Dear Geo-Fellows,
Here we go with our first newsletter of the year, the 45th edition of our quarterly bulletin. It provides an account of the road covered since our last publication. Let’s pause to celebrate the milestones we’ve accomplished together.
Overall, enjoy and forward this letter to fellows and friends!
Anything you want to share in the next newsletter? Please, do not hesitate to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr.
PhD graduates
- Chiara ROSSI successfully defended her PhD on March 12. Her doctoral project was entitled “A micro-mechanical approach to cemented granular materials”, and was supervised by Alessandro TENGATTINI, Cino VIGGIANI, and Pierre BÉSUELLE. The Jury was composed of Ivo HERLE (Technische Universität Dresden), Erika TUDISCO (Lund University), Francesca CASINI (Universita’ degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata), Gael COMBE (Université Grenoble Alpes) and Antoine NAILLON (Université Grenoble Alpes).
GCER 2023-2024!
- Four (4) students of our master program in geomechanics have started working on their research projects in our team: Khayri AL KATABI (supervised by Orianne JENCK), Yoshiki MIYASAKA (supervised by Cyrille COUTURE), Pinelopi PANAGIOTAKI (supervised by Olga STAMATI and Cino VIGGIANI), and Renan TONOLLI (supervised by Cyrille COUTURE, Alessandro TENGATTINI and Cino VIGGIANI).
Visits!
- In early February, our Japanese colleague Ryunouske KIDO left 3SR — after almost one year as a visiting professor. Ryunosuke has just started working at Hiroshima University as an associate professor — previously an assistant professor at Kyoto University.
- Yanyan ZHOU, PhD student at Chang’an University in China, arrived on January 8 and will stay with us for one year. She will play with triaxial testing and X-ray imaging to investigate the link between changes in the micro fabric of loess and strain localization in the material. She is working under the supervision of Olga STAMATI, Alessandro TENGATTINI, and Cino VIGGIANI. For those wondering what it is, loess is a predominantly silt-sized sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust (from Wikipedia).
- Suleyman DEMIR (cf. picture below) joined our Geo team at the beginning of last December as a post-doc researcher. He is staying with us for 16 months, working with Alice Di DONNA and Alessandro TARANTINO (University of Strathclyde, UK), on “Fundamentals of thermo-mechanical behaviour of clays”.
Events!
- On March 15, Vincent RICHEFEU and Cino VIGGIANI went to Montpellier for the kick-off of the project PlantCom (Plant comminution: from cells to process), funded by the ANR. From 3SR, the project includes Vincent, the PI for Grenoble, Cino, and Gael.
- The first workshop organized in the framework of the COST program ON-DEM will take place in Aalto (Finland) from the 14th to the 16th of May. The first day includes a training session on Yade-DEM organized by Bruno CHAREYRE, Vasileios ANGELIDAKIS, and Katia BOSCHI.
- An orientation meeting has lately gathered all the geomechanics team members.
Publications!
- Nguyen, T. K., Vo, T. T., Nguyen, N. H., & Combe, G. (2024). Variability and loss of uniqueness of numerical solutions in FEM× DEM modeling with second gradient enhancement. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics.
- Nguyen, T. K., Desrues, J., Vo, T. T., & Combe, G. (2024). Macro-micro analysis of ground response to circular tunnel excavation in granular media. European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 1-19.
- Recent developments related to homogeneous boundary conditions on arbitrary sets of DEM particles are described in “Uniform Boundary Conditions on MODELS of Spherical Particles through Alpha Shape Surface Tracking and Laguerre-Voronoi Diagrams“, published by Gary PEKMEZY, Bruno CHAREYRE, and David LITTLEFIELD in Computer Physics Communication (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2024.109214). The method is freely available as a module of Yade-DEM software, and it is already in use at 3SR by Théo Dumas (with also a paper in preparation).
- Al Tfaily, B., Sibille, L., Hosn, R. A., & Bennabi, A. (2024). Prediction ability of discrete element model of loose granular media subjected to complex loadings. Powder Technology, 433, 119251.
Seminars!
- On March 29, Lev TRUSKINOVSKY (Laboratoire PMMH, Paris) gave a very inspiring talk on “Mesoscopic discrete-continuum approach to crystal plasticity“–We’ve learned that plasticity is discrete, in nature!
New material!
- A new experimental device was installed in the Eiffel building, in February. Kindly donated by INERIS, the 1g ground motion simulator aims to investigate soil-structure interactions when instabilities occur. It completes the 3SR geotechnical experimental stock.
The new jewel !!!