If you have something you want to share in the next newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr.

Events

Journées en l’honneur de Jacques et Denis

Two half-days were organised by the laboratory in the honor of Jacques Desrues and Denis Caillerie. It took place between the 26th and 27th of January and held talks by Robert Charlier (Université de Liège, Belgium), Stéphane Andrieux (ONERA, France), Pierre Suquet (CNRS, LMA, Marseille, France), Michel Bornert (Laboratoire Navier, Paris, France), Pierre-Simon Jouk (TIMC, Grenoble, France), René Chambon (3SR, Grenoble, France), Claudio Tamagnini (Università di Perugia, Italy), and Annie Raoult (Laboratoire MAP5, Paris, France).

Visits

Claudio Tamagnini (Università di Perugia, Italy) spent one month at the lab as an invited professor — from January 15 to February 15. A friend of Cino’s and an expert in Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics, he is helping Chiara (PhD student of Cino, Alessandro and Pierre) not only with the correction of the formulation of her model for Cemented Granular Materials but also with the implementation of the latter in Finite Elements.

Seminars

• On November 3rd, Yosuke Higo (from Kyoto University, Japan) gave a talk about “Morphological transitions of pore water during triaxial compression in unsaturated soil”. More information in https://3sr.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/fr/actualites/yosuke-higo.

PhD graduates!

• Chunjing Ma defended his thesis titled “Numerical assessment of the behaviour of energy tunnels” on November 14th 2022, under the supervision of Daniel Dias and Alice Di Donna. The jury was composed of: Fleur Loveridge (Leeds University, UK), Hussein Mroueh, (Lille Sciences & Technologies, France), Fabrice Emeriault, (University of Grenoble Alpes, France), Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, (Northwestern University, US), and Iulia Prodan (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania).
• On November 22nd, our amazing Angela Casarella successfully defended her PhD work “Multi-scale investigation of the thermomechanical behaviour of non-active clay”, under the supervision of Vincent Richefeu, Alice Di Donna, and Alessandro Tarantino (Strathclyde University, UK). The jury was composed of:  Gioacchino Viggiani (Université Grenoble Alpes, France), Juan Carlos Santamarina (KAUST, Saudi Arabia), Pierre Delage (École des Ponts ParisTech, France), Catherine O’Sullivan (Imperial College London, UK), and Jelke Dijkstra (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden).

• On December 16th, Ankit Sharma defended his PhD work, funded by Equaterre group, on the “Development and experimental validation of a new in-situ geotechnical test – Cyclic CPT, with emphasis on identifying liquefiable soils”. The jury was composed of Dr. M. ARROYO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO (reviewer, UPC Barcelona), Dr. P. REIFFSTECK (reviewer, UGE Paris), Pr. F. EMERIAULT (president, INP Grenoble), under the collective supervision of B. Chareyre (PhD director), L. Sibille and C. Dano, all from 3SR and P. Riegel and P. Sadrabadi (Equaterre).

(Future) PhD graduates

• On March 31st Ilija Vego will defend his thesis “Multi-modal investigation of hygroscopic granular media at high relative humidity” under the supervision of Cino Viggiani, Alessandro Tengattini, and Edward Andò. The jury is composed of Prof. Emilien Azéma (Université de Montpellier, France), Prof. José E. Andrade (California Institute of Technology, US), Prof. Karen E. Daniels (North Carolina State University, US), and Gaël Combe (Université Grenoble Alpes, France).
• On March 14th Gustavo Pinzón will defend his PhD titled “Experimental investigation of the effects of particle shape and friction on the mechanics of granular media”, under the supervision of Cino Viggiani, Edward Andò, and Alessandro Tengattini. The jury is composed of Prof. Farhang Radjai (Université de Montpellier, France), Prof. Jean Michel Pereira (École des Ponts ParisTech, France), Prof. Gaël Combe (Université Grenoble Alpes), Prof. Catherine O’Sullivan (Imperial College London, UK), Prof. Antonio Gens (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), and Prof. Stephen Hall (Lund University, Sweden).

New PhD students

In November 2022, Michela Arciero started her PhD project “Multi-scale analysis, laboratory design in seismic field and study of soil reinforcement techniques with a sustainable perspective” under the supervision of Giuseppe Modoni (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio) and Gioacchino Viggiani (UGA, 3SR Laboratoire).

