate students are involved in research projects related to tunnelling, mining, landslides, rockfall remediation and other railway geomechanics, rock characterization using remote sensing and nuclear waste related rock mechanics and rock engineering. |
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June 2011
Congratulations to Paul Dittrich, Kerry Rowe, Dennis Becker and Kwan Yee Lo who were awarded the Casimir Gzowski Medal at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in Ottawa. Drs Dittrich, Rowe, Becker and Lo won for their paper titled "Influence of exsolved gases on slope performance at the Sarnia approach cut to the St. Clair Tunnel”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Volume 47, No. 9, pp. 971–98. As superintendent of public works of the Province of Canada, Colonel Sir Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski (1813–1898) was responsible for improving waterways and canals and constructing roads, harbours and bridges. Later, he was involved in railroad construction and the design and construction of the international bridge at Fort Erie. A founder of the CSCE in 1887, he served as president from 1889 to 1891. Established by Sir Casimir in 1890, the Casimir Gzowski Medal is awarded annually by the CSCE for the best paper on a civil engineering subject in the area of surveying, structural engineering and heavy construction. |
Heather, Richard (top left), Ian (bottom left), Jon Foster (bottom right) and representatives from TT Technologies in Aurora, IL, 2008 at the site of the pipe bursting field tests reported in their paper. |
Congratulations to former graduate student Heather McLeod as well as Richard Brachman, Ian Moore and Andy Take who received an honourable mention for the Casmir Gzowski Medal by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, for their paper titled “Brachman, R.W.I., McLeod, H.A., Moore, I.D. and Take, A.W. 2010. Three-dimensional ground displacements from static pipe bursting in stiff clay, Canadian Geotechnical J., Vol. 47(4), pp. 439-450”. |
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Ian Moore received the John R. Booker Excellence Award of the International Association of Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics in recognition of his work on analysis and testing of buried infrastructure. The award was made at the 13th IACMAG conference in Melbourne Australia. |
The first photo shows some of Dr Diederichs graduate research team in the Niagara Beck Tunnel in March - 1 week before breakthrough. From Left to Right: Gary Kramer (Hatch Mott Macdonald), Mark Diederichs, Connor Langford (MSc Candidate), Nicholas Vlachopoulos (RMC), Anna Crockford (MSc) and Matthew Perras (PhD).
The second photo shows (left) Ehsan Ghazvinian (PhD Candidate), Dr Diederichs and (right) Matt Perras, standing inside a Mega-Packer fault migration experiment in the Grimsel Granite Laboratory under the Swiss Alps. This is a lab for nuclear waste storage geomechanics and hydrogeology. Both students are working on this topic for their doctoral projects. |
Dr Mark Diederichs was selected by the Canadian Geotechnical Society to undertake the Cross Canada Lecture Tour during April, making 14 presentations in 14 locations across Canada (Kingston, Kelowna, Prince George, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Sudbury, Montreal, Quebec and Halifax). Mark is speaking on three topics: 1) Laser Scanning for Rock Mass Characterization on Slopes and Tunnels The tour is a highlight of the technical programs offered by the Canadian Geotechnical Society each year, and each tour features a leading GeoEngineering expert from Canada or abroad. The tour is supported through the Canadian Foundation for Geotechnique with the assistance of industrial sponsors (this year : BGC, EBA, Geo-Slope International and the Reinforced Earth Company). |
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Jean Hutchinson, head of the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, has been named a fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. Read full article on Queen's University web page.
Congratulations to Mr Kazi Rahman who has won the 35th Annual Michael Bozozuk Student Forum, a competition for graduate students at Carleton, Ottawa, Queen`s and RMC. Kazi’s presentation titled “Numerical Analysis of the Response of Adjacent Pipelines during Static Pipe Bursting” is part of his doctoral research work with Dr Richard Brachman and Dr Ian Moore, developing nonlinear computer models to capture ground movements and damage to adjacent infrastructure associated with pipe replacement by pipe bursting. also..... Mr Kazi Rahman was awarded the Michael E. Argent Memorial Scholarship by the North American Society of Trenchless Technology at the 20th Annual North American NoDig Conference in Washington D.C. Ms Azadeh Hoor won the two yearly graduate student competition for the best student paper competition at the ASCE Geo-Institute/IFAI/GMA/ NAGS · Geo-Frontiers 2011 conference in Dallas, Texas. Queen's students also won it in 2009 (Rebecca McWatters), 2007 (Melissa Chappel),and 2005 (Karina Lange). |
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CFI article on shaking table (Dr. Bathurst) complete with movie: http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/shakin-all-over See two other recent articles in the Kingston press on the shaking table research by Dr. Bathurst and PhD student Saman Zarnani. |
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Dr Kerry Rowe has been awarded the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, representing an investment of $1.4M over the next seven years. Our society generates a wide range of wastes, including municipal, industrial, hazardous, nuclear and mine waste, and Dr Rowe's research focuses on the measures in place in waste-disposal sites to ensure environmental protection, recognizing that some of them can, and will, fail at some time. This appointment to a Tier 1 (Senior) Canada Research Chair recognizes his world-leading expertise in both geotechnical and geoenvironmental aspects of the environmental protection systems in waste-disposal sites, including covers, systems to collect garbage fluids, and liners. Irrespective of whether the materials used are natural (e.g., soils, such as gravel) or manmade (e.g., plastics), his research is addressing the question of how long it will last and what happens if it fails.
