The 7th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter is brought to you by Chao Yuan. It contains the latest news regarding research publications, conference visits and other activities of the staff and students from the GéoMécanique group of Laboratoire 3SR (Sols, Solides, Structures – Risques). If you have something you want to share, please don’t hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr. Please feel free to forward the letter to colleagues and friends, and let them know that they can subscribe by themselves here. Enjoy.
Research projects
The Australian Research Council has just funded the three-year project “Experimentally validated theory for the mixing of granular materials”. The PI is Prof. Itai Einav (University of Sydney), and the co-PI is Cino Viggiani of 3SR.
The project, which got a funding of 350 000 Australian Dollars, i.e., about 225k€, will start in 2016. It aims to develop better mixing theories to support industrial applications. Effective mixing of granular materials such as aggregates in building industry and stockpiles in mineral processing is important for creating homogeneous products, yet industrial mixers lack scientific design and operate with no control of mixture quality. The project aims to establish a new general continuum mixing theory, which will be validated against X-ray measurements of grain motions within small mixers. By describing the theory using an accurate computational method, the simulations of these mixers will be scalable, and would help deliver predictions for particle mixing in much larger operations. Other expected outcomes are to control mixture quality and reduce industry reliance on costly and time-consuming trial-and-error experiments.
Publications
Edward Andò (together with Cino Viggiani and Jacques Desrues) contributed a young member’s article to last Month’s ISSMGE News Bulletin. Find it here online.
The paper entitled “A minimal coupled DEM-fluid phase model for bedload transport”, by Raphaël Maurin, Julien Chauchat, Bruno Chareyre, and Philippe Frey, has been accepted in Physics of Fluids.
Visits and conferences
Ignacio G. Tejada participated in the international conference on Complex Fluids in Porous Media 2015, held in Bordeaux from 12 to 14 October 2015. He gave a presentation entitled “Micromechanical modeling of solid particle transport by viscous incompressible flows through granular assemblies” which showed an ongoing work by I. G. Tejada, L. Sibille and B. Chareyre.
Ignacio G. Tejada and Luc Sibille visited the Institut de Recherche en Génie Civil et Mécanique de Nantes/St-Nazaire (GeM) from 19 to 29 October 2015 to carry out some experiments on internal erosion by suffusion. They used the erodo-permeameter device available at GeM and worked together with Didier Marot, Fateh Bendahmane and Chueng Zhong. This work is being done in the context of MODERO a joint research project of 3SR with GeM funded by Labex TEC 21.
Konstantin Melnikov, from ETH Zurich/Itasca Germany, will visit us for one month in november/december. This will be an opportunity to discuss very recent advances of our research groups for the numerical modeling of partially saturated granular materials.