Karl of Terzaghi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl of Terzaghi (1926)

Karl von Terzaghi (Karl Anton Terzaghi Edler von Pontenuovo) (born October 2, 1883 in Prague , † October 25, 1963 in Winchester (Massachusetts) ) is considered the founder of modern, scientific soil mechanics .

Early years

Terzaghi belonged to an old Austrian family with a long military tradition. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Austro- Hungarian Army and Terzaghi grew up in Graz after his retirement, but from the age of 10 he attended various military schools in Hungary, Moravia, Vienna and Graz. He studied mechanical engineering at the TH Graz and became active in the Corps Vandalia Graz in 1902 . He turned to civil engineering and geology and was among others with the hydraulic engineer Philipp Forchheimer . Studies were interrupted in 1905 by one year of military service.

After graduating as a qualified engineer (1904), he worked as an engineer in 1906, initially for Adolph von Pittel's Viennese construction company , which was specializing in the then new field of hydropower plants . He was responsible for the design of reinforced concrete structures as well as the processing of foundation problems and site management. Among other things, he worked in Croatia (dam project for hydropower plant) and St. Petersburg, from which in 1911 his dissertation on the calculation of circular tank bottoms grew. In 1912 he visited numerous dam construction projects in the USA. During the First World War he led a pioneer company as a first lieutenant in the Serbian theater of war. He later worked with Richard von Mises and Theodore von Kármán on the expansion of the Aspern military airfield .

Istanbul and MIT

During the First World War, on the recommendation of Forchheimer, in 1916 he became a professor at the Royal Ottoman University (today Istanbul Technical University, ITU) in Istanbul , where he began his research on soil mechanics in a laboratory he had built himself (a work on earth pressure on retaining walls translated into English as early as 1919). In 1919 he continued his work at Robert College (now Boğaziçi Üniversitesi ) in Istanbul, where he worked with partly newly invented measuring devices and the like. a. explored the consolidation of cohesive soils and explored his theory of effective soil tension, which actually (as the title of his famous 1924 book put it) put soil mechanics on a physical basis. The book had a great influence and in 1925 earned him a professorship at MIT in the USA, where he also created a new laboratory from scratch, made his new, initially controversial theories known in a series of articles in Engineering News Records started his career as a consulting floor mechanic. During his time at MIT, he also conducted experiments on earth pressure on retaining walls, taking wall movement into account. In 1928 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Professor in Vienna

From 1929 to 1938 he taught at the Technical University in Vienna , which during this time became an international center for soil mechanics. At the same time, he continued his consultancy work, for example on the Volga-Don Canal in the Soviet Union. From 1933 he was involved in a public, scientific dispute with his Viennese professor colleague Paul Fillunger . Fillunger had developed his own theory of effective tension in porous media and criticized Terzaghi's consolidation theory (published in 1936 in a book with Otto Karl Fröhlich ) in a very polemical way. He doubted the necessity of an independent soil mechanics ( earthwork mechanics ? ) In a 1936 self-published script, whereby he also attacked Terzaghi personally. Terzaghi and his colleague Fröhlich replied in the book Erdbaumechanik und Baupraxis - a clarification in January 1937. When the polemics on the part of Fillunger did not subside, Terzaghi initiated disciplinary proceedings against Fillunger at the Vienna University of Technology. When the danger of dismissal threatened, Paul Fillunger and his wife took their own lives on March 6, 1937 by gas poisoning in their apartment. Reint de Boer , professor emeritus for mechanics in Essen , who considers Fillunger to be an unrecognized forerunner of the theory of porous media, dedicated a book to the affair in 2005, in which he also goes into detail about Terzaghi's career. Terzaghi also had a violent dispute with Fillunger about the Reichsbrücke in Vienna (which collapsed in 1976) : Fillunger expressed violent concerns, but in the end Terzaghi's view prevailed. Terzaghi saw the affair as part of an intrigue designed to damage his reputation and suspected backers. He then considered temporarily stopping his lectures in Vienna.