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Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos (cross-appointed to Queen’s Geology from RMC) organized a very successful field course for the tunnelling students within the Queen’s Geol/Geol Eng Dept. The course was in collaboration with the National Technical University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki (northern Greece). The 1 week course involved circumnavigating Greece and visiting tunnelling sites (road, rail, LRT) throughout the country in limestones, clays, gneiss, molassic rocks, flysch, phyllites, ophiolites, basement schists and fault zones. The tunnels were in various stages of construction and the student work along the way included geological model construction, seismic hazard prediction, ground classification and tunnel design with student presentations in the evenings. The Canadian contingent included Nicholas, Dr. Mark Diederichs and MSc students Connor Langford, Dani Delaloye, Anna Crockford, Colin Hume and Jeffrey Oke. The rest of the graduate students were from the two Greek Institutions. The course was directed primarily by Dr Paul Marinos from NTUA. Paul is a past president of the IAEG. A video slide show of the trip is available online here: www.geol.queensu.ca/people/mdiederi/Queens-NTUA-MSC-Tunnelling-Field-Trip.wmv The video is 12 minutes but does capture the trip rather well. As well, MASc student, Jeffrey Oke wrote about his experience in an RMC publication: |
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At the annual meeting of the Japan IGS Chapter in Tokyo on 2 December, Dr. Bathurst and his colleague Dr. Miyata at the National Defense Academy in Japan were awarded the 2010 TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD of the IGS Japan Chapter for their work developing the K-stiffness Method for geosynthetic reinforced soil walls. |
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November 2010 Dr Robert Holtz delivered the fourth Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Reinforced Soil Technology: From Experimental to the Familiar" on November 2. Bob Holtz, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle is the co-author or editor of 10 books and book chapters, including "An Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering" (with W. D. Kovacs, 1981), and was the 2010 Terzaghi Lecturer for the American Society of Civil Engineers. Funding for the Victor Millgan Lecture series is generously provided by Golder Associates. |
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Mr Saman Zarnani (PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Bathurst) won the annual graduate student competition of the Canadian Geotechnical Society, and presented his lecture titled “ Application of EPS Geofoam for Seismic Buffers in Rigid Retaining Walls” at a plenary session at the 63rd Annual Canadian Geotechnical Conference in Calgary on Tuesday September 14th. Congratulations also to undergraduate student Eric Wolinksky, who received second place in the undergraduate competition for his thesis titled “Application of Digital Signal Processing to the Measurement of Landslide Acceleration Using PIV Image Analysis” (Civil Engineering, Queen’s; Advisor, Dr. Take), and to Jennifer Brown and Candice Cooney who won second place for their group report titled “Mapping Heat Transfer of Gas and Leachate Production at Closed Landfill Sites” (Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering at Queen’s; Advisor Steven Rose). |
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Congratulations to Dr Richard Brachman for receiving the 2010 Geosynthetics Award of the Canadian Geotechnical Society. This award, made at the Canadian Geotechnical Conference in Calgary was awarded by the Geosynthetics Division of the CGS, in recognition of a number of Richard’s recent contributions to Geosynthetics research and practice. |
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John Cholewa, Richard Brachman, and Ian Moore received an honourable mention for the R.M. Quigley Award, for their paper in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal in 2009 “Response of a polyvinyl chloride water pipe when transverse to an underlying pipe replaced by pipe bursting”. This article reports on part of John’s doctoral project on pipe installation using directional drilling and pipe bursting; it provides experimental evidence and a new design procedure for assessing the impact of pipe bursting on other pipe infrastructure. |
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Professor Chris Clayton of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom delivered the third Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Stiffness at small strain - research and practice" on September 29th. Dr Clayton’s lecture was the 50th Rankine Lecture prepared and delivered earlier in 2010 for the British Geotechnical Association. Funding for the Victor Milligan lecture series is provided by Golder Associates, in memory of Canadian GeoEngineering pioneer, Dr Victor Milligan. |
