The XXIX Italian National Conference on Geosynthetics was held on 18th October 2018 in Bologna, giving excellent results in terms of both number of registered attendees and quality of presented papers.
This time the conference theme was addressed to the presentation of the “A.G.I. recommendations for the use of geosynthetics in soil reinforcement: design of walls and steep slopes”.
The conference was organised by the Italian Geotechnical Association (AGI) and by the Italian Chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society (AGI-IGS), in partnership with BolognaFiere, under the auspices of the National Engineers Council (CNI), the Association of Bologna’s Engineers and the University of Bologna.
The conference took place in the context of the SAIE Exhibition (the international reference point for the world of construction in Italy) and it was divided in two different sessions.
The morning session was coordinated by Daniele Cazzuffi (AGI-IGS President) and, through a series of invited lectures, it concerned the basics regarding the geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures, the characterisation of the design parameters and the methodologies of analysis both in static and seismic fields. The first lecture was presented by Nicola Moraci (Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy) and it focused on the “Basics and working principles of the design with geosynthetic”, taking into account the practices currently used worldwide and the recent developments achieved with regard to construction technologies. The second lecture was presented by Giuseppe Cardile (Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy) and it focused on the “Materials used for earth reinforced wall construction: characterization for a correct design”, in which all the requirements for the evaluation of the design parameters were debated. The third lecture presented by Marilene Pisano (Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy) was entitled “Italian design code and current international standards and recommendations”. The last lecture of the morning session was presented by Giovanni Biondi (University of Messina) and Paolo Carrubba (University of Padua) on the “Static and seismic analysis methods“.
The afternoon session started with the presentation of the AGI-IGS Award for the best thesis on Geosynthetics Engineering discussed in the last two years in an Italian University. The winner was Stefano Anzani (Politecnico Milano) with a Master’s Degree thesis on the “Study and development of an innovative adhesive anchored external waterstop for the waterproofing of joints in concrete face rockfill dams”.
Nicola Moraci (AGI President) coordinated the afternoon session, in which invited lectures illustrated the numerical design approaches and examine comprehensively the practical aspects such as realisation, testing and monitoring, passing through a design example that will show the correct application of the new national technical code (NTC2018). Specifically, Claudio di Prisco (Politecnico Milano) presented a lecture on the “Numerical design approaches”, Piergiorgio Recalcati (Tenax SpA) and Pietro Rimoldi (Officine Maccaferri SpA) presented a “NTC2018 design practical case and the differences with the previous code”, while Maurizio Schiavo (Sogen srl) gave a lecture on “Realization, testing and monitoring of earth-reinforced structures”.
At the end of each session, a fruitful and interesting discussion on the different topics took place.
The next XXX Italian National Conference on Geosynthetics will be held in 2020.
Reported by Daniele Cazzuffi (AGI-IGS President and IGS Past President), Giuseppe Cardile (AGI-IGS Secretary) and Marilene Pisano (Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria)
