The 48th Rankine Lecture of the British Geotechnical Association was given by Dr Andrew Charles at Imperial College London on 19 March 2008. The following introduction was given by Hilary Skinner of Ramboll Whitbybird, Chair of the British Geotechnical Association.
Having graduated in civil engineering at Imperial College in 1964 Andrew took a master's degree in soil mechanics, studying under Professors Skempton, Bishop and Gibson.
He then worked for Balfour Beatty gaining experience in the design office and on site, including working on the construction of Backwater dam in Scotland.
In 1967 he joined the geotechnics division of the Building Research Establishment (BRE), having been interviewed by Dr Cooling and the rest of his career has been spent at Garston. He commenced work in the dams section for Dr Arthur Penman with involvement in the instrumentation of Scammonden dam. His PhD work involved the study of the movements of the rockfill dam and included field, laboratory and numerical studies carried out with Professor Bishop at Imperial College and through BRE.
In addition to work on embankment dams, his research topics have included the settlement of poorly compacted waste fill materials and their performance as foundation materials, and the effectiveness of ground improvement techniques. A feature of Andrew's work, which will be reflected in the lecture this evening, is the pre-eminence of field monitoring data, and particularly long-term data, in the understanding of soil behaviour. In particular the understanding of fill materials and ground improvement have benefited from large-scale studies.
He has written more than 150 journal and conference papers and three books; he is the author of Geotechnics for building professionals (Charles, 2005) and has co-authored Building on fill: geotechnical aspects (Charles & Watts, 2001) and An engineering guide to the safety of embankment dams in the United Kingdom (Johnston et al., 1999). These form reference texts for professionals working in these subjects and reflect the advancement in understanding that Andrew has contributed to the profession.
Since 1996 Andrew has been a member of the ICE Reservoirs Committee. He was convenor of the European Working Group on Internal Erosion in Embankment Dams from 1993 to 2002. For over 20 years he was chairman of the BSI committee for BS 1377 ‘Methods of test for soils for civil engineering purposes’. Through written papers and in giving numerous lectures and keynotes, Andrew has disseminated the knowledge gained through careful research to the UK and wider geotechnical communities.
He was awarded ICE's George Stephenson Medal in 1985 and the Geotechnical Research Medal in 2000. He received the British Geotechnical Society Prize for 1993, the Bateman Award of the British Dam Society in 2002 and the ICE Halcrow Prize in 2005.
He obtained a DSc(Eng) degree in 1986 from the University of London and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1999.
Following his retirement in 2002 his association with BRE has continued in a consultancy capacity. During this time he has served as a member of an international review panel for the safety evaluation of the 125 m high Trängslet rockfill dam in Sweden and, together with Professor David Muir Wood, he carried out a review of the extensive research programme which was undertaken following the internal erosion problems at the 183 m high WAC Bennett earth embankment dam in British Columbia.
Andrew's open-minded approach, seeking an understanding of soil behaviour through a careful study of measured results has been an inspiration to many and I am honoured to invite him to deliver the 48th Rankine Lecture.
