ISRM Newsletter No. 66 - Summer 2024

Message from the President

Dear ISRM colleagues,

I hope this message finds you well. Over the past few months, our society has been actively engaged in various activities, which I am pleased to share with you.

From February 29 to March 2, with the cooperation of the Costa Rican Geotechnical Association, we held Board meetings on the first and third days, and a workshop on the second day in San Jose, Costa Rica. The workshop featured eleven presentations from our Board members and three presentations from local experts. In particular, there where discussions on topics of interest to the Costa Rican society, such as weak rock and rock engineering for hydroelectric projects.

In the Board meeting, we discussed over 20 agenda items, the most important of which was establishing plans for the next four years. Our society has operated three committees so far, but the Board decided to add one more this term. The four committees are the Education Fund Committee, Young Members’ Committee, Technical Oversight Committee, and Communication Committee. Additionally, regarding our society’s most important body, the Commissions, we received 24 applications by February 14, and based on the TOC recommendations, the Board approved 22 Commissions. In addition to the Commissions that were active in the previous Board, newly approved Commissions are on AI in Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, Beyond Limits - Rocks in the Face of Extreme Conditions, Bio-Rock Mechanics, Earthquake Motions in Rock Engineering, Mechanics of Ancient Rock Structures, Risks and Reliability in Rock Slope Engineering, Rock Weathering and Erosion, Estimation of Rock Mass Strength and Deformability, and Ultradeep Rock Mass Mechanics and Engineering. We look forward to the diverse activities of all the committees and commissions for the coming years.

On May 1, in conjunction with GeoAmericas 2024 held in Toronto, Canada, under the auspices of the IGS, the FedIGS Board meeting was held. Reports on the activities of the four JTCs were presented. Although there were not many activities recently due to the new appointment of the JTC members, discussions were made to promote information exchange through the webpage. Additionally, there were discussions on plans to continue the FedIGS Lecture and principles for organizing a joint symposium, Geo-Engineering Symposium. I would like to thank Prof. Hehua Zhu, the Chair of JTC2 for Representation of Geo-Engineering Data, for his active involvement.

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ISRM International Symposium 2024 and ARMS13, New Delhi, India, 22-27 September 2024

The International Society for Rock Mechanics (India) is hosting the prestigious ISRM International Symposium 2024 and the 13th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium (ARMS 13) from 22 to 27 September 2024 in New Delhi, India. The symposium theme is “Advances in Rock Mechanics—Infrastructure Development.” The venue is the Eros Hotel, Nehru Place, New Delhi.

On the first two days, 22 and 23 September 2024, Workshops, Short Courses, ISRM Board Meeting, ISRM Commission Meetings, Joint Technical Committee meetings, ISRM Council and Asian Council meetings will be organized in parallel sessions.

The Symposium will be inaugurated in the morning of 24 September. The inaugural session will be followed by Rocha Medal award ceremony, the Eda F. de Quadros tribute session and Franklin Lecture session. The afternoon sessions will comprise technical papers presentations, 9th ISRM Early Career Forum and Rock-Bowl competition. Students’ night will be organized in the evening. Registration for Rock-Bowl competition will open on website soon.

On 25 September, the morning sessions will be dedicated to invited keynote lectures and the afternoon session to technical sessions and Rock Bowl competition. A banquet dinner will be organized in the evening.

On 26 September the morning session will be dedicated to invited keynote lectures. In the afternoon technical sessions will be organized. The symposium will close at 17:00 hrs with valedictory function.

Participants from about 30 countries are expected to attend the symposium with about 170 full length papers. The award and the keynote lectures will be by:

  • Dr Kazuki Sawayama, Kyoto University, Japan (Rocha Medal 2024)
  • Dr Vikram Vishal, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India (Franklin Lecture 2024)
  • Prof. Krishna Kanta Panthi, NTNU, Norway 
  • Prof. Dr Ömer Aydan, Japan
  • Dr. Nick Barton, UK
  • Dr. Ki-Bok Min; Vice President Asia (ISRM) Korea 
  • Dr. H.S. Venkatesh, NIRM, India
  • Dr. K.S. Rao, India
  • Dr. Debasis Deb, IIT Kharagpur, India

For more information, click here to visit the ARMS13 website or email the Symposium Secretariat at contact@isrmindia.org or secretary@cbip.org.