Master projects

Six students of the international master program in Geomechanics have started their second-semester research project and will work in our team: Coraly Corneio (from Bolivia), Georgios Felekis (from Greece), Elena Ilari (from Italy), Aoxin Li (from China), Saad Mortadi (from Morocco), and Birhan Woldemichael (from Ethiopia). We look forward to hearing from them about what are they working on — perhaps in a team meeting soon?

Recent publications

• Lewis H., Couples G., Tengattini A., Buckman J., Tudisco E., Etxegarai M., Viggiani G., Zihms S., Hall S.A. (2022) – Interactions Between Imbibition and Pressure-Driven Flow in a Microporous Deformed Limestone. Transport in Porous Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-022-01873-6
• Pinzón G., Andò E., Desrues J., Viggiani G. (2023) – Fabric evolution and strain localisation in inherently anisotropic specimens of anisometric particles (lentils) under triaxial compression. Granular Matter, 25:15. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10035-022-01305-8.

If you have something you want to share in the next newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr .

Events

LAGASHOP 2022

The Lagashop workshop, organised by Alice Di Donna, Pierre Bésuelle and Jacques Desrues, was held from 5 to 7 July in the Vercors near Grenoble. 30 people participated in this workshop dedicated to the recent evolution of the Lagamine finite element computational code, and organised around the themes of multiscale models, multiphysics couplings, interfaces and localisation as well as large-scale modelling of real problems. This was an opportunity for excellent scientific exchanges in a relaxed atmosphere. More information at: https://lagashop2021.sciencesconf.org/.

Group photo during the thematic visit of the Grotte de Choranche.

IACMAG 2022

On August 29 and 30, Angela, Alice, and Cino Viggiani organized a short course on Multiscale numerical modelling of geomaterials (the program is here: https://www.symposium.it/files/eventi/178/corso-grenoble-aggiornato-141.pdf). This two-day course took place in Grenoble, as a pre-event to the 16th IACMAG conference in Torino, Italy.

Visit to the European Synchrotron

Lorentz Center Workshop “Image is everything” 

On September 12-16, Alessandro, Gustavo, Ilija, and Cino attended a workshop on imaging of particulate and multiphase materials at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, the Netherlands (https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/image-is-everything.html).

ALERT-Geomaterials is (a)live!

Exactly like last year, both the workshop and the doctoral school were held in Aussois — from September 26 to October 1st. Not only was ALERT Geomaterials held in person, but almost 20 of the attendees were from Grenoble – and many of them had posters/presentations. For those interested, the full program can be found here: https://www.alertgeomaterials.eu/data/school/2022/Workshop&school_final%20content2022.pdf

Some (well) known faces at the Aussois cafeteria!

A new batch of students in our Master program (Geomechanics, Civil Engineering and Risks)

A fresh year, a fresh batch of students. The Master’s program boasts 24 new students coming from 16 different countries. The kick-off meeting took place on September 19, all classes are happening on-site (!)

Visits

Dr Sandra SANTA CRUZ from Universidad Pontifica Catolica de LIMA (Peru), civil engeenering department end GRUPO GERDIS  will be at 3SRLab from 19/10 until 1/11. She will give 2 seminars in the framework of Risk Institute of UGA:

• “Evaluation of the seismic vulnerability of Pircas (peruvian traditional dry stone retaining walls): experimental and numerical work”.
  • In partnership with the 3SR Laboratory for the numerical part.
  • Thursday 20/10/2022 at 4:00 pm
  • Coordination: Florent Vieux-Champagne, Yannick Sieffert, and Dominique Daudon

• “Interdisciplinary project on the evaluation of the vunerability of hospital and colleges of Lima (Peru)”
  • Review of an interdisciplinary project between the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) and local authorities.
  • Thursday 27/10/2022 at 4:00 pm

Place: Laboratoire 3SR- Room 011 (Bâtiment Galilée – 1270 Rue de la Piscine – 38610 Gières, France)

Language: English

Participation is free.
To follow the seminar online: https://univ-grenoble-alpes-fr.zoom.us/j/3803570640

Recent publications

• Abdallah, A., Aboul Hosn, R., Al Tfaily, B., & Sibille, L. (2022). Identifying parameters of a discrete numerical model of soil from a geotechnical field test. European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 1-20.
  https://doi.org/10.1080/19648189.2022.2119283
• Milatz, M., Andò, E., & Viggiani, G. (2022). Data from in situ X-ray CT imaging of transient water retention experiments with cyclic drainage and imbibition. 10.15480/336.4291

Last but not least!

