Winner announced of 2022 BGA Masters Prize

Winner announced of 2022 BGA Masters Prize

The BGA is pleased to announce that Danette Tan of Imperial College is the winner of the 2022 BGA Masters prize for her entry “Assessing life extensions of ageing infrastructure”.

Danette’s dissertation was considered by the judges to show a thorough understanding of the important subject of flood embankment resilience. Her dissertation uses numerical methods to assess the lifespan extension of flood embankments by developing a finite element model of a trial embankment in the Lower Thames, employing an elastic-viscoplastic constitutive model to reproduce the time-dependent behaviour of the foundation alluvial clay. There is a good literature review of elastic-viscoplastic (EVP) constitutive models and the topic of the study and the conclusions are of high quality

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

• Emily Riley, University of Birmingham, “Sustainability in Geotechnical Design: Barriers and Enablers”.
• Jamie Alexander, University of Glasgow, “Future Offshore Monopile Design”.
• Jessica Rowe, University of Leeds, “On methods for predicting settlement behaviour in variable engineered fill”.
• Katherine Charles, Durham University, “Assessing the Suitability of Martian Rammed Regolith as a Construction Material”.
• Sally Bennett, Newcastle University, “Testing and developing simple rules for landslide hazard”.

The judges found all six Master’s degree dissertations to be of a very high standard and the final decision was close but Danette’s dissertation was selected as the winner.