The boards of the KIVI Department of the History of Engineering and of the Histechnica Association have the pleasure of inviting you to attend a lecture to be delivered by ir. Jan Heemstra, titled:

"How mechanics got off the ground"

on Saturday 11 January 2020.

Programme:

10.30 h: Building open; reception with coffee

11.00:00: Lecture by ir Jan Heemstra (retired employee of Deltares GeoEngineering)

11:50 a.m.: Break

12:15: Continuation of lecture / concluding discussion

12:45: End of meeting.

Registration is required to attend this lecture. KIVI members can register via the website. The registration deadline closes on Saturday 4 January 2020.

Summary of the lecture

The railway disaster in Weesp in 1918 is considered the moment when the subject of Ground Mechanics in the Netherlands separated itself from the study of mechanics in general.

It was the most serious railway accident until then. The shearing of the railway embankment to the bridge over the Merwede Canal could only be explained with difficulty with the knowledge of the time. Once, but never again, was the thought. In 1934, the young professor of general mechanics at TH Delft Keverling Buisman founded a separate institute, the Laboratory for Soil Mechanics (LGM), in the basement of the building on the Oostplantsoen. It would devote itself entirely to the development and application of the new discipline. Together with the Hydraulic Laboratory, the LGM formed the Hydraulic Laboratory Foundation. The government provided 1,000 guilders as start-up capital.

In 1932, Barentsen, chief engineer at RWS, had invented probing. This involves pushing a cone into the ground. Initially, this was done purely by hand power and the depth of penetration was limited, but soon the LGM switched to probing with devices that allowed one or more operating personnel to reach greater depths. This was done on land (transporting the devices by bicycle or van Gend en Loos) but also on water.

A boost was the construction of the Maas Tunnel in 1936, the first immersed tunnel, where a great deal of knowledge was developed. But LGM was also active in other areas, such as the construction of provincial roads in view of the sharp increase in car traffic. Pre-war subsidence measurements on the Stolwijk test section contributed to the knowledge of compression, and measurements on this could be continued even 75 years later.

Internationally, the achievements here attracted attention, and it was therefore planned to organise the second International Congress on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering in the Netherlands. However, because of the war, that congress could only take place in Rotterdam in 1948. The Netherlands was a leader when it came to building in weak soil.

The 1953 storm surge disaster and the Delta Works ensured even more knowledge development. Today, it is impossible to imagine the profession without it, although the former LGM is long defunct and others have taken over. Still, when a disaster strikes, even today people do not always look immediately to the subsoil, even though there may well be an explanation.

Information about the speaker, Jan Heemstra

Jan Heemstra (Groningen 1948) joined the Laboratory for Soil Mechanics in 1976 and experienced the name changes to Grondmechanica Delft and GeoDelft and finally the incorporation into the knowledge institute Deltares. He worked as a geotechnical consultant on Stieltjesweg in Delft and had a predilection for preventing accidents such as the narrowly failed collapse of the tower of the Hervormde kerk in Vinkeveen in 2005. He spent the very last years putting the archives in order. Jan is a railway enthusiast.

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