Professor of Rock Mechanics

Summary

Biography

Robert Zimmerman obtained a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, and a PhD in solid mechanics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a lecturer at UC Berkeley, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Head of the Division of Engineering Geology and Geophysics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, and is on the Editorial Boards of Transport in Porous Media and the International Journal of Engineering Science. He is the author of the monograph Compressibility of Sandstones (Elsevier, 1991), author of the textbook Fluid Flow in Porous Media (World Scientific, 2018), and co-author, with JC Jaeger and NGW Cook, of Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics (4th ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).

Invited Lectures and Presentations

1. “Predicting the elastic moduli and conductivity of heterogeneous materials using the differential effective medium theory”, Department of Materials Science & Department of Physics & Astronomy, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, 17 November 1993.
2. “Unsaturated flow in fractured rocks”, invited keynote talk, AGU Chapman Conf. on Aqueous-Phase and Multiphase Transport in Fractured Rock, Burlington, Vermont, 14 September 1994.
3. “Effective stress laws for the mechanical and transport properties of porous rocks”, Prager Symposium on Heterogeneous Solids, 31st Annual Meeting Society of Engineering Science, College Station, Texas, 10 October 1994.
4. “Hydraulic conductivity of rock fractures”, Society of Petroleum Engineers Los Angeles Chapter, Los Angeles, 18 October 1994.
5. “Fluid flow through rock fractures: beyond the cubic law”, Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University, Oxford, 10 May 1996.
6. “Fluid flow through rock fractures: beyond the cubic law”, London Petrophysical Society, London, 20 May 1996.
7. “Crack aspect ratio distributions and seismic velocities in rocks”, Schlumberger Cambridge Research Laboratory, Cambridge, 23 May 1996.
8. “Fluid flow through rock fractures: beyond the cubic law”, Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University, Cambridge, 14 November 1996.
9. “Navier-Stokes simulations of fluid flow in rock fractures”, Nottingham Geomechanics Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottinghham, 6 March 2003.
10. “Predicting the permeability of sedimentary rocks from image analysis of the pore space, SINTEF Research Centre, Trondheim, Norway, 25 September 2003.
11. “Fluid flow in rock fractures”, Fall Annual Meeting American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 12 December 2003.
12. “Fluid flow in rock fractures and fractured rock masses”, Department of Earth Sciences, ETH, Zurich, 27 January 2005.
13. “On the relationship between poroelasticity and thermoelasticity”, SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in Geosciences, Avignon, France, 8 June 2005.
14. “Fluid flow in rock fractures”, invited keynote talk, 11th International Conference Computer Methods Applied to Geomechanics, Torino, Italy, 23 June 2005.
15. “Pore-scale analysis of flow in sedimentary rocks, and predictions of permeability from 2-D images”, BP Institute, Cambridge University, Cambridge, 13 October 2006.
16. “Fluid flow in rock fractures”, and “Fundamentals of poroelasticity”, invited lecture tour of eight Chinese universities, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the International Society for Rock Mechanics, 22 October – 4 November 2006.
17. “Estimating the elastic moduli and permeability of porous rocks using two-dimensional pore space images”, SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in Geosciences, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 19 March 2007.
18. “A simple model for the variation of the transmissivity of a rock fracture under normal stress”, Fall Annual Meeting American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 10 December 2007.
19. “Relationship between permeability, elastic moduli and pore structure in porous geological media”, Fall Annual Meeting American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 11 December 2007.
20. “Some rock mechanics issues in petroleum engineering”, invited keynote talk, European Rock Mechanics Symposium (Eurock 2010), Lausanne, Switzerland, 15-18 June 2010.
21. “Elastic moduli of solids containing spheroidal pores”, Warren Lecture, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 29 April 2011.
22. “Some new developments in modeling failure, fracture and fragmentation of rocks”, invited keynote talk, 7^th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium (ARMS 2012), Seoul, Korea, 15 October 2012.
23. “The history and role of the cubic law for fluid flow in fractured rocks”, Fall Annual Meeting American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 3 December 2012.
24. “The effect of pore shape and pore fluid on the Poisson ratio of porous materials”, invited plenary talk, 5^th Biot Conference on Poromechanics, Vienna, Austria, 10-12 July 2013.
25. “Measurement and modelling of the failure of anisotropic rocks such as shales”, invited plenary keynote talk, General Assembly of the Comité Français de Mécanique des Roches, Paris, France, 5 December 2013.
26. “Measurement and modelling of the failure of shale under triaxial stress”, Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, 11 February 2014. 
27. “The past, present and future of rock mechanics”, invited keynote opening talk, 48th U.S. Rock Mechanics Symposium, Minneapolis, 1-4 June 2014.
28. “The role of the intermediate principal stress in petroleum geomechanics”, Society of Petroleum Engineers London Chapter, London, 27 October 2015.
29. “The effects of pore structure, pore fluid, stress, and frequency on elastic wavespeeds in sandstones”, 2015 Maurice A. Biot Lecture, Department of Civil Engineering, Columbia University, New York, 11 December 2015.
30. “The effect of pressure dissolution and precipitation on fracture permeability and normal stiffness”, Fall Annual Meeting American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 14 December 2015.
31. “Modelling of primary fragmentation in block caving mines using a finite-element based fracture mechanics approach”, invited keynote lecture, 1^st International Conference on Geomechanics, Geo-energy and Geo-resources, Melbourne, 28-29 September 2016.
32. “The effect of pore structure and pore fluids on the elastic moduli and wavespeeds in porous rocks”, invited keynote plenary lecture, 9^th International Conference on Porous Media, Rotterdam, 10 May 2017.
33. “Failure of anisotropic rocks such as shales, and implications for borehole stability”, invited keynote plenary lecture, 10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium, Singapore, 2 November 2018.
34. “The role of effective stress coefficients in the mechanics of porous media”, invited presentation, Symposium in Honour of Yves Guéguen, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 6 April 2019.