Cino turned 60 on October 4. To many more years marked by laughter, good science, and an eternal young soul!

The young souls of 3SR!

If you have something you want to share in the next newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr .

Conferences & Events

ICTMS 2022

From June 27th to July 1st, the 5th International Conference on Tomography of Materials & Structures took place in Grenoble, and the 3SR team was present in both the scientific and organizing committees.  A massive attendance of researchers from all over the world made such a nice week, full of x-rays, cheeses and wines!

The keynotes presentations were given by:

• Alexandra Pacureanu (ESRF, France) : Hard X-ray nano-imaging for life sciences
• Joost Batenburg (University of Leiden, The Netherlands) : Advanced X-Ray Tomography Reconstruction: Classical methods, Machine learning approaches, and how to attain the best of both worlds.
• Christian Schlepütz (PSI – SLS, Switzerland) : Time-resolved microtomography for materials science: Unveiling structural evolution in dynamic processes
• Stephen Hall (University of Lund, Sweden) ND imaging of processes in granular- and geo-materials from intra-granula to bulk scale
• Karen Chen-Wiegart (Stony Brook University, USA)
•  Synchrotron X-ray nano-tomography and multimodal characterization of materials for energy applications.
• Jean Susini (Soleil, France) : Synchrotron-Based X-ray Imaging: Trends, Challenges, and new Opportunities.

Our GéoMéchanique team was well represented by: Alessandro Tengattini (NeXT 2.0 : the upgrade of the neutron and x-ray tomograph at ILL), Olga Stamati  (3D particle tracking in flowing granular media with only X-ray radiography: application to two case studies), Ilija Vego (5D Tomography of couscous exposed to high relative humidity), Couture Cyrille (Fast x-ray tomography of immiscible fluid fingering in porous sandstone), Pierre Besuelle (Deformation mechanisms in a clay rock at the micron-scale), and Gustavo Pinzón (Metrological advances on contact detection from X-ray tomography images).

Some students from 3SR giving a hand with the logistics of ICTMS, there is always time for fun pictures !

Yade hackathon!

The core Yade open-source software developers gathered in Frieberg, Germany from 23/06-25/06 for a hackathon! Many familiar faces from Laboratoire 3SR made their appearances including Bruno Chareyre, Janek Kozicki, Jerome Duriez, Václav Šmilauer, Katia Boschi, and Robert Caulk.

Yade hackaton team!

Yade short-course!

Robert Caulk and Bruno Chareyre completed a short course covering thermo-hydro-mechanical processes in particulate materials. Among the participants included students from Italy, France, China, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and even a few familiar faces from Laboratoire 3SR. All slides and tutorials from the short-course are publicly available on the Yade website at: https://yade-dem.org/doc/index-toctree.html#short-courses.

Bruno, Robert and some of the attendees of the Yade course

CPT ’22

Our great PhD student Ankit Sharma participated in the 5th International Symposium on Cone Penetration Testing that took place in Bologna. He presented his new cyclic CPT test and discussed how it can be more suited to identify liquefiable soils – promising results ahead!

Seminars and Visits

•  April 12: seminar by John Rudnicki (Northewstern University, USA). The slides and talk recording can be found here: https://3sr.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/fr/actualites/john-rudnicki.
• Mai 23: Cino delivered the Prague Geotechnical Lecture.
•  June 16: seminar by Benjy Marks (The talk recording can be found here:  https://videos.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/video/23644-3sr-seminar-benjy-marks/)

Cino wearing a tie in Prague

Developments

Multi-phase flow module on Yade

Yade-DEM’s module for multi-phase flow has been further extended to account for vapor transfers. The work was part of the PhD of Son Thai Pham at the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, Thermal Process Engineering Dept., in order to analyze crack patterns in drying materials. Results have been published in Powder Technology by Thai Pham et al. (2022).

Percolation of air and capillary forces resulting the slow drying of a porous material (Thai Pham et al. 2022).

Master projects

The 28 students of our Master program “Geomechanics, Civil Engineering and Risks” defended their Master dissertation in the week 4-7 July (10 of them did their internship in our team GéoMécanique). On July 7, a BBQ took place to celebrate the end of the program. It was back after two years of absence — because of the pandemic.

