Prof. Giulia M.B. Viggiani
Biography
Giulia Viggiani is currently Professor of Infrastructure Geotechnics in the Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group of the Department of Engineering of Cambridge University. She has a Laurea in Civil Engineering from Università di Napoli Federico II and a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the City University in London. She has been Scientific Visitor at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, in Leipzig, MTS Visiting Professor of Geomechanics at the University of Minnesota, and Academic Visitor at Imperial College, working on the JLE-Link Project. In Cambridge, she is the Academic Lead of the UKCRIC National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing, and a Co-Investigator and member of the Executive Committee of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. Giulia has a strong involvement in the activities of the geotechnical international scientific community and she is currently chairing ISSMGE TC204 – Underground Construction in Soft Ground.
The main thrust of her research is on the applications of soil mechanics to geotechnical engineering, and has dealt mainly with underground construction, foundation engineering, and earthquake geotechnical engineering. She has been involved in many infrastructural projects in Italy and the UK, including, e.g., monitoring building response to construction of the Jubilee Line Extension in London, the design and construction of Lines 1 and 6 of Napoli underground and of Line C of Roma underground, and the design of the foundations, anchor blocks and terminal structures of the Strait of Messina Bridge.
She has carried out original research on tunnelling and construction processes, tunnelling-induced damage assessment and connected mitigation and remedial measures, and performance-based design of geotechnical structures under seismic actions, using a combination of field monitoring and laboratory observations, theoretical analyses, and physical and numerical modelling. Part of her research is also devoted to topics in fundamental soil mechanics, such as the mechanical behaviour of freezing ground and of granular materials with crushable grains. She has published forty-three journal papers, more than one hundred papers in international conferences and workshops, and five book chapters.
In 1943 Karl Terzaghi published his famous book “Theoretical Soil Mechanics”, with only 7 pages dedicated to piles. Today, 80 years later, thousands of research papers and textbooks are proof of significant advances made in this field (new pile types, experimental full-scale observations, different method of analysis and design in a wide variety of soil conditions as encountered in practice, taking proper account for general loading conditions, etc.). In the keynote paper, a tentative is made to “distill” this broad literature, trying to pull out some fundamental aspects aimed to establish that undeniable expertise for any professional involved in piling problems.
