Arthur Casagrande was an American civil engineer born in Austria-Hungary who made important contributions to the fields of engineering geology and geotechnical engineering during its infancy.
14 Facts About Arthur Casagrande
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Arthur Casagrande moved to Trieste after attending his first year in school in Linz.
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Arthur Casagrande graduated from the Technische Hochschule in Vienna with a civil engineering degree in 1924, after which he carried on working there as a full-time assistant to Professor Schaffernak in the hydraulics laboratory.
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Arthur Casagrande stayed in a YMCA hostel for ten days after arriving in New York in 1926, and decided to go to New Jersey and work as a draftsman for a few months.
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From 1926 to 1932, Arthur Casagrande worked as a research assistant with the US Bureau of Public Roads, assigned to MIT, where he assisted Terzaghi in his numerous research projects directed towards improving apparatus and techniques for soil testing.
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When Terzaghi took up a professorship at Vienna in 1929 after a short stint at MIT, Arthur Casagrande traveled with him to help him set up the soil mechanics laboratory that would later become one of the most famous research centers in soil mechanics.
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Arthur Casagrande capitalized on the touring opportunity by visiting all soil mechanics laboratories in Europe at the time.
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Arthur Casagrande was a pioneer in the US for conducting the triaxial shear test and was one of the first persons to study the volume changes of soil during shear.
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Arthur Casagrande was among the first to recognize that change in pore pressure developed during undrained shearing.
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Arthur Casagrande pointed out the significant difference in mechanical characteristics between undisturbed and remolded clay.
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In 1932, Arthur Casagrande moved to Harvard University where he would later be promoted to a newly created chair of soil mechanics and foundation engineering in 1946.
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Arthur Casagrande was credited for organizing the first ever International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering in 1936, which Terzaghi considered to be too much of a gamble given the early stage in soil mechanics at that time.
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Arthur Casagrande strenuously insisted that the definition of liquefaction should be reserved for soil exhibiting drastic strain-softening which results in an almost flow-type behavior.
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Arthur Casagrande won many awards throughout his career, including being named the first ever Rankine Lecturer by the British Geotechnical Association as well as a Terzaghi Lecturer by ASCE.