Dr. Rocky Taylor

In 2014, Dr. Rocky Taylor was appointed as the CARD Chair in Ice Mechanics.

The chair is funded by CARD, a centre of excellence for medium- to long-term Arctic research and development. CARD was founded by the Centre for Cold Ocean Resources Engineering (C-CORE) in 2011 with a core funding of $12.5 million over five years from the Hibernia and Terra Nova projects. The new chair will be funded using $500,000 over five years from the CARD program.

Dr. Taylor has been with CARD since its inception in 2011, initially as a senior research engineer and then as a principal investigator for ice mechanics. A graduate of Memorial University, Dr. Taylor holds doctoral and master’s degrees in ocean and naval architectural engineering, as well as an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering.

Dr. Taylor’s research encompasses a variety of significant ice-engineering problems, particularly those related to ice-load estimation for the design of offshore structures and the mechanics of compressive ice failure. Much of his work is focused on fracture processes in ice and the analysis of associated scale effects. Dr. Taylor recently completed a Research & Development Corporation (RDC) IgniteR&D-funded program focused on spalling, non-simultaneous ice failure and extension of the probabilistic fracture mechanics model developed during his doctoral studies, which were supported by C-CORE. He is also a co-investigator on a Statoil-RDC-Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council-funded initiative focused on an investigation of dynamic interactions between ice and compliant structures.