Grenoble Geomechanics

This is the 25th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. This new edition 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. By the way, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Visits and conferences

The ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Winterschool 2018 on “Natural versus compacted clayey soils: from micro to macro behaviour and modelling” was held in Bari (Italy) from November 5 to November 9. Several (current or former) students from our team attended the school: Angela Casarella, Liliana Gramegna, Mathias Tolomeo, and Alessandro Fraccica (see photo group below). Cino Viggiani gave a lecture on “Experimental characterization of localized deformation in clays and clay rocks”.

On December 11, a half-day workshop in honor of our colleague Félix Darve took place in Grenoble. Four talks were given by:

• Eduardo Alonso (Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Spain): Coarse granular soils. Long term behaviour.
• Claudio di Prisco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy): Extension of controllability theory to viscoplastic constitutive relationships.
• Patrick Selvadurai (McGill University, Canada): Dilatancy and Rupture of Elastically Constrained Geological Interfaces.
• Manuel Pastor (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain): Modeling of two-phase landslides.

The day was closed by Félix Darve, who gave a talk entitled “Félix in Geomechanics Wonderland”.

People

Mathias Tolomeo defended his thesis on October 20. His PhD is entitled “Forces inferred from macroscopic loading and grain motions”, and was supervised by Vincent Richefeu, Gaël Combe, Cino Viggiani, and Jean-Noël Roux.

Thanos Papazoglou defended his thesis on December 13. His PhD is entitled “An experimental study of localized compaction in high porosity rocks: the example of Tuffeau de Maastricht”, and was supervised by Cino Viggiani, Christophe Dano, and Giuseppe Buscarnera (Northwestern University, USA).

We had a visit from Yorgos Birmpilis from Chalmers University in Gothenburg (Sweden) with his beautiful x-ray compatible Bishop & Wesley triaxial for soft clays… 74 tomographies per test!

Marius Milatz from the Technical University of Hamburg came with his RaspberryPi powered loading system to compress unsaturated columns of sand and following granular rearrangements and water movement with x-ray tomography.

Publications

The paper entitled “Field experiments at three sites to investigate the effects of age on steel piles driven in sand” by Roselyn Carroll & P Carotenuto (NGI), C Dano, & I Salama (3SR), M. Silva (Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María), K Gavin (TU Delft) and R Jardine (Imperial College London) has been accepted for publication in Geotechnique.

Miscellaneous

On December 4, the sculpture “Essere vento, 2015″ was officially presented in our lab, in the presence of the director of the Museum of Grenoble, the president of UGA, a city council representative, and — most importantly — almost all the members of 3SR. “Essere vento” has been sculpted by the artist Giuseppe Penone and it is the result of a 4-year collaboration between him, Joël Chevrier, Eddy Andò and Cino Viggiani.

In this Christmas edition, the PhD student Ritesh Gupta presents two videos showing the simulated response of a model monopile installed in calibration chamber under the action of combined vertical, horizontal and moment (VHM) loading. The simulation is performed using PlAXIS 3D, comprising of following 4 Steps:

Initial phase: Geometry and material definition
Phase 1: Vertical and lateral confining pressure application
Phase 2: Pile installation
Phase 3: Axial loading application
Phase 4: Lateral loading application

The objective here is to find out the zone of influence in sand volume under the combined loading action in the installed pile. It will aid in decision-making for the strategic location of soil stress transducers in the experimental sand volume. Moreover, the application of lateral load till failure provides a rough estimate of the static load capacity of model pile and subsequently determines the amplitude of cyclic loading.

This is the 24th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. This new edition 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

Visits and conferences

Ivan Deiros has participated in the Fourth International Conference on Railway Technology, Sitges, Spain, on September 3-7. He gave a talk on ”Modelling ballast wear: From DEM simulations to shearing at the contact scale“

Some members of 3SR attended the IS-B2G Symposia Atlanta 2018 on September 10-13, 2018. Our group gave the following talks:

• “Local macro-element model of rigid monopiles in sand” was presented by Ritesh Gupta

• Gael Combe presented the work of Jeanne Doreau-Malioche entitled: “Grain- scale study of pile installation and subsequent axial loading cycles”.

• Cino Viggiani gave a keynote lecture entitled: “Advances in 3D experimental geomechanics at the grain scale: can we measure fabrics?”

• Floriana Anselmucci presented her work entitled: ” Quantifying micro-structural changes in sand due to plant root growth”.

Cino after an exhausting session in Atlanta

The ALERT Geomaterials Workshop 2018 was organized from the 1st to 3rd of October in Aussois, France. The following presentations were given by members of our team:

• “Neutron and x-ray imaging for capturing flow phenomena in geomaterials” by Alessando Tengattini.

• “Shear behaviour of carbonate rock/grout interfaces: application on offshore piles of wind turbines” by Eleni Stavropoulou.

