International Workshop on Numerical Analysis
for Geomechanics
Opening ceremony for establishing the Numerical Manifold Method (NMM) Research Centre and the 8th annual QianJiahua Lecture were held on 14th October 2010 at the Hohai University, China. Professor Pinto who is the past president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) gave the QianJiahua lecture in the ceremony for which the title was “New Trends in Design Methods of Pile Foundations”. This Research Centre is the first established Numerical Manifold Method centre in the world. Professor Shi Genghua developed the Numerical Manifold Method between 1990 and 1992, and this method has become a very important method in the USA Engineering after 20 years improvement. Numerical manifold Method is a new numerical method established on the basis of finite cover of manifold. By using continuous and discontinuous finite cover system, the numerical manifold method includes the continuous and discontinuous media as a whole and solves the calculating methods of finite element method, discontinuous deforming analysis and analytical method uniformly. This numerical method has been widely used in mining industry, soil engineering, geological engineering and hydraulic engineering and so on. The established NMM Research Centre can greatly help the development of Numerical Manifold Method and also provide a good academic communication phenomenon to researchers in this field. In this event, lots of world famous professors were invited to give the talk, such as Professor Shi Genghua from Technical Consultant of Halliburton Petroleum Company, USA; Scientist Jonny Rutqvist from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA; Professor Liu Kofei from Taiwan University, Taiwan, China.
Professor Qian Jiahuan (1923-1995) is one of the greatest pioneers of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering in China, the founder and former head of geotechnical engineering program at Hohai University. He earned his Master degree of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois in US in 1949 and worked in Hohai University from 1952. He made a great number of remarkable accomplishments with regards to rheology of soft soils, dynamic consolidation, and residual deformation of dams after earthquake, and numerical analyses for geotechnical engineering.
After Professor Qian passed away in 1995, annual academic activities which are known as QianJiahuan Lecture were started in 1999 in memory of his outstanding works. Until now, this lecture has been held 8 times, many of world famous professors have been invited to give a talk, such as Professor John Burland who is a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society; Professor Hideki Ohta who is a past president of Japanese Geotechnical Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan; Professor Kenji Ishihara who is a past president of the then-called International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ISSMFE). Photographs below show scenes during the workshop.
Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 4 Issue 4 (pp. 41-42)
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