Master students at the BBQ

Visiting Scholars 

• Our colleague Benjy Marks visited us for the last month!.  Benjy works at the University of Sydney, and he is an expert in granular flow problems, such as avalanche runout, landslide and debris flow modelling.
• On April 8, Cyrille Couture has moved to Japan for a post-doc at the Port and Airport Research Institute. He is working with Daiki Takano and his research team. Good luck!

PhD graduates!

Olatounde Yaba defended his PhD titled: “Improvement of Railway Trackbeds using Geogrids – Analysis of Mechanical Behaviour, Settlement Reduction and Increase in Effective Bearing Capacity”, and prepared under the supervision of Fabrice Emeriault. Bravo Docteur !

Recent publications

• Son Thai Pham, Bruno Chareyre, Evangelos Tsotsas, Abdolreza Kharaghani, Pore network modeling of phase distribution and capillary force evolution during slow drying of particle aggregates, Powder Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2022.117627.
• Sharma, A., Rapanakis, P., Incardona, E., Dano, C., Sibille, L., Chareyre, B., & Sadrabadi, H. H. (2022). New method for assessing soil liquefaction resistance using a cyclic cone penetrometer. In Cone Penetration Testing 2022 (pp. 1102-1106). CRC Press.
• Vego, I., Tengattini, A., Andò, E., Lenoir, N., & Viggiani, G. (2022). Effect of high relative humidity on a network of a water-sensitive particles (couscous) as revealed by in-situ x-ray tomography. Soft Matter.
• Shahin G., Papazoglou A., Marinelli F., Viggiani G., Buscarnera G. (2022) – Experimental Study of Compaction Localization in Carbonate Rock and Constitutive Modeling of Mechanical Anisotropy. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, accepted June 2022.
• Yin Q., Andò E., Viggiani G., Sun W. (2022) – Freezing-induced stiffness and strength anisotropy in freezing clayey soil: phenomenological theory, numerical modeling, and experimental validation. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, 46:11, 2087-2114.

If you have something you want to share in the next newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr .

Group events & visits

Workshop Montpellier – 3SR

On November 25 and 26, we hosted a group of about 12 people including faculty and PhD students from Montpellier, including Carlos Santamarina (KAUST, Saudi Arabia) who is currently on sabbatical leave in Montpellier. The first day Farhang Radjai gave a talk on “Time and length scales in rheology of granular flows”. We then had a very nice dinner downtown.

On the following day, a one-day workshop took place with three speakers from Montpellier and three speakers from Grenoble – see program below. Quite a lot of time was dedicated to discussion, which was rich and fruitful. Most of us returned home with the feeling that we had just gone through an exceptional academic exercise. We hope that similar events can be organized again in the future.

Speakers:

• Angela Casarella: Inferring clay particle interaction modes at different pore-water chemistry: from particles in suspension to the consolidated state
• Jean-Yves Delenne: Modelling grain fragmentation
• Alessandro Tengattini: Neutron(and x-ray) Imaging for the mechanics and physics of geomaterials
• Saeid Nemazabadi: Modelling deformable grains
• Cyrille Couture: Experimental study on 3D fingering of immiscible fluids in porous media
• Katerina Ioannidou: Modelling cement paste in the sub-micron scale

3SR @ IIT Genova

A comitee from 3SR (including Luc and Cino for the Géomécanique team) visited Barbara Mazzolai and coworkers in Genova, Italy for the Geomechanics meets Biorobotics: a new approach towards sustainable technology, a two-day workshop at ITT Genova (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) focused on the commom points between biorobotics, smart materials, geomechanics, biology and archeology. See the program of the workshop here: 2022 Geomechanics meets Biorobotics Agenda .

Such a nice interaction!

Secondments

At the beginning of this year, PhD student Ilija Vego spent two months at the Wageningen Univeristy and Research and Unilever facilities in the Netherlands. There several experiment were performed on a water-sensitive material (couscous), exposing its particles to high relative humidity levels. Also, a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) machine was used to study the different response of dry and wet specimens, as well as the overall absorption process.

Hands-on DEM short course offered – June 2022!

Robert Caulk and Bruno Chareyre are now offering a short-course focused on Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical modeling, which will be held in Amsterdam Netherlands in June 2022. The course will be hands-on with Yade open source DEM software, where participants will learn how to build their own THM models as well as the theory underpinning the THM couplings in Yade. Please see the following link for more details and contact information, please see the flyer: http://u.pc.cd/rl5otalK.

