For the 30th ISRM Online Lecture the ISRM invited Dr. Gen-Hua Shi. The title of the lecture is "Contact Theory and Algorithms for Discontinuous Computations". The lecture will broadcast on the 25th June at 10 A.M GMT and will remain available in the online lectures dedicated webpage.
Dr Gen-Hua Shi completed university studies in Mathematics Topology in 1963, in China, where he worked for several institutes on tunnelling and numerical methods. In 1980 he moved to the U.S.A., where he worked as a researcher at the UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He obtained a PhD in Rock Mechanics from UC Berkeley in 1988, where he taught rock mechanics until 1994. From 1992 to 1997 Dr Shi was a research engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station (WES) in Vicksburg. Since the first years of the 21st century he holds the position of Technical Director at several research institutes in China. In 1997 he founded the DDA company, consulting in rock engineering and numerical methods, and he has been its chairman until the present.
Dr Gen-Hwa Shi received the Chinese National Award of Natural Science in 1982; the Basic Research Award for 1984, from the U. S. National Committee for Rock Mechanics, National Research Council, for the Significant Original Contribution to Research in Rock Mechanics; the Award for Significant Paper, 1994, in the Category Theory: Computational and Analytical International by IACMAG; and the FLC Award of Merit, 1995, for Excellence in the field of Technology Transfer, presented by the U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium Southeast Region.
The precursor research work of Dr Gen-Hwa Shi covers: Block Theory, which is now a part of rock engineering classes in many institutes and a widely adapted practical method in rock excavations; Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA), which can simulate movements of deformable block systems (annual meeting ICADD1 to ICADD10; Numerical Manifold Method (NMM); Simplex Integration; and Contact Theory, considering engineering block systems.
He wrote several books, which are now a reference in his field, namely "Block theory and its application to rock engineering" by R. Goodman and G.H. Shi (1985); "Block System Modeling by Discontinuous Deformation Analysis" by G.H. Shi (1993); "Numerical Manifold Method (NMM) and Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA)" by G.H. Shi (1997); and "Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA)" by J. Onishi, T. Sasaki and G.H Shi (2005).
