Professor Jean Salençon explored Coulomb's revolutionary study in soil mechanics

Newswise — Professor Jean Salençon, Professor Emeritus at the École Polytechnique, delivered a HKIAS Distinguished Lecture, entitled “1773 About Coulomb’s Seminal Contribution to Soil Mechanics”, on 22 November.

In 1773, Coulomb presented to the French Academy of Sciences a research study, which is often considered as the starting point for "yield design" stability analyses in various fields of civil engineering and construction. The study implemented reasoning based on the necessary condition that the equilibrium of the structure under study and the resistance of its constituent materials should be mathematically compatible with each other. In the lecture, Professor Salençon described Coulomb’s reasoning and explored the legacy of Coulomb’s work, which includes the theory of yield design as a straightforward outcome that opened the way to innovative design of civil engineering structures.

Professor Jean Salençon is a distinguished figure in the field of Continuum Mechanics. He served as the President of the French Academy of Sciences in 2009 and 2010. Professor Salençon is currently a HKIAS Senior Fellow at CityU, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Technologies and Academia Europaea, and holds foreign memberships in the Istituto Lombardo (Milan), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (Portugal).

This lecture is supported in part by the Kwang Hua Educational Foundation.

More information about the lecture, please click here.