Anton Weissenbach

Anton Weißenbach (born January 24, 1929 in Wolferts near Ottobeuren ) is a German civil engineer specializing in geotechnical engineering and especially excavation pits. Until his retirement he was a professor at the University of Dortmund .

After graduating from high school in 1947, Weißenbach initially trained as a carpenter (skilled worker examination in 1949). He studied civil engineering at the TH Munich from 1948 to 1954 , while also working in construction. He then worked in the construction industry, initially for a year as a site manager in building construction at a construction company in Munich and then from 1955 for four years in the construction office at Siemens-Bauunion in Hamburg as a group leader. From 1959 he was with the building authorities in Hamburg, where he was increasingly responsible for subway and S-Bahn construction. Most recently, he was responsible as a consultant for the smooth cooperation between the Hamburg building authority and the Hamburg Federal Railway Directorate for the construction of the City-S-Bahn and in this function deputy to the head of the rapid-transit railway construction department. In addition, he did his doctorate in 1961 at the Leibniz University of Hanover (Earth resistance in front of narrow pressure surfaces) under Alfred Streck and completed his habilitation there in 1970 on excavation pit protection. From 1961 to 1982 he taught as a lecturer in technical lectures in the city of Hamburg and from 1970 to 1982 as a private lecturer at the University of Hanover. From 1982 he held the professorship "Building Ground Construction" at the University of Dortmund , where he retired in 1994 for reasons of age (his successor is Achim Hettler ). He continued his voluntary work in the construction standards committee, which he began in the mid-1970s, with full commitment until 2012. In 2008 he was awarded the Beuth Memorial Medal for this activity. In the same year, the German Geotechnical Society made him an honorary member in recognition of his services to the field of geotechnical engineering. In 2001 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Kassel .

For decades, Weißenbach was the leading specialist in building pits in Germany. For example, he created a formula for the earth resistance in front of the steel girders in pile walls and similar applications. From 1966 to 2006 he was chairman of the associated excavation work group of the DGGT and published its recommendations until 2006 ( recommendations of the excavation work group , EAB). He wrote a three-volume monograph on construction pits. He was also significantly involved in the conversion of DIN 1054 ( permissible load on the subsoil ) from 1976 from the global safety concept to the partial safety concept and the extension of the standard to other areas of geotechnical engineering. In the course of time, the 1996, 2000, 2003 and 2005 versions appeared under the title "Safety certificates in earthworks and foundations". With the adaptation of DIN 1054 as "Supplementary regulations to DIN EN 1997-1" in 2010 and the subsequent participation in the creation of the manual "Eurocode 7 - Geotechnical Dimensioning - Volume 1: General Rules", this work found its provisional after 25 years Graduation. Weissenbach is still formally chairman of the DIN standards committees for underpinnings (DIN 4123), construction pits and trenches (DIN 4124) and soil parameters (DIN 1055-2) [1], which are now dormant after the years 2010 to 2012 Revised versions were published after several years of discussion.

Fonts

• Excavation pits, 3 volumes, Berlin, Ernst and Son, volume 1 construction and construction (1975), volume 2 calculation bases (1975), volume 3 calculation methods (1977). Volume 2 and Volume 3 were reprinted. Volume 3 was published in 2010 in a joint revision with Achim Hettler.
• Section excavation securing in the Grundbau-Taschenbuch , 7th edition 2009, together with Achim Hettler
• Sections A 2 The development of DIN 1054 , B 9 retaining structures and examples C 9.2 and C 9.3 in the commentary on the Eurocode 7 manual - Geotechnical design, general rules, 2012 edition
• Sections of excavation pits in the pocket book for tunnel construction 1977 to 1998
• Reports on the results of measurements on girder pile walls : Issues 3 to 20 and 27 to 29 of the series of publications of the subsoil foundation engineering department of the University of Dortmund, 1991 to 2008
• Contributions to the stability of excavation structures: load-bearing method road bridge tunnel 1969, no. 1, 2,3 and 5; Underpinning construction industry 1972, no. 23; Earth resistance civil engineer 1983 pp. 161–173; New knowledge construction technology 1996, H 12; Calculation of construction engineering 2003, volume 12;
• Contributions to the implementation of the partial safety concept in earthworks and foundation engineering: Bautechnik 1991, No. 6; Bautechnik 1998, volume 9; Geotechnical special issue 1999; Bautechnik 2001, no. 9; Bautechnik 2012, no. 9;

literature

• For his 70th birthday, Geotechnics 1999, issue 1
• On the honorary doctorate, Geotechnics 2001, Issue 2
• For his 75th birthday, Bautechnik 2004, issue 2
• On the Beuth medal and honorary membership in the DGGT, Geotechnik 2008, issue 4
• For his 80th birthday, Bautechnik 2009, issue 3
• Biography in the Grundbau-Taschenbuch, 7th edition 2009, p. XXI

Individual evidence

1. ^ Weissenbach biography in the Grundbautaschenbuch , 7th edition 2009, p. XXI
2. ↑ Weißenbach The earth resistance in front of narrow pressure areas , Bautechnik, Volume 39, 1962, Issue 6, pp. 204–211