Modelling Rock Fracturing Processes (PDF)

Uppsala University, Sweden. He spent one year as a Post-Doc at the Division of Mineral Physics of CSIRO in North Ride, Australia and in 1974 was appointed the first professor of Rock Mechanics at Luleå Technical University (LTU). He built up the rock mechanics laboratory at LTU and devoted 16 years of teaching and researching for the mining industry in northern Sweden. In 1990 he was appointed Professor of Engineering Geology at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, KTH. He retired from KTH in 2002. Professor Stephansson is specialised in theoretical, experimental and applied rock mechanics in mining and civil engineering. His main research topics are rock stresses and stress measurements, modelling fractured hard rock masses and geological disposal of toxic waste and spent nuclear fuel. He is the author, co-author and editor of more than 20 books and ca 250 international publications and conference contributions. He is an appointed Fellow of the International Society for Rock Mechanics with more than 6000 members and has served as vice-President for Europe in the society from 1991 to 1995. Since 1985 Professor Stephansson has been an independent rock mechanics consultant in his company and has worked mainly as an expert and inspector of rock mechanics and rock engineering problems related to the deep geological disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel for the Swedish and Finnish Radiation Protection Agencies.

Mikael Rinne is Associate professor in Rock Mechanics at Aalto University, School of Engineering, Finland. He obtained his master degree in Mining Engineering in 1988 at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. In the late 90's Dr Rinne defended the degree of Licentiate of Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden and his doctoral degree in Rock Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology in 2008. His current research interests are directed to rock fracture mechanics, rock engineering, mining engineering and underground energy storages. Dr Rinne has been leading a number of major research projects at Aalto University. Mining associated research has been conducted through the EU funded project I2Mine (Innovative Technologies and Concepts for the Intelligent Deep Mine of the Future) in which research has been focused on short-term scheduling of the drilling and blasting cycle and to geotechnical risk on-line management in deep mines. Underground seasonal storage of solar thermal energy is another area of interest in his research team. Dr Rinne is the director of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) labelled Master's programme European Mining Course (EMC) at Aalto University. He has supervised or co-supervised more than 100 Master's theses and five Doctoral theses . He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, more than 10 technical reports and he has been the co-author of the first edition of the book "Modelling Rock Fracturing Processes". Dr Rinne is a member of many mining and rock engineering organizations and actively participates in organizing scientific meetings and conferences. He is also the managing director of Fracom Ltd and one of the original members in the team that developed the FRACOD fracture propagation modelling software.