Ghyslaine McClure

Professor McClure joined McGill University’s Department of Civil engineering and Applied Mechanics in 1991. She studied civil engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal (B.Eng. 1980), and after some professional practice, she completed her master’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SM 1984) and her PhD at École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989. Her doctoral thesis set out a novel computational mechanics modeling approach for the study of transient effects of conductor failures on overhead transmission lines.

Professor McClure returned to Hydro Québec in 1988 and initially managed a research project on conductor ice shedding at their research institute (IREQ). This was the starting point of more than 25 years of collaborative work on this rich topic, including fruitful collaborations with Professor Masoud Farzaneh of UQAC. Her academic record includes training of over 100 research students and more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. With numerous collaborators, students and seasoned researchers, Professor McClure has led and participated in several experimental studies that form a physical basis for ice shedding models amenable to finite element analysis. Her most recent work has closed the loop by modelling ice fragment detachment from conductors, enabling detailed simulations of the transient mechanical response of line sections subjected to various shock loads that cause ice shedding. The practical industrial applications include development of safe field protocols for novel ice shedding methods and design of reinforced towers that withstand the expected dynamic loads.

In 2016, Professor McClure received the Masoud Farzaneh Award for her contributions to computational modelling of ice shedding effects on overhead power lines.