Prof. Mahendra Singh
Chair of the Organising Committee

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Dr. Jonny Rutqvist46th ISRM Online Lecture by Professor Carlos Carranza-Torres

The 46th ISRM online lecture was delivered by Prof. Carlos Carranza-Torres on 20 June at 10 A.M. GMT. The lecture title was: “Scaled power law failure criterion for rock” and it is available from the Online Lecture's page.

Professor Carranza-Torres obtained his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Northeast National University, Argentina, in 1992; his Masters of Science in Engineering Geology from ITC-Delft, The Netherlands, in 1994; and his PhD in Civil Engineering, with an emphasis in geomechanics, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, in 1998. His PhD dissertation, which was supervised by Professor Charles Fairhurst, was on self-similarity analyses of the elasto-plastic response of underground excavations. Based on his PhD work, he wrote several high-impact publications on tunneling using a scaled form of the Hoek-Brown failure criterion. These publications led to an invitation by Professor Evert Hoek to collaborate on an update version of the Hoek-Brown failure criterion which was published in the early 2000s.

For more than 25 years, Dr. Carranza-Torres has been teaching, publishing, and consulting on rock engineering. From 1998 to 2005, he worked as a project engineer for Itasca Consulting Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During this time, he participated in several projects requiring application of Itasca’s software for the civil and mining engineering industries. Notably, he worked on Yucca Mountain, the radioactive waste repository project in Nevada, United States. In 2005, he left Itasca to become a freelance rock mechanics consultant. In this role, he worked with various consulting companies, participating in the design of major rock engineering projects, such as underground stations for the 2nd Avenue Subway in New York, Admiralty Station in Hong Kong, and the Airport Link in Brisbane, Australia. In 2007, he was invited by the late Dr. Oskar Steffen (a leading geotechnical consultant for open pit mining and one of the three founders of the global mining consulting company SRK), to work for SRK as an external rock mechanics consultant. In this role, and for the past 17 years, he has worked with engineers and geologists from SRK in more than 45 open pit and underground mining projects all over the world.

Dr. Carranza-Torres has also achieved a successful academic career. In 2008, he was hired as an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Campus. In 2012, he was tenured and in 2018, he was promoted to Professor. Dr. Carranza-Torres teaches courses in numerical modeling, computational and applied mechanics, and rock engineering. His field of research is in the development of analytical and numerical techniques for the treatment of rock mechanics problems in mining and civil engineering. The publications resulting from this research are characterized by a balanced blend of analytical and numerical analyses for the treatment of fundamental problems in rock mechanics, such as loading on rock bolts around circular tunnels, stresses on composite liners in tunnels, stability of shallow circular cavities, failure of slopes, and other important topics.

Dr. Carranza-Torres has delivered more than one hundred invited lectures, short courses, and workshops, and has spent time as a visiting scholar at universities around the world, including University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France; Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland; Universidad de Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; Northeastern University, Shenyang, China and others.

Dr. Carranza-Torres is a member of the American Rock Mechanics Association, International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME). He serves on the Editorial Boards of international journals, including Engineering Geology (for which he served as senior editor from 2015 to 2018), International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, and Tunneling and Underground Space Technology.

All online lectures are available on this page.

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Eurock2024, Alicante, Spain, 15-19 July 2024

Dear Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering Enthusiasts,

The Eurock 2024 "International Society on Rock Mechanics (ISRM) European Rock Mechanics Symposium," scheduled to take place in Alicante, Spain, from 15 to 19 July 2023, is approaching fast. Our team has been thoroughly working on organizing this event, and we are excited to share some significant developments.

To date, we have received an overwhelming response from the global rock mechanics and rock engineering community, with 237 contributions accepted for publication and presentation as oral or poster sessions at the conference. You can check the detailed program at the following link: https://eurock2024.com/agenda/indexdd09.html. The contributions are being edited by Taylor & Francis to be published online and indexed in various databases and will be published in OnePetro online library two years after publication.

Moreover, close to 300 people from 36 different countries across five continents have registered for the conference so far. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in three workshops and two excursions organized within the symposium's framework, offering enriching opportunities for hands-on learning and collaboration. These events are designed to enhance the conference experience by providing a platform for in-depth discussions and practical insights.

