Arthur casagrande pdf

An example of this is the following anecdote. In May a group of graduates in soil mechanics at Harvard University gave a dinner to Casagrande, at the end of which he said a few words, according to Wilson Binger, student of Casagrande during the course in — at Harvard University. Casagrande used to say that the loyalty of students to their most beloved lecturers could lead to concepts and theories they had been taught even when later experiences might suggest that they should be modified or even abandoned.

As an example of this, Casagrande noted that many engineers persisted in calculating the thrust of the land by the classical method of Coulomb, although they could see with their own eyes that the foremen did not put the sturdier strut of the shoring at the bottom of a ditch.

Only a great teacher could have made such a statement to his students. The period between the s and early s was a period of construction of many buildings at Harvard University as well as the physical transformation of the campus. Casagrande served as a consultant, without remuneration, in everything concerning the foundations of almost all buildings of Harvard University. In the correspondence between Casagrande and several Harvard University officials, in relation to the planning of the new buildings, he clearly and sometimes sarcastically and always impatiently expressed his opinions against stupidity and waste.

Casagrande could not tolerate incompetence, and his assistants were aware of this. Arthur Casagrande was always loyal to Harvard University and the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, even when he strongly disagreed with any of the decisions that were made. On many occasions, and in many areas, he stood firm but in loyal opposition in the most constructive and most beneficial sense; Casagrande saved the University many costly mistakes, although many times they asked for his advice too late.

Below is a short reference regarding Casagrande's comments on the landing of man on the Moon in that also reflect his personality. Arthur always kept his feet firmly on the Earth, though at times he gave vent to his imagination. He was excited about the landings on the moon and deeply interested in the likely conditions on the moon ground.

Soon we will learn more about them. Of course, we will find them totally different from our earth soils, perhaps 'crisp' as I have read in some newspaper predictions; Although I cannot quite believe that without an atmosphere that transmits the sound, anything can be crunchy on the moon.

I hope that we will find the properties of the soils on the moon somewhat simple and eventually quite boring. His irony and sarcasm served to rivet his sayings in terrestrial reality.

Despite his age, Casagrande collaborated in the foundations of unique buildings such as the Liberty Mutual and John Hancock buildings, both in Boston, and in the construction of Logan Airport, also in Boston, built on a soft clay cladding or the dredging of the port of Boston itself. It was already in when Casagrande joined his brother Leo and his nephew Dirk to form a consulting group in geotechnics under the name Casagrande Consultants Inc.

In addition to his activities as a consultant, Casagrande remained active as a teacher, speaker and author of articles. In Arthur Casagrande half retired, giving only half a day to university matters. For this reason, several hundred of his past students gave his family and him a dinner in his honor. They also gave him a bound book with the testimonies of friends and associates.

His old friend and associate H. Four years later, in , Arthur Casagrande retired entirely from Harvard University and became Professor Emeritus, retiring from daily active teaching. Despite completely withdrawing from teaching and despite his age of 71 years, Casagrande continued his research on the behavior of non-cohesive sands and, on this subject, continued with lessons and consultancy even though he was physically frail.

Casagrande was unable to restrain himself against this challenge. One of the main reasons that conditioned Casagrande to continue his studies in the face of liquefaction is that he felt that the term liquefaction itself, used to describe the effect that cyclic loads or charges produced by an earthquake produced on interstitial pressure and its subsequent deformations in sands, was not appropriate and gave rise to unjustified concern on the part of engineers unfamiliar with this terminology.

In , during investigations on the collapse of the Teton Dam on the Teton River Idaho in which Casagrande participated, Casagrande realized how serious the bone cancer disease he was suffering from was. This made Casagrande realize that, at the age of 74, the end of his life was near. But he did not stop working. On the contrary. Casagrande, with his characteristic strength of will, participated actively in his consulting work and in his investigations until a few months before his death.

