Since 01.04.2019 Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Torsten Wichtmann (formerly Bauhaus-Universität Weimar) is head of the chair for Soil Mechanics, Foundation Engineering and Environmental Geotechnics. At the start of his work, he answered questions from the faculty's PR team about his research areas, his motivation for studying technology, his tips for students and his plans for the future of the chair.

After studying civil engineering at the RUB from 1996 to 2000, Prof. Wichtmann worked as a research assistant at the Department of Foundation Engineering and Soil Mechanics at the RUB until 2006. In his doctorate, which took place in 2005 within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre 398, he dealt with the behaviour of sand under highly cyclical and dynamic demands. In 2007, Prof. Wichtmann joined the Institute of Soil Mechanics and Rock Mechanics (IBF) at the Technical University of Karlsruhe (later Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT) as a scientific assistant. In addition to the extension of research to clay soils, the focus there was more on the validation of the developed constitutive models and their application in numerical simulations. In this way, the long-term behaviour of the foundations of offshore wind turbines and the stability of opencast mine embankments under the influence of earthquakes were investigated. In 2016 Prof. Wichtmann habilitated at KIT in the field of "Geotechnical Engineering". In 2017 he followed the call of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar to the professorship Geotechnics. In 2019, Prof. Wichtmann rejected a call from KIT to the Chair of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering and returned to the RUB by accepting the call to the Chair of Soil Mechanics, Foundation Engineering and Environmental Geotechnics.

Which fields of research will you be dealing with from now on?

The future research of the chair will continue to deal with soil-mechanical aspects of prognosis models for mechanical tunnelling. Thus the chair actively participates in the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 837. Furthermore, we will deal with different challenges of the energy system transformation in our research. I would like to continue my research on the rehabilitation of lignite open-cast mining areas, in particular on the stability of the slopes of open-cast mining lakes under the influence of earthquakes, as well as the work on the long-term deformation of foundations for offshore wind turbines. Our research will also focus on the impact of vibrations on the ground of onshore wind turbines, near-surface geothermal energy and soil mechanical aspects of the ultimate storage of nuclear waste. In addition, we will also deal with the consequences of climate change for geotechnical structures, with monitoring systems, simulation methods for geotechnical engineering that protects structures, and the behaviour of infrastructure structures on improved subsoil. In all these research fields, basic investigations of soil behaviour under (partly coupled) mechanical, hydraulic and thermal conditions are necessary in order to be able to describe this mathematically using material models. These material models are used in numerical simulations, the results of which form the basis for the development of practical solutions.

How did you come to engineering? Was it your plan from an early age to go into a technical field of work?

The interest in building was certainly there long before I decided to study. In the end, I preferred the technically oriented study of civil engineering to the study of architecture, which was also considered. During my studies geotechnics could arouse my interest the most, because the mechanical behaviour of soil differs clearly from the other materials of civil engineering, is very diverse and sometimes surprising. In addition, every subsoil is different, which is an additional challenge for the geotechnical engineer. I then "got stuck" in geotechnics by a job as a student assistant at the Department of Foundation Engineering and Soil Mechanics, which I took up during my studies at the RUB.

What are your tips for a successful course of studies?

It is certainly difficult to give general tips here. Over time, each student will find out for himself or herself how he or she can best acquire the knowledge necessary for the successful graduation of a course of study. Bachelor students in their first semesters should not be discouraged by the courses that are often regarded as dry and in which the foundations are laid. The constructive and planning subjects build on these theoretical foundations in the further course of studies (including the courses in the field of geotechnics). The choice of specialisation in the Master's programme should be based on one's own interests and not on the supposed degree of difficulty or the current market situation. In the Master's programme at the latest, it is also advisable to "get a taste" of the respective field by working as a student assistant at a chair, in an engineering office or a construction company or as part of internships.

Keyword "future plans": What would you absolutely like to realize in the next few years?

In order to carry out basic research in the fields mentioned above, it is first necessary to expand the experimental infrastructure of the chair. The soil mechanics laboratory will be supplemented by some new experimental equipment for the multidimensional cyclic and dynamic loading of soil samples. We will realize these relatively complex devices partly by our own construction. Furthermore, for some of the research fields mentioned above, large-format experimental setups are required in the experimental hall of the chair. An example is a model test for the simulation of embankments or soil columns under earthquake impact. A further goal is the reactivation of the Department's large geotechnical centrifuge, in which models can be tested in an elevated gravity field and thus at realistic tension levels.

Of course I hope for significant progress in the above mentioned research fields, especially with regard to the development of material models based on high quality experiments using existing and new experimental equipment as well as their validation on the basis of different edge value problems, e.g. the own model experiments in the experimental hall. In addition to raising third-party funds for research in the various fields mentioned above within the framework of individual and joint proposals as well as research groups, it is certainly a major goal to develop a new large-scale research format together with the colleagues in the faculty as a thematic successor to SFB 837 and to get it off the ground.

In the field of education, I would like to further develop the contents of the courses from the fields of soil mechanics, foundation engineering and environmental geotechnics within the specialisation "Geotechnics and Tunnelling" in the Master's programme in Civil Engineering and to supplement them with new thematic focuses in order to further increase the already existing attractiveness of the specialisation. The active participation in the planned new international Master's programme "Underground Infrastructure" with the specialisation "Geotechnics and Tunneling" also represents a very interesting and exciting challenge. I hope that, as in Computational Engineering, we will succeed in attracting very good international students with a strong interest in underground infrastructure and geotechnics to the RUB.

The faculty welcomes Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Torsten Wichtmann!