Dear Geo-Fellows,
Welcome to the 47th edition of our quarterly bulletin, marking the close of another fruitful calendar year. This issue highlights the remarkable achievements and milestones we’ve reached over the past trimester. Let’s take a moment to celebrate these successes together!
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season—feel free to share this bulletin with colleagues and friends!
Anything you want to share in the next newsletter? Please, feel free to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr.
GCER 2024-2025!
- The kick-off meeting of the master program “Geomechanics, Civil Engineering and Risks” took place on September 9. This year, the students are 22. For the first time ever, there are no european students in the class (!). They will start their research project in February next year — at least 9 of them will do it in our lab.
Visits!
- Meron (and Michela)
Meron Belachew, PhD student at GeorgiaTech in the US, stayed with us from the end of September until December 13. Her stay is part of a research collaboration program between UGA and Georgia Tech that has been ongoing for over a decade. Meron performed experiments advancing a probe with a conical tip and vortex-like into a sand by coupling the penetrating motion with a torsional one. These experiments were performed in our tomograph, to capture images of the sand particles as the probe advances. She was helped by Michela Arciero, our PhD student in cotutelle between Grenoble and Cassino in Italy, who was at 3SR for about three months to also perform her experiments on fiber-reinforced sand in the tomograph.
Meron&friends!
- Visiting Tomoya in Genova In December, Luc and Cino went to Genova to meet Tomoya, who is spending one year at IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) in the framework of his PhD in cotutelle between Grenoble and Genova. Two very nice days discussing with Barbara and Emanuela about the design of Tomobot, a new robot for penetrating the soil.
Publications!
- Vego I., Richefeu V., Felekis G., Tengattini A., Viggiani G. (2024) – A simple discrete approach to explore the response of swelling and softening particles. Géotechnique Letters, accepted October 2024.
- Zhang, Z., Zhang, T., Li, X., & Dias, D. (2024). Bayesian ensemble methods for predicting ground deformation due to tunnelling with sparse monitoring data. Underground Space, 16, 79-93.
- Wu, H. T., Zhang, Z. L., & Dias, D. (2024). Prediction on compression indicators of clay soils using XGBoost with Bayesian optimization. Journal of Central South University, 1-16. NEW
- Zhang, Z., Wang, B., Li, Z., Ye, X., Sun, Z., & Dias, D. (2024). Physics-guided neural network-based framework for 3D modeling of slope stability. Computers and Geotechnics, 176, 106801. NEW
- Christophe Dano, Luc Thorel, Jean-Claude Dupla, Nadia Benahmed & Zheng Li (2024). Compilation des propriétés physiques et mécaniques du sable de Fontainebleau NE34 (Compilation of physical and mechanical properties for NE34 Fontainebleau sand). Revue Française de Géotechnique, 179 (6).
Seminars, Workshops and Conferences!
- IS-Grenoble 2024
At the end of September, we hosted IS-Grenoble 2024 , the 5th International Symposium on Geomechanics from Micro to Macro, organized under the auspices of TC 105 (Geomechanics from Micro to Macro) of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. The symposium gathered about 270 attendees, 96 oral and 90 poster presentations, with 14 sessions and 5 Keynote Lectures. Furthermore, IS-Grenoble 2024 inaugurated the Named Lecture « Micro-to-Macro », which is the honor lecture of ISSMGE TC105. The lecturer, selected by the members of TC105, was our emeritus CNRS research director Jacques Desrues. Selected papers will be published in open access in the IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Sciences by IOP Publishing (Bristol, UK), to appear by the end of the year. A selection of pictures from the event can be found here.
- ALERT-Geomaterials, annual meeting in Aussois
Michalis Komodromos gave a talk at the ALERT workshop (see the program here). Also, Alessandro was elected to the new ALERT Board of Directors, and Cyrille is now the ALERT representative and corresponding member for Grenoble.
- Robodynamics in Soft Terrains
A very nice little workshop, organized by the University of Aachen, took place in October at the Abbey Rolduc in Kerkrade, the Netherlands. In this exciting workshop, about 30 invited researchers thoroughly discussed cross links between robotics, geotechnics, computational mechanics, and material science. Cino was lucky enough to be of them.
- YADE
An online seminar about Yade-DEM is available on CASSINY platform (here), as part of Computer Physics Communications Seminar Series. The seminar follows this companion paper by Angelidakis et al. (2024).
New PhD students!
After her master in Grenoble, Pinelopi Panagiotaki has decided to embark on a PhD — again in Grenoble. She has just started working at 3SR on her project “Micro-inspired study of damage and breakage in cemented granular materials”, under the supervision of Cyrille, Alessandro and Cino.
Awards!
- PhD prize
Our Ilija Vego was awarded the Ioannis Vardoulakis PhD Prize 2024 for his thesis entitled “Multi-modal investigation of hygroscopic granular media at high relative humidity“. Moreover, our Gustavo Pinzón was one of the three finalists for the prize, with his thesis entitled “Experimental investigation of the effects of particle shape and friction on the mechanics of granular media“. Warm congratulations to both!
- Congratulations to our Ahmad El Ayoubi who was awarded first place in the competition organized by the Comité Français des Géosynthétiques (CFG) as part of the EuroGeo 8 conference, to be held in Lille from September 15-18, 2025. His research on “Effects of Grains Characteristics and Geogrid Shape and Rigidity on the Behavior of Reinforced Granular Soil – 3D DEM Study” was recognized with full coverage of his registration, travel, and accommodation by the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS). This achievement highlights the impactful work conducted in our laboratory and its growing visibility within the international scientific community.