His colleagues on the research team of eight 39 other engineers, including his former student Ralph Peck, were constantly surprised at Casagrande's ability to conduct investigations with sharp inspections and extensive writings in this important study Peck, Despite this, Casagrande continued to concern himself with the implications of liquefaction in the field of geotechnics. Proof of this was that during his stay at the hospital, Casagrande heard that the liquefaction issue was to be dealt with at the Waterways Experiment Station, so he wrote from his hospital bed with his views to make sure that his ideas on the topic were represented anywhere liquefaction was being discussed.

In the fall of Casagrande again entered Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for new treatment for his bone cancer and remained there until he passed away. Arthur Casagrande died while sleeping in his hospital bed on Sunday, 6 September , at the age of During his long career, Arthur Casagrande wrote or co-authored more than professional articles. The profession lost one of the greatest civil engineers of the twentieth century.

With his death, Casagrande left three incomplete commitments, which he assumed a long time before but was not able to finish.

The first was his book on the mechanics of soils. For nearly 40 years Casagrande wrote notes to include in the book, and in addition, he wrote and rewrote the introduction of the book. Casagrande wanted his book to be perfect, but he was too critical and strict with himself, which meant that he was never satisfied, and so the book was never finished. The second of these commitments was from , when Casagrande was about to prepare a comprehensive report on the limits of Atterberg.

Again, Casagrande's goal was too ambitious and he was never able to do it. Finally, the behavior of sands had always been a great challenge for Casagrande from the moment he developed the concept of a critical index of holes.

Casagrande himself hoped that the missing elements, including the compression of the phenomenon of cyclical charges, could be solved during his life. However, the problem was too complex and progress too slow, so he was not able to meet this challenge. Before his death, Casagrande took advantage of the new construction of a Waterways Experiment Station building in , the year in which the first phase of construction was completed, to donate many of his books, archives, technical articles, soil samples, and rocks to the WES.

He later decided that the rest of his technical belongings should also be given to the WES. The managers of the WES, in response to the generous gesture of Casagrande, decided to name the new geotechnical facilities the Arthur Casagrande Building.

Morris, were present at the inauguration ceremony. Member of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundations Engineering of which he was also president between and Casagrande received many awards and recognitions throughout his career, which are listed below.

This award was established to provide professional development possibilities to outstanding young professionals no older than 35 years, in-service engineers, researchers, and professors of geotechnical engineering. Figure 12 Arthur Casagrande Building. New WES facilities, Vicksburg, The story of Arthur Casagrande begins with serious difficulties.

The first of these was the financial situation that the Casagrande family experienced during Arthur's youth, a fact that marked him and conditioned him for the rest of his life. Another very important event was the death of his father. Arthur was forced from an early age to carry the heavy burden of looking after his family, first when his father was taken prisoner of war, and then when his father committed suicide after being released from prison.

Arthur's father was very depressed because of being a prisoner of war, which eventually drove him to take his own life. All these events took place when Arthur was between 12 and 22 years old, which influenced him greatly. When after a year as full-time assistant to Professor Fitz Schaffernak, Casagrande decided to go to the United States, no doubt the bad situation of his family at the time was foremost in his mind. This situation of suffering and sadness combined with other conditions, such as financial needs, ended with the departure of Casagrande to the USA, despite attempts by his family and Schaffernak to stop him from leaving.

Once in the USA Casagrande looked for new challenges to face and found them when he started working with Terzaghi. The strong character of Terzaghi left a mark on Casagrande: it nurtured him with great determination, dedication, and an outlook in life to solve problems quickly.

All of this served him well throughout his professional life. But in addition to all the habits of work and constancy that Casagrande acquired, the most important thing was Terzaghi himself, who probably influenced Casagrande most in geotechnics, guiding him definitively towards the world of soil mechanics.

Another factor that greatly conditioned Casagrande's life was his return to the Technische Hochschule with Terzaghi when he also took the opportunity to visit the soil mechanics laboratories in Europe. So important was this trip for Casagrande that, as soon as he returned to the United States, he applied for American nationality that was granted in at the age of 29 years. In addition to his great work as a consultant and as a researcher, perhaps the work he carried out in the field of education was the most important for the development of geotechnics.

His great dedication and passion for teaching were recognized and admired by all his students. Casagrande was a professor to many people who later developed a fundamental role in the field of geotechnics, as is the case of Ralph Peck.

