Inspiring Interest in Geotechnics
On June 27, 2022, Professor James Hambleton delivered the Bright Spark Lecture "Inspiring Interest in Geotechnics" at the Tenth International Symposium on Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground (IS-Cambridge 2020) at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. (The conference was delayed for 2 years due to the COVID pandemic). Professor Hambleton’s presentation was motivated by the goal of increasing interest in the field of geotechnical engineering, and he shared the lessons learned from developing and teaching a course on Teramechanics, which explores how machines and organisms interact with earth materials.
Terramechanics is defined broadly as the field dealing with the interaction between moving parts and earth materials. In his lecture, Professor Hambleton reflected first on the failure of civil and geotechnical engineers to popularize their work, even though humans have dramatically reshaped the face of the earth. In contrast to physics and questions about the cosmos, the field of geotechnics does not seek to spark curiosity about the wonders lurking beneath the earth’s surface. Yet, young minds are inherently inquisitive about the underground, and it behooves us to ap this interest if we want to attract the best minds to our profession. The aims of Prof. Hambleton’s course are to provide an early and engaging introduction to the subdiscipline of geotechnics and connect problems in terramechanics to other areas of geotechnics. He shares prediction contests for “hands-on” laboratory demonstrations completed using the six-axis robotic arm and soil test beds available in the Soil-Machine Interaction Laboratory (SMI Lab) at Northwestern University. A novel aspect of the course is that its audience is both undergrad and graduate students, with graduate students mentoring the less experienced students.
In 2020, Professor Hambleton received the Bright Spark Lecture Award, which was created by the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) President Professor Charles Ng to allow deserving young geotechnical professionals and academics to deliver a keynote address at a significant ISSMGE sponsored conference. This award is given to encourage young members of ISSMGE to play a significant role in various international and regional conferences.
Professor Hambleton’s areas of research interest include computational plasticity, geotechnical analysis, contact mechanics, soil-machine interaction, and the study of issues involving unsteady plastic flow. Increasing our understanding of how soils are moved and formed by contact with machines and man-made things is a significant focus of his study in the upcoming years. The development of accurate, mechanics-based models for forecasting soil deformation and the accompanying force requirements or reactions is the main objective of these initiatives. The interplay of unstable plastic flow, possible three-dimensional deformation, contact interaction, material instabilities, rate effects from inertial pressures, and hydromechanical coupling make problems involving soil-machine interaction extremely difficult to solve theoretically (for saturated or partially saturated soils). This work aims to find new modeling techniques.