Plus, some posters were presented:

• “Why does geomechanics need tube-shaped grains? DEM insight into grain crushing”, Marta Stasiak

• “Tensile and compressive failure of micro-concrete: from mechanical tests to FE meso-model with the help of x-ray tomography”, Olga Stamati

• “Multiscale model of partially saturated media based on a pore-network approach and lattice Boltzmann method”, Eduard Puig Montellà.

• “Characterization of Diffuse and Localized Deformation in a Porous Sandstone: A True-Triaxial Experimental Study”, Cyrille Couture.

• “Local macro-element model of rigid monopiles in sand”, Ritesh Gupta.

• “NeXT-Grenoble: The Neutron and X-ray Tomograph in Grenoble”, Alessando Tengattini.

People

Angela Casarella started her PhD on “Effect of varying temperature and degree of saturation on soils THM behaviour: application to energy geostructures ”, under the supervision of Alice Di Donna and Benjamin Loret.

Christos Papazoglou started his PhD in the team the 1st October. The title of the PhD is “A micromechanical study of the chemo-hydro-mechanical behavior of granular cemented materials”. He will be supervised by Alessandro Tengattini, Nicolas Lenoir and Cino Viggiani.

Floriana Anselmucci moved on the other side of the Atlantic and she will spend 6 months in GeorgiaTech to work with her co-advisor Chloé Arson.

Dorjan Dauti has defended on September 26. His PhD entitled “A 3D hydro-mechanical discrete element model for hydraulic fracturing in naturally fractured rock”, supervised by Stefano Dal Pont,
Benedikt Weber and Matthieu Briffaut.

Jeanne Doreau defended her thesis the 28th of September. Her PhD is entitled “Grain-scale investigation of sand-pile interface under axial loading conditions using x-ray tomography”, supervised by Gaël Combe and Cino Viggiani.

Jelke Dijkstra is visiting us from Chalmers University for three weeks between October and November.

Miscellaneous

Maria Delli Carpini sent us a nice video from her PhD that we want to share with you. Here there’s a brief description of her research:

Ground subsidence represents a significant and complex problem. Localized loss of ground support could be the cause of the collapse of the infrastructure. The geosynthetic reinforcement (GR) is an economic and effective solution to avoid this hazard. It can reduce the total and differential settlement problems. When the geosynthetic sheet is applied on the cohesive soil, it takes up the vertical loads and diffuses them in the form of tensile forces transferred by friction in the anchorage areas.

The developed numerical model enables to analyze the mechanism of the transfer of the load into a cohesive soil and the deformations into the geosynthetic sheet as well. The results are compared with experiments that have been previously conducted on a small scale model.

This is the 23rd edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. After the summer break we are ready to begin the new academic year full of energy and fresh ideas! This new edition 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

People

Two members of the team are involved in a newly launched non-profit Open Access geomechanics journal entitled “Open Geomechanics”. You can check the website here: http://www.opengeomechanics.org

It aims for quality and not quantity of papers, and is now open for submissions! If you’re wondering why Cino resigned from the editorial panel of Acta Geotechnica, now you know…

Prof.r Gudmund Reidar EIKSUND has joined the Geomechanics Team for 1-year sabbatical period at 3SR. Gudmund is Professor at NTNU in Norway and his main research topics deal with offshore foundations (including for offshore wind turbines), from practical and numerical points of view. Welcome Gudmund !

PhD students Marcus Guadagnin and Eduard Puig left Grenoble to continue their research in Brazil and Barcelona, respectively, but don’t panic, Eduard will come back to the lab to see you and present the PhD defense.

Honors and Awards

Dorjan Dauti (thesis Tec21, supervised by S.Dal Pont) received the 3rd price award in the competition “Young Researcher” (prix Jeunes Chercheurs “Rene Huopert”) given by AUGC (Association Universitaire de Génie Civil).

Visits and conferences

Cino went to Hong Kong where he sat in the committee for the PhD defense of Xingyue Li (photo 1) and Huanran Wan (photo 2), both supervised by Jidong Zhao of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He also gave a talk at HKUST and met the current president of ISSMGE, Charles Ng (photo 3)

Photo 2: PhD defense of Huanran Wan

Photo 1: PhD defense of Xingyue Li

Photo 3: Cino and Charles Ng

In August, Cino gave a keynote lecture at the 41st Solid Mechanics Conference in Warsaw, Poland. He will also give a keynote lecture at IS-Atlanta 2018, to be held in September 2018.

Dorjan Dauti and Stefano Dal Pont attended the 36^èmesRencontres Universitaire de Génie Civil from 20-22 June 2018 in Saint-Etienne where Dorjan presented the conference paper entitled “In-situ Neutron tomography and 3D numerical modeling of moisture distribution in concrete at high temperature“.