In 1935, when he was advising the Todt Organization , which he had advised on the renovation of the Munich-Salzburg autobahn, among other things , a dispute about founding problems for the large building projects of the NSDAP in Nuremberg (the congress hall), which, according to Terzaghi's diaries, also led to discussions with whom Adolf Hitler himself was always very interested in his building projects . At the turn of 1935/1936 he also gave a guest lecture at the TH Berlin . Fritz Todt and some of his students who were in Berlin wanted to find him a professorship in Germany, but Terzaghi refused, not least because of a conversation he had with Otto Franzius in Hanover at Christmas 1935 , in which Franzius had a negative view of Hitler and expressed his war intentions. The main purpose of the visit was the collapse of a construction pit for the north-south tunnel of the Berlin S-Bahn in August 1935, in which 19 workers died and Terzaghi was under discussion as an expert, but nothing came of this, since Terzaghi are returning to Harvard had to. After the German troops marched into Austria in March 1938, Terzaghi, who was currently in France, where he was a consultant for dam projects in North Africa, did not return to his chair, which was later taken over by Fröhlich. Terzaghi stated in letters to the Ministry of Education and the Rector of the Technical University of Vienna in August and November 1938 that he could not return to his chair for health reasons. He also mentioned that, to his own satisfaction, he had always kept his chair free from “non-Aryan elements” and had already experienced disadvantages from the regime of the time during the Austro-Fascist period because of his sympathy with the nationalist student group.

Emigration to the USA

Terzaghi went to the United States and continued his work at Harvard University in Boston. Decisive for the emigration were probably career-political aspirations and the fact that his wife, as an American, would have feared reprisals in Vienna. In 1943 he became a US citizen. In the 1940s he was u. a. Advised on the construction of the Chicago subway and the Newport News docks in Virginia. In 1953 he retired, but continued to give guest lectures and continued his extensive work as a consulting engineer, particularly on dam projects. From 1954 to 1959 he was the lead consultant for the construction of the Aswan Dam , which ended due to disagreements with the Russian engineers. He oversaw many dam projects for hydropower plants in British Columbia in western Canada, where a dam in the Bridge River Power Project is named after him today.

He was married to the American geologist Ruth D. Terzaghi.

Terzaghi had numerous important students. From his time in Vienna alone, these include Walter Bernatzik , Mikael Juul Hvorslev , Wilhelm Steinbrenner Hubert Borowicka , Richard Jelinek , Leo Rendulic (who carried out triaxial tests on saturated clay soils at Terzaghi in the 1930s , which confirmed the concept of effective tension), Leo Casagrande , Wilhelm Loos , Christian Veder , Peter Siedek , Gregory Tschebotarioff . At Harvard Arthur Casagrande was his student and later a close collaborator. Numerous engineers, whom he employed for his extensive consultancy work, were among his students, such as Ralph Peck or the Mexican Leonardo Zeevaert .

Scientific achievements

With his theories and experiments on soil consolidation , earth pressure , load-bearing capacity and soil stability, he founded modern soil mechanics as an independent engineering science , which has often earned him the honorary title of father of soil mechanics . His publications became relevant standard works. Among other things, he developed a filter rule for soil seepage and the concept of effective voltage.

Honors

Terzaghi received the Norman Medal from the ASCE ( American Society of Civil Engineers ) four times (1930, 1943, 1946 and 1955). He has also received nine honorary doctorates from universities in eight countries, including:

The ASCE Terzaghi Award, which has been presented since 1963, is considered the highest award in soil mechanics. The " Terzaghi Lectures " are published regularly in the ASCE's Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. The first lecturer was Ralph Peck in 1963 . The Vienna Terzaghi Lectures are also named in his honor.

Terzaghi was the initiator of the establishment of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ISSMFE ), whose international conference was first held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1936. Terzaghi presided over this conference and the following ones in 1948 in Rotterdam, 1952 in Zurich and 1956 in London. At the 1961 conference in Paris he was honorary president.

In 1966 the Terzaghigasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

Others

Thanks to the efforts of Laurits Bjerrum, a large part of his estate is in the Terzaghi Library in Oslo at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute.

Anecdotes

During his stay in Paris in 1938 he was called in to investigate the failure (1937) of the Chingford Dam of the water supply in north London ( William Girling Reservoir ) while it was still being built. The engineer sent by the British initially only presented him with the construction plans without comment (without informing him about the background) and asked him for his opinion on the dam project. After studying them, Terzaghi asked where the dam was going to be built, and when he answered "North London" he said it must have come from an enemy of England trying to flood the capital. The engineer, whom his boss had commissioned not to tell Terzaghi anything about the damage that had already occurred, but to wait for his reaction, then explained to him and hired him as a damage assessor. Alec Skempton , the "father" of British soil mechanics, was also involved as a young engineer in clearing up the damage .