Another of Casagrande's great contributions to the field of geotechnics is undoubtedly the effort he invested in promoting the 1st International Congress of Soil Mechanics and Foundations Engineering at Harvard University. The success of this congress was essential for the development of geotechnics and Casagrande achieved great international recognition for his efforts.

In addition, Casagrande's great determination not only influenced his profession, but also his family. This is shown in that even after being appointed as an adjunct professor at Harvard University in shortly after obtaining his doctorate, it was not until that he became a permanent lecturer.

Soon after he married Erna Mass. Many would have married before, but his great sense of prudence made Casagrande wait until the right moment. In short, the legacy left by Casagrande as a teacher, consultant, and researcher, in addition to his great personality, dedication, and determination forged through multiple experiences throughout his life, made Casagrande one of the key personalities in the field of geotechnics and the most important of the twentieth century.

In this context, they are working on the biography of singular engineers as a tribute to the work of these. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Edited by: Kristian Schlegel Reviewed by: two anonymous referees. Blackall, T. Casagrande, A. Casagrande, V. Fatherree, B. Goodman, R. Hirschfeld, R.

Ishihara, K. Peck, R. The Professional Legacy of Ralph B. Wilson, S. Articles Volume 9, issue 2. Article Metrics Related articles. Articles Volume 9, issue 2 Hist. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4. Contribution to the knowledge of early geotechnics during the twentieth century: Arthur Casagrande. Show author details. Companion paper 2 Companion paper 3. How to cite. Figure 2 Casagrande bowl cup , model. Figure 9 Casagrande, circa Arthur Casagrande was an active member of many professional societies.

Author contributions. Competing interests. Short summary. Arthur Casagrande is one of the main people responsible for the geotechnics that we know today.

Born in Slovenia, he went to the United States in to participate in major civil engineering projects. In his years of work with Karl Terzaghi, Casagrande focused on research studies, such as the development on the limits of Atterberg, and equipment for soil trials.

Casagrande also was professor at Harvard University and a consultant. William F. Wells and Mildred W. Journal of the American Medical Association. Exploration of Soil Conditio. Soil Mechanics Series No. June, Seepage through Dams. Arthur Casagrande. Darcy's Law for the Flow of Water through Soils.

Forchheimer's Graphical Solution. Seepage through Dams; General Considerations. Seepage through' Homogeneous Isotropic Earth Dams. Tlw flow nPt was thrn obtained by Forchheinwr's graphical method, by gradual approximation.

KotP tlw Pqui-distant horizontal lines intPrsecting the line of Reepage. Home Seepage Through Dams Casagrande, He received his civil engineering degree in from the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, where he served as an assistant to Professor Schaffernak in the Hydraulics Laboratory.

His father died in the same year, leaving the major burden of supporting the family on his shoulders. From to he was Research Assistant with the U. Bureau of Public Roads, assigned to MIT, where he assisted Terzaghi in numerous research projects directed toward improving apparatuses and techniques for soil testing. He also conducted field investigations on frost action in a cooperative project between the Bureau of Public Roads and the New Hampshire State Highway Department.

His criteria for the frost susceptibility of soils, which resulted from this project, have been adopted by highway designers throughout the world. In Arthur Casagrande began his long association with the Graduate School of Engineering at Harvard, where he developed a program of instruction that became the training ground for the majority of workers in soil mechanics and brought recognition to Harvard as the world's outstanding center of teaching and research in that field.

He developed the triaxial test, now universally used as the basic technique for investigating strength and volume-change characteristics of earth materials, and entered into a lifelong study of the phenomenon of liquefaction, or loss in strength, of saturated cohesionless soils as a result of shock or earthquakes. He was an outstanding teacher, always thoroughly prepared, not dramatic, but completely at home in every detail.

His students felt his personal interest, his genuine concern for their future, and the graciousness of his personality. Army Corps of Engineers, Professor Casagrande trained approximately officers in the soil mechanics aspects of airfield construction. After the war the enrollment in his program of courses expanded to 80 or 90 students per year. In all, some 1, students studied soil mechanics at Harvard under Dr.