Winner announced of 2019 BGA MSc/MEng Prize

The British Geotechnical Society (BGA) is pleased to announce that Geng Jie (Jay) Liang of Imperial College London is the winner of the 2019 MSc/MEng prize for his dissertation “Characterizing the Variability of London Clay: A Study of Tunnel Face Logs from the Jubilee Line Extension between Green Park and Waterloo”.

The MSc/MEng Prize is awarded annually by the BGA for the best Masters’ degree dissertation on a geotechnical topic. The other four dissertations submitted for consideration were:

• Rosemary Ashmore, Newcastle University, “The geometry and distribution of desiccation cracking across an earth embankment model”.
• Laurence Darby, Birmingham University, “Finite Element Modelling of Winged Suction Caisson under Uniaxial and Combined Loading in Clay”.
• Ben Naylor, Oxford University, “Effects of Scour and Protection on Foundation Behaviour”.
• Rodolfo Verdejo, University College London, “Monitoring of Strip Anchors Pull-Out”.

Jay Liang’s MSc dissertation describes a highly detailed and painstaking re-evaluation of tunnel face logs from the Jubilee Line Extension in 1995-96 to characterise the spatial variability of London clay within the recognised units and sub-units. The occurrence of claystones and claystone bands was highlighted along with changes to the nature of the London clay within each unit, the occurrence of silt and sand bands and laminations, the locations and orientations of fault planes and joints as well as the locations where severe seepage problems occurred.

For her MSc dissertation Rosemary Ashmore carried out laboratory model tests of cracking on slopes, investigating how the crack intensity and orientation varied with slope angle. The cracking was predominantly perpendicular to the slope and in some cases displayed the isolated disconnected cracking observed in previous studies on full-scale embankments.

The MSc dissertation topic of Laurence Darby was a finite element analysis of a novel winged suction caisson, designed to improve the torsional capacity of suction caissons for offshore wind turbines. He found there to be a substantial improvement in the overall capacity of the foundation compared to a conventional suction caisson.

Ben Naylor’s MEng dissertation was on the dynamic performance of offshore wind turbines subject to scour, comparing finite element analyses with laboratory model tests. Scour protection with rock armour could restore the original natural frequency of the structure, recovering the effect of the lost support caused by scour.

Rodolfo Verdejo’s MSc dissertation described an experimental investigation of the mechanics of strip anchors in dense sand by means of a two-dimensional model using aluminium rods with digital image correlation to examine the displacement and strain fields. A comparison of the data with various analytical methods showed that simple limit equilibrium analysis could reproduce the data reasonably well.

The judges found all four Master’s degree dissertations to be of a high standard and the final decision was close but Jay Liang’s MSc dissertation was selected as the winner of the 2019 MSc/MEng prize.