The Roorkee-based IIT engineer and professor Satyendra Mittal has received the prestigious Award of Excellence 2018 for Industrial Research and Consultancy on the occasion of 51st Engineers Day at a function held at The Institution of Engineers here. The award was conferred by IIT Director A K Chaturvedi and Managing Director of high speed rail corridor Achal Khare in recognition of his contribution in designing rail tracks for the high-speed trains for hostile soil conditions and hill slope stabilisations.
Receiving the award for the year 2018, Mittal said that he was driven to work for humanity under the influence of Karma Yogi Swami Vivekananda who was the main inspiration behind establishment of Indian institutes of sciences across the country. Amalgamation of science and spirituality could bring out wonders, he said.
Before leaving for Mumbai for his railway project, Mittal said while talking to The Pioneer on Friday, “Presently I am doing hill slope stabilisation for India’s highest altitude bridge in the north-eastern region under NF railway. As far as rail tracks for high speed trains are concerned, many sectors like Delhi-Ambala, Delhi-Agra have been chosen by Indian Railways where my design tracks would be constructed.”
Notably a decade ago, his soil nailing technique was used for stitching a safety network on a 2 km long and 20 metres high landslide area in Nainital. The area is said to have faced no landslide since then. The technique which he learnt from Italy and applied at various loose soil areas like Supreme Court complex in Delhi has made it safer from the banks of the Yamuna river. His book on ‘An introduction to Ground Improvement Engineering’ discusses many such techniques. It is very popular among the engineering graduates and postgraduate engineering students.
The otherwise useless grounds like municipal solid waste dump sites, sites with marine clays, compressible soils or reclaimed lands, all are made worthy of construction purpose by adopting ground improvement measures, he said. Notably, the book also narrates his personal experiences gained while he was working on various projects.
