Biography

 

While his classmates wanted him to name the device “La Ménarde”, he preferred “pressiometer” and at the age of 23, filed a patent; with the help of the École des Ponts Alumni Association he obtained financial help to build a prototype.He managed to do his internship at Illinois University, where he wrote a thesis on his pressiometer through a theoretical study of the expansion of a cylindrical cavity in a semi-undefined medium by means of soil tests, and developed an operational device.In 1957, he founded his company, Les Pressiomètres Louis Ménard S.A. In 1960, the pressiometer was already in use in Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Canada.In 1962, he created the bilingual journal Sols-Soils and split his company in two, Les Techniques Louis Ménard and Les Études pressiométriques Louis Ménard.He conducted a life-scale sole load experiment in order to apply the pressiometric results in calculating compression, and produced semi-empirical formulae for estimating distortions.He obtained support from the Ponts et Chaussées laboratories.He now understood that the bearing strength of piles is linked with the limit pressure.For EDF, he invented ground inflating piles to improve the traction resistance of pylon foundations.He also developed the use of the pressiometer and filed patents for new drilling and measuring devices (in 1965, dynamic compacting for sandy soils, and in 1969 ballasted blocks for clay soils).In the early 1970s, Louis Ménard was directly involved in engineering works such as the construction of the La Napoule marina in Cannes, where he recommended compacting an embankment by pounding it with an 8 tonne mass dropped from a height of 10m.From 1969 to 1973, he developed this technique worldwide and, in 1974 in Sweden and Switzerland, would use a crane of his own design to drop a mass of 40 tonnes from a height of 40 m, a system soon replaced with tripods of the same capacity.In 1976, a giant machine that could lift 170 tonnes to a height of 25 m was used at Nice airport, which he extended onto land reclaimed from the sea.In 1977, one of his last inventions was designed to increase the bearing capacity of tubular steel piles, which he tested to lay the first vertical drain at 40 m at Singapore airport.He died suddenly in 1978, a few days from the 23rd anniversary of his first patent.Louis Ménard’s processes for foundation works are now used all around the world.

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