Shale Symposium at the International Congress of the ISRM Montreal, Canada May 10–13, 2015

Excerpt

The Canadian Rock Mechanics Association (CARMA) and the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) together with the leadership of the Congress under Professor Hassani organized a special “Shale Symposium” at the International Congress of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM). This symposium, which ran during four half days during the 3-day Congress, was structured in three topic areas with corresponding sessions: “Basics and Slopes”, “Mining and Tunnels”, “Hydrocarbon”. An additional session was devoted to a debate on “Shale is a Soft Rock, not a Hard Soil”. Each of the topic sessions started and ended with a keynote paper. The keynote papers were substantially revised, and the revised versions were peer reviewed for publication in this special issue following this editorial. A few comments about the topics covered in each session are provided here: …