Collaborative research with Richard (Rich) Raspet on wind induced ground vibrations

Dr Richard (Rich) Raspet was a colleague and friend for over 30 years, and I had the privilege of benefiting from his mentoring as a post-doctoral fellow, co-advising graduate students, working on collaborative research projects, and friendship. Rich was extremely passionate and thorough in his endeavors, both personal and professional. Working with Rich was “intense” and usually involved a dossier of handwritten derivations under my door waiting for me in the morning, followed by discussions over coffee, and subsequent discussions later in the day (or days) after I’d had time to digest his formulations. Rich focused on hard work and continuous forward progress on the problem at hand. In this presentation, I will summarize our progress on our final research on wind induced ground vibrations. Our goal was to understand this interaction to exploit wind noise as a useful seismic source. Rich was a strong advocate of publishing, and I often joked that “all his graduate students still owed him a publication.” It is fitting that I share our final correspondences where I appear to be obligated for two papers!