Alexandre Collin

Alexandre Collin (born July 29, 1808 in Essoyes , † January 5, 1890 in Orléans ) was a French civil engineer, a pioneer of geotechnics , especially for the soil mechanical behavior of clays.

Collin was the son of a local building contractor and from 1828 attended the École polytechnique in Paris. After graduation, he went to the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées, where he was engaged in canal construction work on the Canal de Bourgogne from 1883 . He was also able to measure a landslide that occurred after the autumn rains in the stiff local Lias clay at the construction site (according to Collin they were roughly in the form of a cycloid ), after Skempton it was the first time that sliding surfaces in the clay were examined so precisely. Collin continued his observations on other slope breaks in the clay. He also carried out experimental studies of the shear strength of clays (their cohesion ) as a function of the water content and gave a method for calculating the slope stability. Collin wrote a paper on his research that was finally published in 1846. Subsequently, the treatise was occasionally cited, but was superseded in the 19th century by the methods developed by Jean-Victor Poncelet (1840) and William John Macquorn Rankine (1857) on sandy soils (which are not applicable to clay soils). The analysis by Collin, which is true in its main features according to Skempton, was independently redeveloped in the 20th century and Collins's work was rediscovered.

Collin continued his career in his agency, becoming chief engineer for the Loire area in 1855 and inspector general in 1867. In 1873 he retired.

He published several other works, mostly on hydrology and hydraulic engineering, but no longer on soil mechanics. In 1866 an experimental work on evaporation won a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences. He devoted himself to archaeological and historical research in retirement and was temporarily President of the Archaeological and Historical Society of Orleans.

Collin was an officer in the Legion of Honor .

Fonts

Recherches experimentales sur les glissements spontanés des terrains argileux, accompagnées des considerations sur quelque principes de la mecanique terrestre , Paris 1846, English translation by WR Schriever Landslides in Clay , University of Toronto Press 1956

literature

Alec Skempton Alexandre Collin , Geotechnique, Volume 1, 1948, pp. 216-221

Remarks

↑ A first draft sent in in 1840 was rejected by Poncelet and Coriolis , and an application for an Academy Award in 1844 was unsuccessful, despite the advocacy of geologist Elie de Beaumont
↑ So by Jean Résal 1910, Arthur Langtry Bell 1915, the Swedish school around Sven Hultin , Wolmar Fellenius and others, Jean Frontard (who took up the sliding curve of the cycloid again in 1922 and made shear tests in clay in 1910), Karl von Terzaghi 1924. Skempton mentioned also that Collin's work was cited in the official investigations into the Panama Canal slides in 1924.

personal data
SURNAME	Collin, Alexandre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	July 29, 1808
PLACE OF BIRTH	Essoyes
DATE OF DEATH	January 5, 1890
Place of death	Orleans

[1] A first draft sent in in 1840 was rejected by Poncelet and Coriolis , and an application for an Academy Award in 1844 was unsuccessful, despite the advocacy of geologist Elie de Beaumont

[2] So by Jean Résal 1910, Arthur Langtry Bell 1915, the Swedish school around Sven Hultin , Wolmar Fellenius and others, Jean Frontard (who took up the sliding curve of the cycloid again in 1922 and made shear tests in clay in 1910), Karl von Terzaghi 1924. Skempton mentioned also that Collin's work was cited in the official investigations into the Panama Canal slides in 1924.