2009 Press Releases
Top Prize for UCC Civil Engineering Students
14.10.2009
UCC Civil Engineering graduates, Paul Whooly and Brendan Casey have won first prize in the Graduate and Student Paper Competition of the Institute of Civil Engineers 2009.
14.10.2009
UCC Civil Engineering graduates, Paul Whooly and Brendan Casey have won first prize in the Graduate and Student Paper Competition of the Institute of Civil Engineers 2009.
Paul and Brendan who graduated with a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering in September, won the competition for a paper on their final year project – Irish Peat Failures.
The judges comments stated: “Their paper , which is a very detailed analysis of a bogflow incident at Ballincollig Hill, in Co. Kerry, in August 2008, is both thorough and rigorous. It classifies the Ballincollig failure within the whole range of different types of slope failures which can occur in bogs generally, and in particular in blanket bogs. It examines all of the known factors which might have caused the failure, and then performs a sensitivity analysis on each factor in turn. It then examines the record of what happened on the day, and establishes a hypothesis which corresponds with the recorded facts, which, on the face of it, is very credible. The engineering content of this paper is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the mechanisms involved in failures in slopes in peat, and it should be brought to the attention of a very wide audience among the geotechnical community. Altogether, a very thorough and insightful piece of work.”
A paper is now being prepared for submission to “Geotechnique”, one of the more prestigious international journals in geotechnology.
Picture shows L-R: Professor Ger Kiely (UCC project supervisor), Paul Whooly, Brendan Casey and William Murray (Institute of Civil Engineers).
1176MMcS
The judges comments stated: “Their paper , which is a very detailed analysis of a bogflow incident at Ballincollig Hill, in Co. Kerry, in August 2008, is both thorough and rigorous. It classifies the Ballincollig failure within the whole range of different types of slope failures which can occur in bogs generally, and in particular in blanket bogs. It examines all of the known factors which might have caused the failure, and then performs a sensitivity analysis on each factor in turn. It then examines the record of what happened on the day, and establishes a hypothesis which corresponds with the recorded facts, which, on the face of it, is very credible. The engineering content of this paper is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the mechanisms involved in failures in slopes in peat, and it should be brought to the attention of a very wide audience among the geotechnical community. Altogether, a very thorough and insightful piece of work.”
A paper is now being prepared for submission to “Geotechnique”, one of the more prestigious international journals in geotechnology.
Picture shows L-R: Professor Ger Kiely (UCC project supervisor), Paul Whooly, Brendan Casey and William Murray (Institute of Civil Engineers).
1176MMcS