ASCE has honored Chao Zhang, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, and Ning Lu, Ph.D., F.EMI, F.ASCE, with the Norman Medal for their paper “Unified Effective Stress Equation for Soil,” Journal of Engineering Mechanics, February 2020.
Zhang is at the College of Civil Engineering at Hunan University.
Lu is at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
The paper resolves a century-long issue on what the "effective stress" for soils is, which was introduced by Karl von Terzaghi in 1921 and has been a cornerstone of geotechnical engineering ever since.
The Norman Medal is bestowed upon the author or authors of a paper that is judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a contribution to engineering science.
