2007 ISTT Awards: Academic and Student Paper
January 1, 2008
Dr. Hideki Shimada, associate professor in the Department of Earth Resources Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan, was named the 2007 ISTT Award winner in the Academic category at the recent International No-Dig 2007 in Rome, Italy, for his work over the years in the field of pipe jacking.
Dr. Shimada has concentrated his research using numerical analysis on solutions for the stability of surrounding soils when using pipe jacking. He has developed the theory of mud slurry performance around the bore pipes by means of the two-dimensional Eulerian-Lagragian seepage analysis. He also has evaluated the accurate prediction of thrust forces in slurry pipe jacking by comparing the resistance between the mud slurry and the concrete pipes and the resistance between the soil and the pipes in linear and curved jacking.
His research has spread throughout the pipe jacking field in Japan, with many joint research projects between universities, companies and the Japan Society for Trenchless Technology (JSTT).
In 2003, Dr. Shimada took part in the Fujisawa project. The project successfully installed a world-record pipe jacked bore of 3,500-mm OD pipes over a length of 792 m, which was at the limits of pipe jacking capability. His recommendation was that pipe jacking should be used instead of a shield tunneling method and it provided an example of how to deal with the lubricant in the over-cut annulus as a reference model for the kind of monitoring system required. This success of this project owes much to Shimada’s research.
Shimada is now engaged in researching rehabilitation methods with large diameter pipe jacking systems and low thrust lubricants. He supervises many doctoral and master students who study pipe jacking. He also lectures on soil mechanics, which includes trenchless technology.
In giving the award to Dr Shimada, the ISTT wanted to recognize his considerable contribution to the research of pipe-jacking technology and his enthusiasm for encouraging young engineers at the start of their careers.
Student
The paper deals with the ecological assessment of trenchless technology, linking it with earlier results of work done by the Department of Sanitary and Ecological Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Prague Technical University. The paper suggests improvements in the classification of trenchless technology for ecological assessment (with classification refinements for all utility types and selective classification for water supply and sewerage pipelines). It also takes a further step forward by suggesting the use of trenchless technology catalogue sheets and the verification of the applied methods of value analysis for trenchless technology from an ecological point of view.
The author concluded that it is probable (or at least has been proven by the results of the research in the Czech Republic) that economic criteria and parameters will not stimulate broader trenchless technology application in construction practice. Economic parameters are not conclusive enough. So it is essential to use trenchless technology’s strong ecological parameters and even this must be done in a systematic, consistent and emphatic way.
Nenadalova is an environmental engineering Ph.D. student in the Department of Sanitary and Ecological Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the largest university in the Czech Republic. The university has 25,000 students, 5,000 who are studying civil engineering.
She was nominated for this special award by the Czech Society for Trenchless Technology. Nenadalova is from Prague and now works part-time for an engineering design firm. She has a special interest in trenchless technology, which is the subject of her thesis.
Both of Nenadalova’s parents are in education. Her mother teaches world and Czech history and her father is in the civil engineering field. She says her parents’ careers helped motivate her to develop an interest in environmental engineering.
Soon, Nenadalova will spend six months in Germany working for a water management company. The organization is based in Oldenberg with a focus on drinking water and wastewater.