Welcome to IACMAG 2025

Pierre-Yves Hicher, École centrale de Nantes, France
pierre-yves.hicher@ec-nantes.fr

Presentation: Modeling the impact of internal soil erosion on engineering structures and granular slopes in the context of climate change

Biography: Pierre-Yves HICHER is a distinguished researcher in the field of geomechanics. His main contribution has been to study the mechanical behaviour of soils and granular materials. He has notably contributed a methodology for connecting macroscopic properties to the microstructure of heterogeneous materials and has advanced knowledge of material properties under complex loading paths through original experimental procedures and parameter identification methods under inverse analysis techniques. He has proposed homogenization techniques adapted to disordered granular materials in the modelling of their mechanical behaviour. These techniques have been applied to the analysis of instability and collapse in granular materials and of the size effect in coarse granular materials, which has been useful to the modelling of rockfill dams. Recently, his work concerns the impact of internal erosion on the stability of hydraulic works (dams, dykes, levees) in the context of climate change. He is the author and co-author of more than 150 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and has published several books on his research topics.
He is currently Professor Emeritus at Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France.

Buddhima Indraratna, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Buddhima.Indraratna@uts.edu.au

Presentation: Conceptual and Computational Perspectives of Sustainable Rail Geotechnics

Biography: Prof Buddhima Indraratna is a Civil Engineering graduate from Imperial College, London. Since his PhD at University of Alberta in Canada in 1987. He is currently, Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and the Director of Transport Research Centre, at the University of Technology Sydney. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, Indian Institute of Technology in Assam, and Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University and Shanghai University of Science and Technology in China. Buddhima is a Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust), Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (FASCE), Fellow of Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM), and a Fellow of the Geological Society of UK (FGS). He is a Chartered Professional Engineer of Australia, United Kingdom, and Sri Lanka.