Dorjan Dauti attended and presented in the 6th European Conference on Computational Mechanics (ECCM) jointly organized in Glasgow with the 7th European Conference in Fluid Dynamics (ECFD) from 11-15 June 2018. The title of the presented work, coauthored by Stefano Dal Pont, Benedikt Weber and Matthieu Briffaut, was: Investigation of constitutive laws for modelling concrete at high temperature by the aid of neutron imaging.

Alessandro Tengattini and Maddi Etxegarai went to Australia to attend the11th World Conference on Neutron Radiography from 2 to 7 September 2018. Alessandro gave a talk entitled “Recent developments from NeXT-Grenoble, the Neutron and X-ray Tomograph in Grenoble” while Maddi presented the following work: “Investigation of hydromechanical processes in porous rock using 4D neutron imaging”.

Publications

The paper “Analysis of moisture migration in concrete at high temperature through in-situ neutron tomography” by Dorjan Dauti, Alessandro Tengattini, Stefano Dal Pont, Nikolaj Toropovs, Matthieu Briffaut and Benedikt Weber has been published in Cement and Concrete Research (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0008884618301613).

The paper “How does strain localise in standard triaxial tests on sand: revisiting the mechanism 20 years on” – by Jacques Desrues, Eddy Andò, Federica Mevoli, Laurent Debove and Cino Viggiani – has been published in the journal “Mechanics Research Communications”.

The article “Open-source support toward validating and falsifying discrete mechanics models using synthetic granular materials—Part I: Experimental tests with particles manufactured by a 3D printer.” by Ritesh Gupta, Simon Salager, Kun Wang and Waiching Sun was published in Acta Geotechnica in July 2018.

Miscellaneous

Voussoir Monobloc Compressible (VMC) is an innovative technology of precasted concrete tunnel linings integrating a layer composed of tube-shaped grains such that its compressible behavior is activated (Andra’s & CMC patent). Research study carried out in 3SR by M. Stasiak, G. Combe, V. Richefeu, P. Villard and J. Desrues concerns mechanical behavior of this brittle granular material paying special attention to grain crushing. DEM simulation of oedometer test shows high compressibility of material and progressive grains fragmentation (see the video below).

This is the 22nd edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. The month of May and the days off are over. Despite the holidays, our group doesn’t rest and keeps working hard! This new edition 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.

A couple of weeks ago the “Journées du labo” took place in Avigliana. We want to thank Olga , Dominique, Mireille and Cyrille for organizing this event. We had the chance to socialize with our colleagues during the coffee breaks, copious lunches and social activities. Plus, some people of our group presented their research to the whole lab. However, the most significant achievement was carried out by Marcus Guadagnin Moravia and Bruna Garcia, the video contest winners and members of the GéoMécanique group:

Publications

The article “Liquid water uptake in unconfined Callovo Oxfordian clay-rock studied with neutron and X-ray imaging” by Eleni Stavropoulou, Edward Andò, Alessandro Tengattini, Matthieu Briffaut, Frédéric Dufour, Duncan Atkins, Gilles Armand, has been published in Acta Geotechnica

“A discrete numerical model involving partial fluid-solid coupling to describe suffusion effects in soils” by R.Aboul Hosna, L.Sibille, N.Benahmed and B.Chareyre has been published in Computers and Geotechnics.

The article “Phase segmentation of concrete x-ray tomographic images at meso-scale: Validation with neutron tomography” by Olga Stamati, Emmanuel Roubin, Edward Andò and Yann Malecot, has been published in Cement and Concrete Composites.

“Modeling concrete exposed to high temperature: Impact of dehydration and retention curves on moisture migration” by D. Dauti, S. Dal Pont, B. Weber, M.Briffaut, N. Toropovs, M. Wyrzykowski, G. Sciumé, has been published in the International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics

“Critical review of the description of concrete’s damage-permeability coupling using continuous and regularized elastic-based damage models – New strain-based matching law” by D. Bouhjiti, M. Ezzedine El Dandachy, F. Dufour, S. Dal Pont, M. Briffaut, J. Baroth, B. Masson has been accepted in the Numerical Methods in Geomechanics.

“COST TU1404 benchmark on macroscopic modelling of concrete and concrete structures at early age: Proof-of-concept stage” by A. Jędrzejewska, F.Benboudjema, L. Lacarriere, M. Azenha, D. Schlicke, S. Dal Pont., A. Delaplace, J. Granja, K. Hájková, P. Heinrich, G. Sciumè, E. Strieder, E. Stierschneider, V. Smilauer, V. Troyan, has been published in Construction and Building Materials.

The International Society of Porous Media “Interpore” released a Research Spotlight on Yade-DEM.org, and more specifically the hydro-mechanical couplings available therein.