Additionally, we are pleased to announce that six esteemed companies will exhibit their cutting-edge products and services during the conference. Their participation will greatly enrich the conference experience and provide attendees with valuable insights into the latest advancements in the industry.

Finally, we would like to inform you that we have organized several social activities around the conference to foster interaction among participants in a more cordial, enjoyable, and friendly atmosphere. Planned activities include a welcome reception, a wine and typical food tasting, a soccer match, a visit to the Santa Barbara Castle followed by a walk across the Moorish city, and a gala dinner.

To stay updated on conference developments, we invite you to visit our official conference webpage www.eurock2024.com, and follow us on social media platforms. You can find us on Twitter at @eurock2024 and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9313199/

We look forward to meeting you in Alicante in a few weeks.

Organizing Team of Eurock 2024

ISRM International Symposium 2024 and Eurock2025, Trondheim, Norway, 16-20 June 2025 - Abstract submission deadline extended to 1 August 2024

Dear ISRM community

The Norwegian Group for Rock Mechanics (NBG) and the EUROCK 2025 Organizing Committee are happy to announce that preparations for the conference are going as planned. It is about one year to the Conference, and the Organizing Committee have already achieved several milestones in our conference planning. Some highlights are presented here:

  1. Seven fantastic Keynote-speakers are confirmed, and now announced in our website.
  2. A significant number of abstracts have already been received, and as we are hoping to receive even more – it has been decided that the EUROCK 2025 abstract submission deadline is extended to the 1st of August 2024.
  3. We have invited more than 100 experts in rock mechanics and rock engineering, to form part of the review process of the manuscripts.
  4. The EUROCK 2025 Advisory Committee has been established.
  5. The Venue hotel is doing the necessary preparations in coordination with the EUROCK 2025 Organizing Committee to ensure an enjoyable Conference for all participants.
  6. As part of the social program, an Organ-recital at the Nidaros Cathedral is now confirmed for Tuesday 17 June 2025. Technical tours are also being planned to rock-engineering interesting sites in Norway.
  7. We are working to bring selected choice of Workshops to our Conference.

You are welcome to submit your abstract by visiting this link https://eurock2025.com/abstracts-papers and following the submission instructions there. Remember: Abstract submission deadline is now extended to August 1st 2024. There are many more updates coming soon, which will be published on our website.

Please follow us at www.eurock2025.com and hold the dates 16-20 June 2025.

See you in Trondheim!

The Eurock2025 Organizing Committee

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Morocco joined the ISRM

It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Moroccan Committee of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnics (Comité Marocain de Mécanique des Sols et de Géotechnique - CMMSG) was approved by the Board as the ISRM National Group of Morocco. The ISRM looks forward to welcoming our Maroccan colleagues in the ISRM activities.

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14th International Symposium on Landslides (ISL Landslides 2024), Chambéry, France, 8-12 July 2024

ISL is the International Symposium on Landslides organized each 4 years by JTC1.

After Kyoto 1972, Tokyo 1977, New Delhi 1980, Toronto 1984, Lausanne 1988, Christchurch 1993, Trondheim 1996, Cardiff 2000, Rio de Janeiro 2004, Xi'an 2008, Banff 2012, Napoli 2016, Cartagena 2021, ISL2024 will be held in Chambéry, France, from 8 to 13 July.

By mid-June, 296 participants from 37 different countries were registered. The symposium program includes nine lectures and 12 parallel sessions in two rooms, organized in 11 topics:

  • Multiscale constitutive modelling for soils and rocks
  • Weathering effects on soils and rock destabilization
  • Permafrost and ground stability
  • Survey techniques
  • Modeling of soil and rock hazards
  • Recent progress in numerical tools for landslide modelling
  • Risk analysis and mitigation
  • Modelling and design of protective structures
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques applied to slope engineering
  • Make researchers, authorities and companies work together and involve inhabitants
  • Case studies

125 scientific talks will be given and 109 posters will be presented during a special dedicated evening with the best poster award.

The symposium is preceded by a two-day summer school for students dedicated to landslides and rockslides from hazard to mitigation. Half a day of technical visits are organized to landslide and rockfall sites close to Chambéry. 13 students from 7 countries will attend the course.