Quotes

"I produced my theories and made my experiments for the purpose of establishing an aid in forming a correct opinion and I realized with dismay that they are still considered by the majority as a substitute for common sense and experience."

"I proposed my theories and experimented to provide a means of forming an accurate opinion, but I was disappointed to find that they are still misunderstood by most as substitutes for common sense and experience."

- Charles of Terzaghi

"Theory is the language by means of which lessons of experience can be clearly expressed."

"Theory is the language in which practical teaching can be clearly expressed."

- Charles of Terzaghi

Works

  • Earthwork mechanics based on soil physics , Vienna 1925
  • with Otto Karl Fröhlich: Theory of the placement of clay layers - an introduction to analytical clay mechanics , Deuticke, Vienna and Leipzig 1936
  • Large Retaining Wall Tests , Engineering News Record, 1934
  • with Richard Jelinek : Theoretische Bodenmechanik , Springer 1954, (English Theoretical Soil Mechanics , New York, Wiley 1943)
  • with Ralph Peck : Bodenmechanik in der Baupraxis , Springer 1951 (first in English 1948, 3rd edition with Gholamreza Mesri Soil mechanics in engineering praxis , Wiley 1996)
  • Alec Skempton , Arthur Casagrande , Laurits Bjerrum (eds.): From theory to praxis in soil mechanics - selections , 1960 (with biography of Casagrande and reprints by Terzaghi and Experiences as a consultant )

literature

  • Richard E. Goodman : Karl Terzaghi - the engineer as artist , ASCE Press 1999, ISBN 0-7844-0364-3
  • Heinz Brandl : 100 years of Karl v. Terzaghi. Communications for foundation engineering, soil mechanics and rock construction , Vienna University of Technology, Volume 2, self-published by the Vienna University of Technology in German and English, 1983, pp. 11–41.
  • 100 years Terzaghi , Geotechnik 1983, issue 4, p. 157
  • Reint de Boer: Theory of Porous Media, Historical Development and Current Status , Research Reports from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Essen, Issue 53, 1991
  • Reint de Boer The engineer and the scandal , Springer-Verlag 2005
  • Achim Hettler and Karl-Eugen Kurrer : Earth pressure . Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-433-03274-9 , pp. 347-349

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Reint de Boer: From Leonardo's vine to high-tech application . In: Essen unique items 23/2004 (PDF; 1.2 MB)
  2. ^ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 51 , 51
  3. ^ Wilhelm Frank zu Terzaghi in Emigration of Austrian Technicians , in Displaced Reason , in Friedrich Stadler (editor) Displaced Reason , Volume 1, Münster 2004
  4. ↑ Reint de Boer The engineer and the scandal - a piece of science history , Springer 2005
  5. ^ The bridge builder Professor Saliger in Vienna, who denied it. Malicious rumors found their way to Berlin, scattered by a former assistant, after which Terzaghi proposed a suspension bridge for the Reichsbrücke, then realized that the ground was not stable and was forced to propose constructive changes that made the project considerably more expensive. De Boor The engineer and the scandal , p. 220
  6. ↑ This is also shown in Goodman's Terzaghi biography, p. 151. De Boer The engineer and the scandal , 2005, doubts a direct meeting with Hitler and takes the view that Terzaghi has overstated his role
  7. ^ Richard Goodman Karl Terzaghi: The engineer as an artist , ASCE 1999, p. 154. He evaluated Terzaghi's diaries.
  8. ↑ a b Street names in Vienna since 1860 as “Political Places of Remembrance” (PDF; 4.4 MB), p. 276, final research project report, Vienna, July 2013
  9. ↑ Later court counselor and at the Linz regional building department. He is known for an essay from 1934 tables for settlement calculation in Die Strasse , Volume 1, pp. 121–124 (or the mention of the content in Terzaghi's books), for calculating the soil pressure under foundations
  10. ^ William Girling Reservoir
  11. ^ Wilhelm Frank, loc. cit.
  12. ↑ a b Terzaghi Quotes

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Terzaghi, Karl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1963
Place of death Winchester, Massachusetts