TEXTILES.ORG
An Oct. 25 press release issued by Penn State announced that Patrick Fox, the John A. and Harriette K. Shaw Professor and Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State, is the 2015 recipient of the Best Paper Award for the journal Geosynthetics International.
Fox, along with Timothy Stark, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois/ Urbana-Champaign, received the honor for their paper titled “State-of-the-art report: GCL shear strength and its measurement—10-year update,” which was published in the February 2015 edition of the journal.
The award-winning paper presented an update to the professors’ 2004 paper and provides an expansive source of information on the shear strength and shear strength testing of geosynthetic clay liners (GCLs).
The press release stated that, “Essential concepts of shear stress–displacement behavior and shear strength are examined as well as detailed discussions on the laboratory measurement of the shear strength of GCLs and GCL interfaces.”
Photo courtesy University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign
The release noted that GCLs are widely used as hydraulic barrier materials in the construction of landfills and other waste containment facilities.
Fox joined the Penn State Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2015. His research interests include slope stability, retaining walls, groundwater, consolidation, geosynthetics, landfills, foundation engineering, soil dynamics and earthquake engineering.
Prior to joining Penn State, Fox was a professor of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California-San Diego where he co-authored the winning paper. He received a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Fox has been a member of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) since 1998, received the IGS Award for research in 2008, and is a member of the editorial boards of both IGS journals, Geosynthetics International and Geotextiles and Geomembranes. Fox will receive a certificate recognizing his achievement.
Fox has also authored or co-authored numerous articles for Geosynthetics magazine, including a 2012–2013 3-part series, “Shear strength of geosynthetic clay liners,” with co-author Chris Athanassopoulos.