New faces at 3SR

• Alessandro Tarantino, from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK, visited us for a couple of weeks in November and December 2021.
• Barbara Mazzolai and coworkers from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) visited us for a few days in December 2021. We started working on a common project in wich we’re looking at the way the growth of plant roots in a soil is affected by a significant change of density of the soil. The experimental tool is (surprise surprise!) x-ray tomography and associated image analysis. Also Floriana Anselmucci was with us for these preliminary experiments.

• Martial Blondet, from PUCP Lima, Peru,  visited us for 2 days, in the framework of the Risk Institute seminar.
• Paola ITA, PhD student at PUCP Lima, Peru, is visiting us for 4 months from January 2022, within the ECOS North Peru programm, a bilater mobility cooperation program between GERDIS-PUCP (Lima) ans 3SR. Paola, works on the seismic behavior of “pircas” through discrete element modeling. The objective is to improve the construction techniques of her small self-built support walls in the popular districts of Lima, a very seismic region. Within the framework of his thesis, of the ECOS program, and of the M2GC Biosourced Mtx UE of Phitem, a cyclic shear test of a small dry stone wall was carried out at the IUT. This is a world premiere shared by the Geomeca and RVO team. The cyclic displacements at the head were 1,2,3,4,5 cm; the brand new stereovision equipment acquired by CMTC, 3SR and LEGI was used to obtain displacement field measurements at the wall surface.

  

• Xiaomin Liang, PhD student at Tongji University, arrived to 3SR at the end of January and will stay with us for one year. Her work at 3SR, funded by CSC (Chinese Scientific Council) will include innovative tests on sand samples to investigate the link between changes of elastic wave velocity and the corresponding changes in the micro fabric of the material, namely its anisotropy.
• Øyvind Torgesrud has arrived to the lab in early February and will stay with us for one year. His PhD project, which started in April last year, is supervised by Jose Andrade at Caltech, Hans-Petter Jostad at NGI, Eddy, and Cino. His doctoral work experimentally and numerically investigates fabric evolution in granular soils under cyclic loading. The tools are x-ray tomography (again, surprise surprise!) and LS-DEM.

PhD graduates!

Our beloved Robert Caulk successfully defended his thesis titled “Modélisation « micro-macro » par la méthode des éléments discrets du comportement à long terme des scellements de puits sous sollicitation hydraulique-gaz” on January 28th 2022. Bravo Docteur !

Master projects

10 of the 28 students currently enrolled in our Master program “Geomechanics, Civil Engineering and Risks” have started in February their internship in 3SR in our team Géomécanique, good luck with their projects!

Recent publications

• Anselmucci F., Andò E., Viggiani G., Lenoir N., Arson C., Sibille L. (2021) – Imaging local soil kinematics during the first days of maize root growth in sand. Scientific Reports, 11:22262.
• Etxegarai M., Tudisco E., Tengattini A., Viggiani G., Kardjilov N., Hall S.A. (2021) – Characterisation of single-phase fluid-flow heterogeneity due to localised deformation in a porous rock using rapid neutron tomography. Journal of Imaging, 7, 275  https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging7120275
• Tengattini A., Andò E., Einav I., Viggiani G. (2022) – Micro-mechanically inspired investigation of Cemented Granular Materials – Part I: from x-ray micro tomography to measurable model variables. Acta Geotechnica, accepted January 2022.
• Tengattini A., Nguyen G.D., Viggiani G., Einav I. (2022) – Micro-mechanically inspired investigation of Cemented Granular Materials – Part II: from experiments to modeling and back. Acta Geotechnica, accepted January 2022.
• Couture C., Papazoglou A., Tengattini A., Bésuelle P., Viggiani G. (2022) – X-ray imaging of immiscible fluid fingering patterns in a natural high porosity rock. Frontiers, Vol. 10, Article 839368.
• Garcia E.F., Sitar N., Andò E., Viggiani G. (2022) – Influence of depositional fabric on mechanical properties of naturally deposited sands. Géotechnique, accepted March 2022.
• Roy N., Frost J.D, Viggiani G. (2022)  – Pore Space Evolution of Sand Assembly under Shear: An Experimental Study using X-Ray Tomography.  Granular Matter, accepted March 2022.
• Wang, R., Pinzón, G., Andò, E., & Viggiani, G. (2022) -Modeling Combined Fabric Evolution in an Anisometric Granular Material Driven by Particle-Scale X-Ray Measurements. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 148(1), 04021120.