Ralph Brazelton Peck

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Ralph Brazelton Peck (born June 23, 1912 in Winnipeg , Manitoba , † February 18, 2008 ) was a Canadian-American civil engineer , soil mechanic and geotechnical engineer . He was referred to in his obituary in the Times as the “godfather of soil mechanics” after Karl von Terzaghi was known as the “father of soil mechanics”.

Life

Peck was born in Canada and moved to the United States with parents OK and Ethel Peck when he was six. He studied civil engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he graduated in 1934. Then he got a three-year scholarship. In 1937 he married Marjorie Truby and received his doctorate in the same year. He worked briefly for the American Bridge Company, then 1939-42 on the Chicago subway, where his close collaboration with Terzaghi began at times. Most of that time, 32 years, he was a professor at the University of Illinois , where he retired in 1974.

Professionally, he was significantly influenced by Terzaghi. He was involved in around 1,045 start-up projects as a consultant. These included ore storage facilities, tunnels, dams, levees, the Cannelton and Uniontown lock , dam construction failures on the Ohio River , the Baie James hydropower project in Quebec, subways in Washington and San Francisco, the Leaning Tower of Pisa , the Trans-Alaska Pipeline , Dead Sea levees, and the Rio-Andirrio Bridge over the Corinthian Gulf.

He wrote 200 publications, including a standard work with Terzaghi on the practice of soil mechanics.

Memberships and honors

Peck was President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering from 1969 to 1973 and received numerous honors, including:

He received the National Medal of Science, awarded by the President of the United States of America, for his scientific knowledge in geotechnical engineering, specifically for combining contributions from geology and soil mechanics with the practical art of founding design.

The ASCE Ralph B. Peck Award is named after him - it is given for the publication of outstanding case studies.

Fonts

  • Terzaghi, K., RB Peck and G. Mesri : Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice , Wiley-Interscience (1996) ISBN 0-471-08658-4 (first 1948), German translation: Bodenmechanik in der Baupraxis , Springer 1951
  • Peck, Walter Hanson, Thomas Thornburn: Foundation Engineering , 1953, 2nd edition, Wiley 1974
  • Peck: Judgment in geotechnical engineering: the professional legacy of Ralph B. Peck , edited by J. Dunnicluff, Don Deer, Wiley 1984

literature

  • Elmo DiBiagio and Kaare Flaate: Ralph B. Peck. Engineer - educator - a man of judgment , Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, publication no.207, Oslo 2000, online, pdf, 4.18 MB (with some essays by Peck)
  • EJ Cording et al. a. (Editor): The Art and science of geotechnical engineering: at the dawn of the twenty-first century. A volume honoring Ralph B. Peck , Prentice Hall 1989
  • Achim Hettler and Karl-Eugen Kurrer : Earth pressure . Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-433-03274-9 , pp. 331-332

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peck Award ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.asce.org
personal data
SURNAME Peck, Ralph Brazelton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian-American civil engineer, soil mechanic, and geotechnician
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Winnipeg
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 2008