Jean Frontard

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Jean Frontard (born March 4, 1884 in Besançon ; † January 3, 1962 ) was a French civil engineer, known for pioneering work in soil mechanics .

Frontard was a civil engineer in the public service, first working in the Haute-Marne department and in Melun , later he became inspector general for bridge and road construction (Inspecteur Generale de Ponts et Chaussées). He later was Vice President of the French section of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMFE).

He is known for his early studies of the shear strength of clay soils in France. He followed the French pioneer of these investigations, Alexandre Collin , who was active in the 1840s and had already been forgotten by then. The reason was partly a request from the famous bridge-building engineer Jean Résal , who wrote a book on basic construction himself, but missed measurements. Resal was able to incorporate the shear strength values ​​of the clay soil backfill for a dam in Charmes (where a landslide had occurred), measured by Frontard with a frame shear device he developed , in an appendix to his book. He measured the (undrained) values ​​of around 2 tons per square meter for the cohesion at an angle of friction of 8 degrees (approach of the parameters according to Coulomb ). The values ​​were surprising at the time (especially the low angle of friction). An essay about this by Frontard appeared in 1914. In 1922 he also published an essay in which, like Collin, he identified the sliding surface on slope slides (in clay or cohesive soils) as a cycloid , which he also derived theoretically.

His father was a censeur (teacher in charge of the discipline in French schools) at the Lycée in Rouen . Frontard married around 1910 and had three children.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exact life data according to this genealogy page: gw1.geneanet.org
  2. ↑ Skempton Landmarks in early soil mechanics , 7th European Congress Soil Mechanics, Brighton 1981, reprinted in Skempton Selected papers , and Skempton A history of soil properties 1717-1927 , Proc. 11. ICSMFE, 1985, also reprinted in his Selected Works
  3. ↑ Frontard Notice sur l'accident de la Digue de Charmes , Annales Ponts et Chaussées, Series 9, Volume 23, 1914, pp 173-292
  4. ↑ Frontard Cycloides de glissement of terres , Compte R. Acad. Sci., Volume 174, 1922, pp. 526-528, Calculs de stabilité des barrages en terre , in Deuxième Congrès des grands barrages, Washington DC 1936, Lignes de glissements d´un massif de terre limité per un talus plan , Proc. European Conf. Soil Mechanics, Stockholm 1954, Volume 1, p. 34, Vol. 3, p. 29
personal data
SURNAME Frontard, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Besançon
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1962