Mines PhD graduate honored by American Rock Mechanics Association
Sana Zafar, PhD in civil and environmental engineering, received 2024 D. N.G. W. Cook PhD Dissertation Award
A Colorado School of Mines PhD graduate was recently honored by the American Rock Mechanics Association for the best dissertation in rock mechanics.
Sana Zafar, PhD ‘23 in civil and environmental engineering, was awarded the 2024 D. N.G. W. Cook PhD Dissertation Award for the best PhD thesis in rock mechanics at the 2024 US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium, hosted at Mines this summer.
Dr. Zafar’s dissertation, “Geophysical Signatures of Crack Initiation and Growth in Rocks Under Uniaxial Compression,” represented a significant advancement of the state-of-the-art, with profound practical implications for rock mechanics, said her PhD advisor Reza Hedayat, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Mines.
“The fracturing processes in rocks are complex phenomena whereby microcrack initiation and growth lead to strain localization in the form of macro-fracturing and, ultimately, failure of the rock specimen,” Hedayat said. “Sana’s PhD research stands out for its unique focus on identifying the key geophysical signatures accompanying crack initiation, coalescence and growth in natural rocks. Her dissertation contributed to the quantitative analysis of the progressive damage observed in rocks under monotonic and time-dependent loading conditions by applying acoustic emission monitoring and image-based strain analysis approaches. By monitoring subsurface processes such as crack growth in real-time with advanced high-resolution imaging techniques under creative laboratory conditions that simulate the in-situ environments, Sana’s work offered new opportunities for identifying the underlying micro-processes and their evolution.”
The American Rock Mechanics Association is an international professional engineering and scientific society that promotes interaction among specialists, practitioners, scholars and educators in rock mechanics and geomechanics. The D. N.G. W. Cook PhD Dissertation Award is one of eight annual awards presented by the society.
About Mines
Colorado School of Mines is a public R1 research university focused on applied science and engineering, producing the talent, knowledge and innovations to serve industry and benefit society – all to create a more prosperous future.
