In this episode, NGI's Dr. Georg H. Erharter talks with Prof. Herbert Einstein from MIT about tunnel design methods. They start with a historical look back to ancient tunnel design and construction and then slowly transition over to modern day tunnelling, different design paradigms and ultimately the future of tunnel design including artificial intelligence, research gaps and advice for future tunnel engineers.

SPEAKERS

Prof. Herbert Einstein finished his PhD at ETH Zürich in 1966 and is leading the "Herbert Einstein Research Group" at MIT since 1973. His main fields of work are rock mechanics, engineering geology, underground construction, field measurements, laboratory experiments, numerical- and analytical modelling. He received numerous prices for his teaching and research including the "Müller Lecture award" in 1999 from the International Society for Rock Mechanics and the "Outstanding Contributions to Rock Mechanics award" from the American Rock Mechanics Association in 2006. He is still actively working on tunnelling research and recently published a new book about Tunnel Design Methods together with Antonio Bobet (see link below).

Dr. Georg H. Erharter is an engineering geologists at NGI. He brought practical experience from large alpine tunnel projects such as the Brenner- or Semmering Base tunnels to NGI and today is working in both engineering geological consultancy and research. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering where he was dealing with machine learning for geotechnics and he is generally engaged with using modern technology to solve long standing problems of the field.

Georg H. Erharter

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georg-h-erharter-b514b4125/

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fb3-U50AAAAJ&hl=en

Herbert Einstein

Research group website: https://herbert-einstein.org/

Contact: [email protected]

New Tunnel Design Methods book:

Bobet, Antonio; Einstein, Herbert H. (2024): Tunnel design methods. First edition. Boca Raton, London, New York: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group. https://www.routledge.com/Tunnel-Design-Methods/Bobet-Einstein/p/book/9781032358444