Alfred Stucky
Alfred Stucky (born 16 March 1892 at La Chaux-de-Fonds, died 6 September 1969 in Lausanne) was a Swiss engineer who worked on hydraulic dam designs. He founded the engineering firm Stucky SA in 1926; based in Renens in Switzerland, it has been part of the Gruner AG group since 2013.
Education and early career
Drawn to technology from an early age, Stucky initially trained as a mechanic and later enrolled at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich to study civil engineering, and became interested in hydraulics.[1]
He had internships with the Meyer office in Spiez, working on construction of the Zweisimmen to Lenk railway line, then with the company Favetto, Bosshard, Steiner & Co, which hired him during construction of the Lake Brienz railway.[1]
Lausanne School of Engineering and Stucky SA
From 1917 to 1923, Stucky worked at the Basel office of Gruner AG, first as an assistant and later as head engineer and joint partner.[2] At Gruner he developed calculation methods and introduced the notion of elastic deformation in arch dams during design of an arch dam impounding the Lac de Montsalvens reservoir in the Canton of Fribourg in Switzerland.[1] He completed a doctoral thesis on arch dams in 1922.[3] During construction of the Montsalvens dam, he met Jean Landry, director of the School of Engineering of the University of Lausanne (today the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), who offered him a position as lecturer in 1927. In the meantime Stucky founded the engineering company Stucky SA in 1926; it became part of the Gruner AG group in 2013.[2]
At the Lausanne School of Engineering, he founded the Hydraulic Testing Laboratory in 1928,[4] then in 1935 the Geotechnical Laboratory.[5] He was appointed a full professor in 1938. When Landry died in 1940, Stucky succeeded him as the head of the school. In 1943, he chaired the new school of architecture in the Canton of Vaud.
During his career, he participated in the construction of 38 dams, including 20 in Switzerland.[6] Swiss dam projects included Dixence[7] and Grande-Dixence, Mauvoisin (1951), Moiry (1954), and Luzzone (1958). He worked on dams in Greece, Iran (the Latyan dam), Romania, Algeria (the Beni-Bahdel dam),[8] Morocco and Tunisia (the Beni M'Tir or Ben Metir dam).[8]
Publications
In addition to his thesis, Stucky contributed to about 40 technical publications, including a reference work for specialists in concrete dams published in 1957 with Maurice-H. Derron,[9] and a 1961 article (written with his son Jean-Pierre Stucky and E. Schnitzler), summarising his work on the Swiss dams of Châtelot, Mauvoisin, Moiry, Malvaglia, Nalps, Luzzone, Limmern and Tourtemagne.[10]
Personal life
He married Nelly Mathis, the daughter of an architect.
References
- ^ a b c "La Vie d'Alfred Stucky". www.asst.ch. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
- ^ a b History, Gruner AG website. Archived. Accessed: 18 August 2023.
- ^ Étude sur les barrages arqués (Thèse). Lausanne, La Concorde, 1922
- ^ Historique du Laboratoire d'hydraulique environnementale de l'EPFL
- ^ Création du laboratoire de géotechnique de l'EIL Sixty years of geotechnical engineering et La lettre de la Géotechnique No. 45 page 2
- ^ Profil de plusieurs des barrages conçus par Alfred STUCKY
- ^ Le barrage de la Dixence, Bulletin technique de la Suisse romande des 16 février, 2 mars et 13 avril 1946
- ^ a b Historique de la société Stucky SA
- ^ Problèmes thermiques posés par la construction des barrages-réservoirs, par Alfred Stucky et Maurice-H. Derron, EPFL publication no 38, Éditions Sciences et Technique, Paul Feissly éditeur, Lausanne 1957
- ^ Conceptions actuelles dans la construction des barrages-voûtes en Suisse, Barrages du Châtelot, de Mauvoisin, Moiry, Malvaglia, Nalps, Luzzone, Limmern et Tourtemagne, par A. Stucky, J.-P. Stucky et E. Schnitzler, Revue Cours d'eau et énergie No. 6-7 de juin-juillet 1961.