Malcolm D. Bolton

Malcolm David Bolton ( born 1946 ) is a British civil engineer, who deals with geotechnical engineering and professor at the University of Cambridge.

Bolton studied from 1964 civil engineering at the University of Cambridge (Bachelor 1967) and in 1969 a master's degree at Manchester University. He received his doctorate at Cambridge in soil mechanics and was then involved in the construction of the first Geozentrifuge in the UK in Manchester by Andrew Schofield. From 1980 he was back in Cambridge, where he is Professor and Director of the Schofield Centre for Geotechnical Construction Processes and Modelling. He is also Head of Geo - and Environmental Engineering in the Engineering Faculty.

In 1979 he became a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

It deals both with fundamental questions of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering with tunnels, effects of earthquakes to the prevention of landslides and was geotechnical consultant for pipeline projects in the offshore area (interaction soil - pipeline ). He was the official British Standards Committee for Retaining Structures ( Earth Retaining Structures, BS 8002 ). He was Chairman of the Technical Committee TC 15 of ISSMGE Geomechanics from Micro to Macro.

He was a long -time advisor to the Company for Giken piles and was founding president of the International Press -in Association ( IPA). He was the Technical Review Board for slope stability of Hong Kong. He continues the tradition of geomechanical modeling of comparison of numerical calculations with testing in Geozentrifugen in Cambridge. In the bottom of modeling he deals inter alia with Discrete Element Models ( DEM).

In 2012 he was Rankine Lecturer (Performance - based design in geotechnical engineering). In his Rankine Lecture he is in favor of more flexibility in geotechnical design by consideration of ground movements and stress-strain behavior ( Mobilizeable proposed by him Strength Design, MSD ) and considers the load method used in the Euro codes (LSD, Limit State Design) with associated safety factors as often too conservative and costly. It is thus a representative of the observational method (performance based design).

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Telford price, the Oscar Faber Medal and the Sir Benjamin Baker Medal.

Writings

He wrote more than 200 scientific publications (2012 ) and a textbook:

  • Guide to Soil Mechanics, Macmillan 1979, Wiley 1980

Some essays:

  • Limit state design in geotechnical engineering, Ground Engineering, Vol 14, 1981, p 39-46
  • With P. Pang: Collapse limit states of reinforced earth walls Retaining, Geotechnique, Vol 32.1982, p 349-367
  • The strength and dilatancy of sand, Geotechnique, Volume 36, 1986, pp. 65-78
  • SY Lam: Energy conservation as a principle underlying mobilizable strength design for deep excavations. ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Vol 137, 2011, pp. 1062-1074.
Geotechnics University of Manchester
541874
de