Erman Evgin

Biography

Dr. Evgin received his undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Istanbul. As an engineer, he worked in all stages of the construction of Keban Dam in Turkey over a period of three years. Upon arrival to Canada as an immigrant, he was employed by Acres Canadian Bechtel to work on the construction of dykes and dams in Churchill Falls, Labrador. After the completion of the Churchill Falls Hydroelectic Project, he attended McGill University. For his Masters degree, he constructed a relatively large instrumented model scale pile group. Based on a substantial amount of experimental data, he developed a computer program to determine load distribution to each pile head. Although he received an offer from Professor G.G. Meyerhof (who was his external examiner) to do his PhD with him, he went to the University of Alberta to do research on numerical modelling in geotechnical engineering. He developed a nonlinear finite element program from scratch and incorporated Lade’s constitutive model for sand into the code. He used his finite element code with great success to simulate the behaviour of an instrumented retaining wall. The retaining wall experiments were conducted at the University of California at Berkeley under the guidance of Professor J. Duncan. He remained as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta for about six months and worked with Professor N.R. Morgenstern to incorporate Duncan and Chang’s hyperbolic model in the ADINA finite element program. The improved ADINA was used to anayze the behaviour of offshore islands in the Beaufort Sea under ballast and ice loads. In the following years, Dr. Evgin worked as a researcher at the National Research Council in Ottawa. He developed a novel method to make a newly purchased dual gamma ray apparatus to make it work effectively as a geotechnical research tool. The apparatus was used to take simultanous measurements of moisture content and density changes in unsaturated soil samples. Dr. Evgin joined the University of Ottawa in 1986. Under his supervision, one of his graduate students used a bounding surface plasticity model to simulate the field behaviour of an instrumented deep foundation. Two other students worked on ice mechanics (joint supervision with a researcher at the NRC for testing purposes) to develop constitutive models and to incorporate them in a 3D finite element program for the analyses of time dependent initial and boundary value problems related to ice. In relation to contaminent transport in soils, one of his PhD students developed a stochastic finite code. Over the years, some of his graduate students studied the effects of oil spills on constitutive behaviour of soils and oil and gas exploration islands in the Beaufort Sea. For indepth understanding of soil-structure interaction problems, a unique 3D cyclic interface apparatus was developed. In addition, several modifications to the interface apparatus were made to investigate the effect of temperature changes on interface behaviour. Advances were made in conventional understanding of the role of interface behaviour on energy piles during thermo-hydro-mechanical processes. Geotechnical aspects of nuclear waste disposal in deep geological repositories have been another area of investigation Dr. Evgin collaborated with researches from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Tests were done at CANMET on rock samples and the finite element analysis was performed using COMSOL Multiphysics Finite element code.  

Research Interest

  Fields of Interest Numerical Analysis and Design of Energy Piles Geotechnical Aspects of nuclear waste disposal Testing of soil-structure interfaces and numerical analysis of foundations in unsaturated soils Solution of Geotechnical Problems Related to Climate Change