Other Significant Activities

Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences, 2006–present; member of Editorial Board, 2001-2006

Member, Editorial Board, Transport in Porous Media, 1996–present

Member, Editorial Board, International Journal of Engineering Science, 2007–present

Member, Committee on Poromechanics, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2004–present

Member, Commission on Petroleum Geomechanics, International Society for Rock Mechanics, 2009-present

Member, Expert Panel on the Environmental Effects of Mining, Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2017-present

Member, Expert Commission on Wadden Sea Subsidence, Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, 2013-2015

Plenary LectureS

1. “Unsaturated flow in fractured rocks”, invited keynote talk, AGU Chapman Conf. on Aqueous-Phase and Multiphase Transport in Fractured Rock, Burlington, Vermont, 14 September 1994.
2. “Fluid flow in rock fractures”, invited keynote talk, 11th International Conference Computer Methods Applied to Geomechanics, Torino, Italy, 23 June 2005.
3. “Fluid flow in rock fractures”, and “Fundamentals of poroelasticity”, invited lecture tour of eight Chinese universities, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the International Society for Rock Mechanics, 22 October – 4 November 2006.
4. “Some rock mechanics issues in petroleum engineering”, invited keynote talk, European Rock Mechanics Symposium (Eurock 2010), Lausanne, Switzerland, 15-18 June 2010.
5. “Some new developments in modeling failure, fracture and fragmentation of rocks”, invited keynote talk, 7^th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium (ARMS 2012), Seoul, Korea, 15 October 2012.
6. “The effect of pore shape and pore fluid on the Poisson ratio of porous materials”, invited plenary talk, 5^th Biot Conference on Poromechanics, Vienna, Austria, 10-12 July 2013.
7. “Measurement and modelling of the failure of anisotropic rocks such as shales”, invited plenary keynote talk, General Assembly of the Comité Français de Mécanique des Roches, Paris, France, 5 December 2013.
8. “The past, present and future of rock mechanics”, invited keynote opening talk, 48th U.S. Rock Mechanics Symposium, Minneapolis, 1-4 June 2014
9. “The effects of pore structure, pore fluid, stress, and frequency on elastic wavespeeds in sandstones”, 2015 Maurice A. Biot Lecture, Department of Civil Engineering, Columbia University, New York, 11 December 2015.
10. “Modelling of primary fragmentation in block caving mines using a finite-element based fracture mechanics approach”, invited keynote lecture, 1^st International Conference on Geomechanics, Geo-energy and Geo-resources, Melbourne, 28-29 September 2016.
11. “The effect of pore structure and pore fluids on the elastic moduli and wavespeeds in porous rocks”, invited keynote plenary lecture, 9^th International Conference on Porous Media, Rotterdam, 10 May 2017.
12. “Failure of anisotropic rocks such as shales, and implications for borehole stability”, invited keynote plenary lecture,10th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium, Singapore, 2 November 2018.

Other Teaching

Introduction to Rock Properties - course notes

Elasticity Theory for Rock Mechanics - course notes

Seismic Rock Physics - course notes

Cubic Law presentation, 2012 AGU

Zimmerman presentation at Alain Gringarten Symposium on Well Testing

Publications

Journals

Conference

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