The British Geotechnical Association (BGA) is the principal
association for geotechnical engineers in the United Kingdom.
The British Geotechnical Association (BGA) is the principal
association for geotechnical engineers in the United Kingdom.
27th Mar 2023 17:30 hours
Centre for Student Life at Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BB
This event will be streamed live via MS Teams (slides and sound only). This can be accessed via the button below
The Cooling Prize competition is held annually by the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) and is named after Dr Leonard Cooling, one of the founders of British Soil Mechanics, a former chair of the BGA, and the 2nd Rankine Lecturer. The Cooling Prize competition is intended for professionals in the geotechnical/ground engineering industry in the early stages of their careers.
This event is hosted by the ICE Wales Cymru Regional Group. Advance booking is required for this event, via the button further down this page.
At the event there will be a short presentation on the history of the Competition, presented by Stephanie Markvukaj.
The four finalists will then present their papers.
The Cooling Prize Finalists are:
George French of OGI Groundwater Specialists Ltd - The design and management of a groundwater control system for the construction of a box culvert during a four-day railway blockade in Littleborough, Rochdale.
Domenico Gallese of Arup - Simplified procedures for the seismic design of monopile-supported offshore wind turbines.
Steven Pryce of COWI - Risk Based Assessment of Settlement in Anisotropic soils using back-analysis.
Diarmid Xu of the University of Cambridge - Response of rock-scour protection to earthquake induced liquefaction for offshore wind applications.
The Cooling Prize judges will be:
After the presentations, while the judges consider their verdict, a short keynote lecture will be given by Professor Snehasis Tripathy of Cardiff University on 'Climate Change - Challenges Ahead for Geotechnical Engineers'.
The winner of the 54th Cooling Prize will be announced at the end of the evening.
After the event, attendees of the Cooling Prize are invited to join the Welcome Reception for the BGA Geo-Resilience conference from 19:30 – 21:00 at the Centre for Student Life at Cardiff University.
Professor Treipathy’s talk will highlight some key challenges that the geotechnical engineering community may face in relation to climate change. Experimental research devoted to studying the impacts of seasonal climatic processes on engineering properties of soils have drawn significant attention in the recent past. In this context, the key research findings that have been derived from cyclic wet-dry tests on soils will be presented. The talk will further discuss some alternative approaches that are available for determining the shear strength of unsaturated soils as affected by water content change, which may act as substitutes to expensive and time-consuming laboratory tests
Snehasis Tripathy is currently a Professor in Civil Engineering at Geoenvironmental Research Centre (GRC), Cardiff University.
He received a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in 2000 and worked in universities in India, Singapore, and Germany before joining Cardiff University in 2006.
He is a leading researcher with established international research profile, conducting high-precision experiments to investigate thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical processes in unsaturated soils in relation to underground disposal of nuclear waste, carbon sequestration, and climate change.
He has published more than 90 papers in international Journals and Conferences. Some of his research works that are very well referred to are cyclic swell-shrink behaviour of compacted expansive soils, assessments of swelling and compressibility behaviour of clays from electrical double-layer theory and measuring soil suction using chilled-mirror dew-point technique.
Snehasis is in the Editorial Board of Geotechnique, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, and Indian Geotechnical Journal.
Tea and coffee will be available before the event.
Attendees of the Cooling Prize are invited to join the Welcome Reception for the BGA Geo-Resilience conference for refreshments after the event. The Welcome Reception will be held from 19:30 – 21:00 at the Centre for Student Life at Cardiff University