A Post-conference tour in the Swiss Alps is also organized by Prof Loew, with 17 international guests and 2 guides (per day). All aspects of landslide research and application will be discussed: predisposition, movement mechanisms, long-term causal factors, triggers, impacts of climate change, landslide monitoring and early warning, landslide hazard/risk management in Switzerland.

For more information visit the IS Landslide 2024 website.

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5th ICITG - International Conference on Information Technology in Geo-engineering, Boulder, Colorado, 5-8 August 2024

The Joint Committee 2 (JCT2) on Representation of Geo-engineering Data cordially invites you to the 5th International Conference on Information Technology in Geo-Engineering (5th ICITG), to take place on the campus of Colorado School of Mines in Boulder, Colorado, 5-8 August 2024.

JTC2 is a committee under the Federation of International Geo-Engineering Societies (FedIGS), which is an umbrella organization linking international professional societies in the field of “Geo‐Engineering’” including the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), the International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (ISRM), the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment (IAEG), and the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS).

The conference intends to bring together engineers, scientists, researchers, and educators to discuss and review IT advances in geo-engineering and provide a forum for discussion of future trends.

The first four ICITG conferences were organized by:

  1. Tongji University, Shanghai, China in 2010;
  2. Durham University, Durham, UK together with Tongji University, Shanghai, China in 2014;
  3. University of Minho and the Portuguese Geotechnical Society in Portugal in 2019;
  4. Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore in 2022 (online).

For more information visit the 5th ICITG website.

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CouFrac2024 - Kyoto, Japan, 13-15 November 2024

Delving into the intricacies of coupled thermal-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes within fractured geological media not only provides insights into the earth's evolution but also underscores their pivotal role in myriad near-surface and subsurface activities. These include, but are not limited to, carbon sequestration, energy storage, nuclear waste disposal, geothermal exploration, and oil and gas exploitation. To truly harness and optimize these THMC processes, a blend of numerical modelling and experimental observations is paramount. This conference aims to propel scientific discoveries and refine subsurface engineering practices.

The 4th International Conference on Coupled Processes in Fractured Geological Media: Observation, Modeling, and Application (CouFrac2024) is an ISRM sponsored Specialized Conference organised by the Japanese Society for Rock Mechanics and will take place 13-15 November 2024 in the Kyoto University Katsura Campus, in Japan.

The conference, which succeeds the first held in Wuhan, China in 2018, the second held in Seoul, Korea in 2020, and the third held in Berkeley, USA in 2022, will focus on new and exciting advances in all areas of coupled processes associated with fractured geological media, including numerical methods, in-situ tests, lab experiments, machine learning, and applications to different activities in the near-surface, subsurface, and critical zone. The conference will be held in a face-to-face format only.

For more information click here to visit the conference website.

We look forward to your participation!

Prof. Hideaki Yasuhara
Chair of the Local Organizing Committee

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News from the National Group of North Macedonia 

From April to June the Macedonian Association for Geotechnics developed a number of activities, namely:

  • 18.04. Fourth International Conference on Geotechnical Engineering - Iraq. Online paper presentation by Prof. Milorad Jovanovski.
  • 18.-19.04. Co-organization of Arcelor Mittal’s Balkan Open Lectures in Skopje.
  • 24.4.2024. Prof. Milorad Jovanovski, VP at large and other members from NG Macedonia took part in the webinar "Second Generation of Eurocode 7 - Rock Engineering".
  • 16.5. Lecture "Experiences and strategies for dealing with instabilities of slopes and landslides", Case studies from landslide occurrences in Southern Italy, by Prof. Vito Tagarelli – Department DICATECH, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy.
  • 15-18.5. Members of NG Macedonia participated in the 6th Regional Symposium on Landslides in the Adriatic-Balkan Regions, with papers on landslides in weak rock.
  • 24.6. Organization of a technical seminar "Sustainable earthworks and soil stabilization with innovative geosynthetics and geosystems".
  • 25-29.6. Organization of the 28th Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference, Demir Kapija Macedonia, with the support of ISSMGE. Photos are from the opening day of the conference.

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ISRM Sponsored Conferences

Click here to open the conferences webpage