Boulanger, Kutter, Malvick and Kulasingam Awarded Norman Medal
Ramachandran Kulasingam, A.M.ASCE, Erik Malvick, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, Ross W. Boulanger, P.E., M.ASCE, and Bruce Kutter, Ph.D., M.ASCE,
have been named the recipients of the of the *Norman Medal* for their
paper “Strength Loss and Localization at Silt Interlayers in Slopes
of Liquefied Sand,” which appeared in the November 2004 issue of
ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.
The Norman Medal is bestowed upon the author or authors of a paper
that is judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a
contribution to engineering science. ASCE has thirty journals and the
Norman Medal is for the best paper from all of them that year.
The paper signalized with this year’s medal investigates the role of
void redistribution in the liquefaction behavior of saturated sand
slopes with and without silt interlayers. The authors report
experimental and analytical results demonstrating that the apparent
residual shear strength is unlikely to correlate closely with
preearthquake penetration resistance alone; rather, it is a function
of these initial shear stresses and numerous factors affecting the
process of void redistribution and localization.