Grenoble Geomechanics Newsletter No. 49

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Sébastien Volcy

Geo-Fellows,

This is the 49th edition of our bulletin—and the final one of the academic year! As we wrap up this enriching period, this issue celebrates the remarkable achievements and key milestones from the past trimester. Let’s take a moment to reflect on these successes together before we head into a well-deserved break!

Don’t hesitate to share this bulletin with your colleagues and friends!

Anything you want to share in the next newsletter? Please, feel free to contact us at: geomecanique.newsletter@3sr-grenoble.fr.

Master “Geomechanics Civil Engineering and Risks 2024-2025″

  • The master defenses took place from June 30 to July 3. A total of 19 students defended their master projects, and 8 of them will now embark on a PhD (three at 3SR). A great barbecue on July 3 marked the end of the year — many thanks to Lou-Anne, who did a splendid job organizing it!
  • The new batch of master students will start on September 10 — they will be about 25, coming, as usual, from many different countries (including, again, Europe!)

Publications!

Seminars, Workshops, Meetings and Conferences!

  • The project Yade/ON-DEM, submitted by Bruno Chareyre, has been selected by GRICAD for a Kraken’s Freeride. This ride aims at testing the newest HPC equipement in Grenoble and will contribute to ongoing actions in the framework of WG1 of the COST Network ON-DEM (CA22132), following a previous DEM benchmark. Yade will be allocated 44 nodes with 192 cores each, reaching a total of 8448 cores for massively parallel execution.

kraken

  • On April 28 and 29, a meeting over two half-days took place at 3SR with the four PI of the ALLIANCE project. The first half day was devoted to discussions with the four members of the Grenoble ALLIANCE team (Olga Stamati, Cyrille Couture, Alessandro Tengattini, and Filippo Masi from INRIA). The second half day the project was presented to (and discussed with) a number of researchers and PhD students from 3SR.
  • in May, Tomoya Nagayama and Cino Viggiani attended the 2025 International Conference on Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (ICBBG), in Tempe, Arizona. Tomoya gave a very nice (and very appreciated) talk titled “Plant root adaptation to changes in soil stiffness: characterization and future perspectives for the design of self-motile robots”.

Arizona

  • in June, Cino Viggiani spent ten days as an invited professor at the University of Palermo, Italy. He gave a 10-hour course on “Recent developments in laboratory testing of geomaterials with emphasis on imaging processes”. He also explored possibilities of scientific collaboration with the researchers of Palermo. They are planning to visit us early next year to further explore these possibilities.
  • On the 25th of June, Alice Di Donna and her new post-doc researcher participated in the Unlocking Underground Energy workshop, in Torino, organised in the framework of the COST Action FOLIAGE. Alice presented their recent work on the thermal activation of a metro station in the city of Rennes, in France.
  • A delegation from 3SR, composed of Fabrice Emeriault, Orianne Jenck, Ritesh Gupta, Rami Chalhoub and Lucas Chinem Takayassu, took part in the 5th International Symposium on Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics – ISFOG – organized by the Gustave Eiffel University in Nantes from 9 to 13 June 2025.As the chair of the French Committee for Soil Mechanics ang Geotechnical Engineering (CFMS), under whose auspices the conference was organized, Fabrice Emeriault spoke at the welcome ceremony.Rami Chalhoub presented two papers, both related to the GEOLAB SAM-WT project and entitled: Floating wind turbine anchor piles under lateral multidirectional cyclic loading: experimenral investigation and Measurement of soil response to laterally loaded piles using distributed fibre optic sensing. Following the conference, some of us had the chance to visit the first offshore wind farm in France, as well as France’s very first offshore wind turbine (floating), installed off the coast of Saint-Nazaire.Moreover, our Colleague Christophe Dano was a member of the organizing committee. The latter as well as Orianne Jenck were theme editors of the proceedings, that are in open access here.  

SHEV 3 SHEV 2 SHEV 1

 

 

Projects!

  • The european project SAFARI has been funded. SAFARI stands for “Solid and Fluid Regime Transition of Granular Materials”. It is a “Staff Exchanges (SE)” project, funded in the framework of the “HORIZON-MSCA-SE-2024″ scheme. The participants from our team are Gaël Combe, Vincent Richefeu, Alessandro Tengattini, and Cino Viggiani. The project is currently in the stage of Grant Agreement Preparation, more details will follow soon.
  • The ANR project LOCCO has been funded. LOCCO stands for “Hydro-chemo-mechanical LOCalization phenomena in CO2 geological sequestration”. The participants from our team are Pierre Bésuelle, Quentin Rousseau, Alessandro Tengattini, Cyrille Couture, and Cino Viggiani.
  • The ERC-SYNERGY ALLIANCE proposal by Cino Viggiani has passed step 2. Cino will be interviewed, together with his 3 colleagues, on September 9 in Bruxelles. Wish him good luck! ;-)
  • Two distinct projects with our colleague Takashi Matsushima from Tsukuba University have been funded: one within the framework of the UGA International Research Booster Program (the project title is “Redefining soil mechanics from a granular perspective”), and one within the framework of the “Joint Initiatives in Research and Education of 2025 NTU-UGA-UT Trilateral Center” (the project title is “Developing modern framework and numerical tools for applied geomechanics problems”). The participants from our team are Gaël Combe, Cyrille Couture, Alessandro Tengattini, and Cino Viggiani.
  • Alice is among the founders of the new International Society for Energy Geostructures (ISEG). ISEG was officially created on the 25th of June during the Unlocking Underground Energy workshop to foster international collaboration and knowledge exchange in the rapidly growing field of energy geostructures – a technology at the intersection of geotechnical, structural, and energy engineering that has great potential for contributing to a sustainable energy future.

alice

PhD Students!

  • Unfortunately, in May this year Pinelopi Panagiotaki had to quit her doctoral project for personal reasons, and she went back to Greece.
  •  On June 2, Øyvind Torgersrud succesfully defended his PhD titled “Numerical and experimental analysis of fabric evolution in granular soil under cyclic loading”. His doctoral work was supervised by Jose Andrade  (Caltech, USA), Hans-Petter Jostad (NGI, Norway), Edward Andò (EPFL, Switzerland), and Cino Viggiani at UGA.
  • Zilong ZHANG successfully defended his PhD thesis on June 6. His dissertation, entitled “Three-dimensional slope stability analysis and reliability assessment,” was completed under the supervision of Daniel DIAS. The examination jury consisted of Abed SOUBRA (President, Nantes Université), Marwan SADEK (Université de Lille), Julien BAROTH (Université Grenoble Alpes), and Dong SU (Shenzhen University).

zilong

 

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