Special Session in Honour and Memory of Professor Tien H. Wu
Kok-Kwang Phoon, National University of Singapore, Singapore
C. Hsein Juang, National Central University, Taiwan
Professor Emeritus Tien H. Wu passed away on June 7, 2018. A special issue was initiated by Geo risk and ISSMGE TC304 (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ngrk20/13/4?nav=tocList) to commemorate the passing of a founding member of the geo risk community who has been instrumental in bringing probabilistic methods to geotechnical practice over a distinguished career of more than 50 years. Some of the invited papers in this special issue will be presented in this Special Session in Honour and Memory of Professor Tien H. Wu on 12 December 2019, between 2:40 – 4:10 PM and 4:30 – 6:00 PM inIB-101 at the symposium venue.
TH was a Professor Emeritus of The Ohio State University (he retired from OSU in 1994). His distinguished academic career includes 12 years of services as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and then Professor of Civil Engineering at Michigan State University, and 30 years of services as Professor of Civil Engineering at Ohio State University. For his life-long contributions to the profession of Civil Engineering, TH was conferred as an Honorary Member of ASCE in 2003. This is the highest honor one can receive from ASCE.
TH’s research work covers a broad spectrum of geotechnical subjects including strength properties of soil and rock, glaciology in Alaska and Antarctica, stability of embankments and natural slopes, ground water and seepage, soil-structure interaction of buried structures, risk and reliability assessment for foundations and slopes, and soil reinforcement. His work is of very high quality; among the many awards TH has received is the ASCE State-of the-Art Award in 1990 for his paper on “Reliability of Offshore Foundations.”
Throughout his career, TH has published many outstanding practical papers that documented case histories. Examples include a paper on “prediction and mapping of landslide hazard” (Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Vol. 37, pp. 781-795, 2000) and another paper on “stability of shale embankment and slopes” (ASCE Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, Vol. 119, pp. 127-146, 1993). The adoption of probabilistic approaches can only be enhanced if more good examples, such as TH’s case histories, are made available. In this regard, TH’s persistence in his research and publication on this subject over the last five decades has made a tremendous contribution. Many of the case histories that were documented in his reports and papers can be used as key examples toward a common goal of improving the use of probabilistic tools in our profession. His research was recognized by the Ralph B. Peck Award from the Geo-Institute (2008) among other accolades. His strength and interest in documenting case histories and innovative solutions to geotechnical problems perhaps could be attributed to his early and continuous learning from Professor Peck. After all, TH was Professor Peck’s first PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
To honour the memory of Professor Tien H. Wu, we invited contributors to share case histories that demonstrate the practical value of probabilistic methods in geotechnical engineering. We believe his spirit will live on in this type of use-inspired research that he has tirelessly championed in his professional career. The lead paper in the Geo risk special issue by Baecher and Christian (2019) entitled “TH Wu and the origins of geotechnical reliability” traced TH’s seminal insights that shaped the early evolution of geotechnical reliability through the case histories he published. We are very pleased that some of the authors have graciously agreed to present their papers in this Special Session in honour and memory of Professor Tien H. Wu, which consists of 11 presentations. We invited Professor Daniel Pradel, who is colleague of TH in Ohio State University, to share his reflections at the beginning of this session. Everyone is most welcome to attend.
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