Dr. K Rainer Massarsch

Dr. K Rainer Massarsch

Dr. K Rainer Massarsch is a private consultant in foundation engineering and soil dynamics, working on projects world-wide. He is scientific advisor to the Swedish Geotechnical Institute and works as consultant to international foundation contractors and consulting companies on a variety of projects. Dr. Massarsch is the author of over 120 scientific and technical publications and has lectured in more than 40 countries.

One area of special interest is the application of information technology to geotechnical engineering. He is the co-founder of GeoForum.com, an Internet-based geotechnical information system.

Dr. Massarsch received his master degree from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria and the doctor of technology from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Thereafter, he was visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, respectively. He has been professor in soil dynamics at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, technical director of an international foundation company and senior consultant with a leading Swedish consulting group. He is the inventor of several patented new foundation and soil improvement methods, such as resonance compaction, foundation nailing and ground vibration isolation. He is the author of more than 140 publications.

Dr. Massarsch was secretary of the first international conference on penetration testing, ESOPT in 1974, and was chairman of CPT´95, an international conference on the application of cone penetration testing in geotechnical and environmental engineering. He has participated as chairman, session leader, keynote lecturer and invited speaker in more than 25 international conferences and symposia. He has given guest lectures in 35 countries.

Over the past 25 years Dr. Massarsch has been involved in a wide variety of engineering projects in many countries. These included the salvage of Egyptian monuments from the rising ground water along the Nile, earthquake-resistant design of dams, design and execution of major infrastructure projects e. g. in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. As a specialist consultant he has designed and participated in the planning and execution of soil improvement projects for industrial facilities, ports and airports in different parts of the world. His area of speciality includes ground vibration and earthquake problems, different types of deep foundation methods and geophysical investigation methods.