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Congratulations to Mr. Jeffrey Oke who has recently won multiple awards. He has recently been awarded the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships and NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship awarded to high-calibre scholars who are engaged in master's or doctoral programs in the natural sciences or engineering. Upon his recent graduation from the Royal Military College of Canada he recently won the following awards: The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship. The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship is awarded to the graduating RETP cadet who obtains the highest marks in academic subjects in the graduating year, provided attendance at a university following graduation. The J.F. Lott Award is awarded for the top thesis mark in civil engineering. Navy League of Canada Prize. The Navy League of Canada Prize is awarded to the best Sea Operations cadet in the graduating class based on high standards of proficiency in each of the four components (academic, sports, military and language ability). The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award. The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award is awarded in conjunction with the Navy League of Canada to the graduating naval cadet who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, moral values, performance, and potential for future service in the Profession of Arms. OUA East, Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Randy Gregg Award. This award honours the hockey player who best combines outstanding hockey ability, academic achievement and community involvement. Jeffrey Oke is currently enrolled in a Master’s program under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos. We congratulate Jeff on his recent outstanding achievements and welcome him to our team. |
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Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos has recently been granted Department of National Defence Grants within the GeoEnvironmental field amounting to $400K. This funding will, in part, support the ongoing graduate work of recent graduate students, Ms. Tina Basso (Queen’s - Masters of Environmental Science) and Mr. David Thebault (RMC – Masters in Environmental Engineering). Congratulations to Dr. Vlachopoulos for his continued success and to Tina and David for their acceptance to their respective programs. |
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July 2010 More info on Queen's website |
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June 2010 Congratulations! |
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Dr. Richard J. Bathurst was awarded the biennial International Geosynthetics Society Gold Medal Award for his technical contributions to the advancement of geosynthetics in earth retaining wall technologies. Dr. Bathurst has now won this medal for an unprecedented third time. He was the first Canadian to receive the medal (1994), the first person to receive it twice (1998) and now the first person to receive it three times. |
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May 2010 Congratulations to Mr. Kazi Rahman who won the annual graduate student poster competition at the 2010 NoDig conference of the North American Society of Trenchless Technology, held in Chicago during May. His poster outlined part of his doctoral research on three dimensional analysis of pipe bursting, conducted under the supervision of Drs. Richard Brachman and Ian Moore. |
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April 2010 Dr Mark Diederichs has been awarded funding of $52,000 per year for his project titled “Improved mechanical models & engineering management strategies for the excavation damage zone (EDZ) in sedimentary rocks around underground nuclear waste”. This represents an increase in funding by 126%. Dr Kent Novakowski has been awarded funding of $35,000 per year for his project titled “The role of the overburden-bedrock contact and upper bedrock properties in the recharge and contamination of shallow bedrock aquifers”, a 62% increase in his previous funding. Dr Andy Take has been awarded funding of $62,000 per year for his project titled “Effects of climate and climate change on the soil slopes of our natural and built environment”, a 170% increase in funding. Andy and Mark have also been awarded Discovery Accelerator Supplements of $120,000 to boost their productivity even further over the next few years. These additional awards are exceptional, since these were two of only thirty awarded to all engineering scholars across Canada in 2010. |
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March 2010 Congratulations to Ms Azadeh Hoor who has won the 34th Annual Michael Bozozuk Student Forum, a competition for graduate students at Carleton, Ottawa, Queen`s and RMC. Azadeh’s presentation described part of her doctoral research work with Dr Kerry Rowe, examining how the longevity of leachate collection pipes is enhanced by active cooling to mitigate the high temperatures that can develop in landfills. |
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February 2010 |
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January 2010 |
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January 2010 He then spent 2009 as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Ontario before accepting a faculty position at Queen`s. Kevin strengthens our team of groundwater/hydrogeology experts (Bernie Kueper, Kent Novakowski and Vicki Remenda), adding expertise on three-fluid phase flow within porous media, with potential for application to new developments in carbon sequestration and remediation of contaminated ground. |
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