dharma-wijewickreme | UBC Civil Engineering

Faculty

Professor

Dr. Dharma Wijewickreme

Dr. Wijewickreme joined the UBC Civil Engineering Department in January 2001. His general field of specialty is geotechnical engineering with specific expertise in the fields of earthquake geotechnical engineering and pipeline geotechnical engineering. Dr. Wijewickreme received his Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1990 and 1986, respectively. Immediately prior to joining UBC, Dr. Wijewickreme served in the geotechnical consulting practice in British Columbia, Canada, where he acquired some 11 years of industry experience in the fields of seismic design and pipeline geotechnical engineering.

Dr. Wijewickreme pioneered the establishment of new Pipeline Integrity Institute (PII) at UBC in 2015 with industry funding, and is the Co-Director of the institute. He has received numerous awards, including the Horst Leipholz Medal of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering (2013) for outstanding contributions to engineering mechanics research and practice, the Canadian Geotechnical Journal's Editor's Choice Award (2011), and is a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering and the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is the President of the Canadian Geotechnical Society (CGS) for the two year term (2017-2018), and he has served as the Vice President Finance of the CGS between 2013 and 2017.

"Soil: the abundant, recyclable construction material on earth. Next time you build, think geotechnical!"
- Dharma Wijewickreme, March 30, 2010

Soil-Pipeline Physical Modeling at UBC ASPIRe^TM Facility

Pipeline Subject to Ground Movement at a Reverse Thrust Seismic Fault Crossing

Research Area / Group

Geotechnical Engineering

Research Interests

Response of soils under earthquake loading with particular emphasis on liquefaction of silts; Advanced Soil Pipe Interaction Research (ASPIRe ^TM) program with physical modeling to solve pipeline engineering problems; and advanced laboratory geomaterial characterization research to solve earthquake geotechnical engineering problems.

Courses

CIVL 311

Soil Mechanics II

Consolidation and shear strength of soils, with application to settlement and stability analysis of embankments, retaining walls, shallow footing and pile foundations.

CIVL 574

Experimental Soil Mechanics

Field and laboratory experimental studies of advanced aspects of soil behaviour; compressibility; shear strength; pore water pressure; dynamic tests; advanced instrumentation and measurement techniques; research reports required.

CIVL 581

Soil Dynamics

Seismic loading and its effect on earth structures; dynamic response of single, and multi-degree of freedom systems and continuous systems; behaviour of soil under dynamic loading; pore pressure generation and liquefaction effects; seismicity and seismic design parameters; dynamic analysis of earth structures; seismic design of soil-structure systems.

Latest Publications

2018

P. Verma and Wijewickreme, D., “Some observations on the effect of high initial confining stress levels on the mechanical response of a natural silt”, 5th Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics Conference , 2018.

A. Soysa and Wijewickreme, D., “Initial observations on laboratory shear loading response of sand-silt mixtures”, 5th Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics Conference , 2018.

P. Verma, Seidalinova, A., and Wijewickreme, D., “Equivalent number of uniform cycles versus earthquake magnitude relationships for fine-grained soils”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 2018.

2017

D. Wijewickreme, Monroy, M., Honegger, D. G., and Nyman, D. J., “Soil Restraints on Buried Pipelines Subjected to Reverse Fault Displacement”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 2017.

D. Wijewickreme, Soysa, A., and Verma, P., “Response of Natural Fine-grained Soils for Seismic Design Practice: A Collection of Research Findings from British Columbia”, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, vol. Vol. 38, 2017.

L. Weerasekara, Hall, B., and Wijewickreme, D., “A new approach for estimating internal stability of reinforced soil structures”, Geosynthetics International, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 419 - 434, 2017.

D. Wijewickreme, Monroy, M., Honegger, D. G., and Nyman, D. J., “Soil restraints on buried pipelines subjected to reverse-fault displacement”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 5410397, no. 10109, pp. 1472 - 1481, 2017.

D. Wijewickreme and Soysa, A., “A Comparison of Cyclic Shear Response of Natural Fine-Grained Soils Having Different Plasticity”, in 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Chile, 2017.

S. Dilrukshi and Wijewickreme, D., “Effect of Pipe Size on Estimating Soil Restraint on Pipelines Subject to Transverse Permanent Ground Movements”, in 19th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Seoul, South Korea, 2017.

S. Dilrukshi and Wijewickreme, D., “Evaluation of the trench backfill particle size effects on the development of soil restraints on buried pipelines subjected to relative ground movement”, in 3rd International Conference on Performance-based Design in Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering (PBD-III), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2017.

View more publications

Contact

dharmaw@civil.ubc.ca

604.822.5112

Location:

CEME - Room 2037

Civil and Mechanical Engineering Building
The University of British Columbia
6250 Applied Science Lane
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4
Canada