Ronald Brinkgreve (PLAXIS)
"Past and future of the Finite-Element Method in Geotechnics - More than a quarter century PLAXIS"
In this presentation a short history wil be given of how PLAXIS evolved from a research project at TU Delft towards the world market leader in the field of geotechnical finite element software. In addition, topics will be described that are expected to determine the future of the finite element method in geotechnics.
About the speaker
Ronald Brinkgreve is Manager Research at Plaxis BV in Delft. In this position he is responsible for the (geo)technical and scientific quality of the PLAXIS finite element software which is used world-wide in design and analysis of prestigious geotechnical projects.
In addition, Ronald is part-time Associate Professor at the Geo-engineering section of the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geo-Sciences of Delft University of Technology (TUDelft). In that position he is responsible for the course "Behaviour of Soils and Rocks" and he supervises PhD students and MSc graduation students with their research projects. Ronald obtained his MSc-degree at TUDelft in 1989 in the field of Geotechnics and obtained his Dr-degree from the same university based on the PhD thesis "Geomaterial Models and Numerical Analysis of Softening". After his promotion in 1994, Ronald started working at the spin-off company Plaxis BV, which has meanwhile grown towards an international company with more than 60 employees. In 1997 he was recruited by (meanwhile emeritus) professor Arnold Verruijt to become part-time lecturer at TUDelft. The combination of both positions has proven to be very fruitful.
As a researcher, Ronald has contributed to the (geo)technical and scientific developments of the PLAXIS software. He has written many papers about the application of numerical methods and constitutive models for soil and rock. As a lecturer, Ronald is involved in many international courses on Computational Geotechnics. Besides that, Ronald has been member of the NAFEMS Geotechnical Committee in the period 2008-2014. In this period he wrote the book "Validating numerical modelling in geotechnical engineering". Since 2015, Ronald is guest-member of the German DGGT working group 1.6 Numerical Methods and he is member of the Dutch POV-M committee Rekentechnieken (Calculation methods).
