UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Patrick Fox, the John A. and Harriette K. Shaw Professor and head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State, received the 2018 IGS Award from the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS).
The award, given once every four years during the IGS General Assembly and the International Conference on Geosynthetics (ICG), recognizes individuals or groups of individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the scientific and engineering development of geosynthetics products and associated technologies.
Fox, along with John S. McCartney, associate professor at the University of California–San Diego, and Yewei Zheng, assistant professor at Old Dominion University, were chosen for their research, published in a series of six journal papers, that used experimental and numerical modeling to uncover significant findings about the response of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil (GRS) bridge abutments in terms of service limit, strength limit and seismic loading conditions.
Although GRS bridge abutments are extensively used in transportation infrastructure and show worthy field performance under service loading conditions, the role of various design parameters isn’t adequately understood. There are also concerns about the performance of these structures in high seismic zones.
The researchers used full-system numerical simulations of GRS bridge abutments, 3D numerical simulations of GRS mini-piers and longitudinal and transverse shaking table tests on half-scale GRS bridge abutment systems to help shed light on these issues.
Fox and his colleagues received the IGS Award during the 11th ICG in Seoul, South Korea, on Sept. 19.
Fox joined Penn State in 2015. He was previously a professor of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California–San Diego. He received his doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Fox has been a member of IGS since 1998. He also received the IGS Award in 2008 for his research on the static and dynamic shear strength of geosynthetic clay liners. He is a member of the editorial boards of both IGS journals — Geosynthetics International and Geotextiles and Geomembranes.