Prof Nick Barton of NB&A, Oslo, Norway
Nick Barton was born in England in 1944, but lived in Wales until his schooling in Oxford from 1957 to 1963, and his university education in London from 1963 to 1970. He obtained a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from King’s College in 1966, and a Ph.D. concerning shear strength and rock slope stability from Imperial College in 1971.
His first employment was at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) in Oslo. Here he worked for two periods: from 1971-1980, and from 1984 to 1999 when he was Division Director for 5 years and then Technical Adviser for 10 years in the Dam, Rock, Tunnel, Avalanche and Petroleum Reservoir divisions.
Since 2000 he has had his own international rock engineering consultancy, Nick Barton & Associates, based in Oslo and São Paulo. He developed the widely used Q-system for classifying rock masses, and for selecting rock tunnel and cavern single-shell support in 1974. This later became known as NMT (the Norwegian Method of Tunnelling) after updating of the Q-system to include S(fr) with Grimstad, while both worked at NGI. He was also originator of the joint roughness and strength parameters JRC and JCS and co-developer of the resulting Barton-Bandis constitutive laws for rock joint behaviour.
Nick has consulted in a total of 35 different countries in the last 40 years, He has 275 publications and has written two books. He has various international awards, including the last Müller Lecture of ISRM in 2011
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Date
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13 FEBRUARY 2013
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Time
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18:00 - 20:00
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Event Type
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Associated Society
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Starting with modest developments from tension-fractured physical models, begun 45 years ago at Imperial College, and progressing to the real jointed and three-dimensional world in due course, a few of the lessons learned and subsequently applied in rock engineering practice will be described.
The six orders of magnitude rock quality Q-scale has proved invaluable and also essential for rock mass characterization, and for a posteriori prediction of NMT tunnel and cavern single-shell support (B+Sfr), and also for TBM prognosis of progress rates, or lack of progress. The wide numerical range of Q better reflects the even wider range of rock mass properties and behaviour that exists in practice.
This has directly contributed to the development of simple correlations of Q and Qc to useful rock engineering parameters, in the form of equations that can be remembered, as opposed to complex black-box algebra. Characterizing the jointed nature of rock masses, followed by consistent numerical modelling on the basis also of jointed behaviour, provides rich experiences for those who value greater reality, even when reality has to be simplified by some (a posteriori) empiricism. Continuum modelling, and the addition of ‘c’ and ’σn tan φ’ must clearly be avoided.
Advance booking is not required.
Tea and biscuits will be available at 5.30-6pm.
In case of any query please contact: Coordinator BGA on 020 7665 2007
or email: bga@britishgeotech.org.uk
www.britishgeotech.org.uk
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