They say it pairs well with vin chaud on a chilly Thursday evening – the 29th edition of our GéoMécanique newsletter :-). Within you will find neige fraîche in the form of news covering our recent graduates, visiting researchers, workshops, and lectures generated by the GéoMécanique group at Laboratoire 3SR (Sols, Solides, Structures – Risques). Please forward this letter to colleagues and friends. Enjoy!
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 .
Fresh PhD grads!
Hamid (Payam) Hossein Sadrabadi defended a PhD on “In-situ identification of liquefiable soils by cyclic static penetrometer : physical and numerical modelling“. Supervised by Bruno Chareyre and Luc Sibille, the work advances an ongoing project on innovative in-situ testing methods funded by Equaterre group.
On September 27, Olumide Okubadejo successfully defended his PhD. Olumide’s PhD is entitled “Identification and tracking of grains undergoing progressive breakage under mechanical loading with image analysis of 3D+t tomography images” and was jointly supervised by Mauro Dalla Mura and Laurent Bonnaud at GIPSA-Lab and by Eddy and Cino at 3SR.
On October 11, Anne Oleker successfully defended her PhD at the University of Aachen, Germany. Anne’s PhD is entitled “Deformation properties of Boom Clay – Implementation of a multi-scale concept” and was jointly supervised by Janos Urai and Guillaume Desbois in Aachen and by Pierre and Cino in Grenoble.
Riccardo Rorato successfully defended his PhD “Imaging and discrete modelling of sand shape” in Barcelona, supervised by Marcos Arroyo (UPC), Edward Andò (Grenoble) and Antonio Gens (UPC)
ALERT-Geomaterials 2019
The annual wosrkshop and doctoral school of ALERT-Geomaterials took place in Aussois from September 30 to October 4, 2019. Cyrille Couture, Bruno Chareyre and Luc Sibille presented their research in the session “Upscaling in Geotechnical Engineering”. Luc Sibille and Evelyne Kolb (Sorbonne, Paris) organized and coordinated the Tuesday session on ‘The mechanics of root-soil systems: from microscopic to macroscopic approaches”, which included a short presentation by Floriana Anselmucci. The doctoral school, entitled “The legacy of Ioannis Vardoulakis to Geomechanics” was coordinated by Jean Sulem and Cino Viggiani, and included a lecture by Eddy Andò. Dorjan Dauti was awarded the 2019 Ioannis Vardoulakis PhD prize for the best PhD in geomechanics (ex-aequo with Antoine Wautier).
Inspiring lectures and talks
On October 16, Barbara Mazzolai (Center for Micro-BioRobotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) visited the lab and gave a talk on “Towards a new generation of self-growing plant-inspired robots”
On November 21, Bernardo Caicedo (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) visited the lab and introduced 3SR researchers to diatomaceous species and their pronounced effect on soil behavior with his talk titled, “Effect of the shape of diatomaceous species on the macroscopic behaviour of soils”.
On November 1st, Cino Viggiani delivered the 17th C.W. Lovell Distinguished Lecture at Purdue University, USA where he introduced Purdue researchers to recent advances in (geo) mechanics thanks to image analysis. Find details on his talk titled: “3D experimental geomechanics at the grain scale: what for?”
Fresh CALIPER projects at 3SR
The CALIPER project (a Horizon 2020 funded Initial Training Network, see https://caliper-itn.org/) has officially started in September 2019. The network consists of 15 academic and private sector partners (including Université Grenoble Alpes) who come together to advance the field of granular materials forward in numerical modeling, experimentation and understanding. In this framework, two PhD students will be working at 3SR: Ilija Vego (who started in October) and Gustavo Pinzon (who will start in December). They will be supervised by Edward Andò, Alessandro Tengattini, and Cino Viggiani.
New doctorat
Nicolás Zalamea started his PhD in the team the 1st October 2019. The title of the PhD is “Multi-scale modelling of the thermo-hydromechanical behaviour of argillaceous rocks”. He is supervised by Pierre Bésuelle, Stefano Dal Pont and Alice Di Donna.
Special guests
Antonio Pol is visiting 3SR from University of Padua for three months to work on his project titled “Coupled hydromechanical simulation of debris flows and submerged avalanches”.
In the framework of the UGA-GeorgiaTech project BIOinMECH (The mechanics of bio-inspired processes: a multiscale study of multifunctional systems), two PhD students from GeorgiaTech came to spend three months at 3SR (from mid September to mid December): Nimisha Roy and Rodrigo Borela Valente
Nimisha and Rodrigo setting up an experiment in the tomograph, with the help of Floriana
Geomaterials short course offering – June 2020!
We are organising a workshop that will take place in Grenoble on June 29-30 2020 entitled “Mechanics of geomaterials: from micro to macro”. The workshop is in the framework of the IACMAG conference. Download the flyer for more information.
Biophysique team workshop
Floriana Anselmucci and Luc Sibille from 3SR and Rodrigo Borela Valente from Georgia Tech (currently visiting us) attended mid November the workshop “Biophysique de l’interaction racine-sol” organized by the GDR PhyP. Floriana presented her PhD work “Digital image analysis of the root-soil interaction”, and Luc gave a brief talk “What is the impact of root development on soil state ?”