Visits and conferences

Bruno Chareyre gave a keynote lecture (Coupling DEM and fuids at the pore scale: recent advances and further issues) at the 2nd Yet Another Discrete Element Workshop. The workshop was organized at Irstea Aix en Provence. Eduard Puig also participated with a regular talk entitled “Micromechanical study of multiphase flow based on the lattice Boltzmann method”

Mustafa Sari from the University of New South Wales visited the lab in May and gave a talk on “Geomechanical Modelling of Pore Collapsing in Soft Porous Rocks: Insights From Triaxial Experiments and Numerical Simulations in Sandstone, Mudstone And Shale Samples”.

The International Symposium on Micro to macro mathematical modelling in soil mechanics was held in Reggio Calabria (Italy) on May 29 – June 01, 2018, at the University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria. Our group delivered the following talks:

• “Experimental access to the mechanics of sand at its constitutive scale”, Edward Andò
• “Measuring the evolution of contact fabric in shear bands with x-ray tomography”, Max Wiebicke
• “An assessment of discrete element approaches to infer intergranular forces from experiments on 2D granular media”, Mathias Tolomeo
• “In-situ x-ray tests for an image-based FE meso-model for cementitious materials”, Olga Stamati
• “Discrete element modeling of crushable tube-shaped particles”, Gaël Combe
• “A micro-mechanics focused experimental investigation of cemented granular materials”, Alessandro Tengattini.

Bruno Chareyre attended and presented in the InterPore 10th Annual Meeting and Jubilee which took place in New Orleans from May 14th-17th, 2018.

Group photo of Micro to macro Mathematical Modelling in Soil Mechanics conferece

People

Ivan Deiros has defended the 2nd of May, 2018. His PhD entitled “A Multi-scale study of the degradation of railway ballast” was supervised by Gaël Combe, Fabrice Emeriault, Charles Voivret and Jean-François Ferellec.

Robert Caulk, PhD student at University of California San Diego, has been selected as a recipient of a Chateaubriand Fellowship supported by the Make Our Planet Great Again Initiative. Robert is a developer and active member of the Yade-dem.org community. This grant will cover a 9-month stay in Grenoble for further collaborative efforts in relation to micro-hydro-mechanical couplings.

This is the 20th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. 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|AT|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.

Honors, Awards and Invitations

Cino Viggiani has been elected as the new president of ALERT-Geomaterials (for the next three years).

Award for “one of the best papers published in Geosynthetics International in 2016″ for the following paper : J. Górniak, P. Villard and P. Delmas (2016). Coupled discrete and finite-element modelling of geosynthetic tubes filled with granular material, Geosynthetics International, 23, No. 5, 362-380. Continue reading →

This is the 19th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. 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|AT|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.

People

Zeynep successfully defended her PhD at the University of Edinburgh on the 4th of September with Florian Fusseis and Matthew Coop as assessors. The title of her thesis is “A study of temporal and spatial evolution of deformation and breakage of dry granular materials using x-ray computed tomography and the discrete element method” and it will be available online by the end of December. Well done Zeynep!

Alice Di Donna is the latest addition to our team. She has obtained a position of “Maitre de Conférences” (Assistant Professor) at Université Grenoble Alpes, effective since September 1st 2017. Alice obtained a Masters degree at UJF Grenoble and Politecnico di Torino back in 2009, then a PhD at EPFL, Switzerland, in 2014. After that, she performed a postdoc at the Politecnico di Torino and worked at the same time as a professional engineer at Teknema Progetti srl in Torino. Welcome Alice! Continue reading →

This is the 18th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. 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|AT|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.

Visits and conferences

A number of people went to the International Workshop of Bifurcation and Degradation in Geomaterials (IWBDG2017) in Lemesos (Limassol) in Cyprus, starting with a keynote on localisation precursors from Jacques Desrues, and a large number of full-field experimental results on sand, sandstone, clayrocks, tuffeau…

Continue reading →

This is the 17th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. 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

On March 27, took place the first meeting of the REGIC project (REnforcement par Géosynthétique Intelligent sur Cavités naturelles ou anthropiques) financed in the framework of the call for project ADEME (Investissement d’avenir, Route du futur) in which the 3SR laboratory is strongly involved. The partners of this project are INERIS, Texinov and 3SR (Fabrice Emeriault and Pascal Villard). There are an experimental part (small scale laboratory tests at INERIS and true scale experiments) and a numerical part supported by the 3SR (DEM modelling of the reinforcement of cohesive embankments by geosynthetics). A funding of 250 k€ has been allocated to the 3SR laboratory for the financial supports of a PHD, a post-doc and for the development of the numerical model . The PHD proposal is currently being finalized and will soon be released. Continue reading →

This is the 16th edition of the GéoMécanique newsletter. 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.

Publications

The paper “Intensity and volumetric characterizations of hydraulically driven fractures by hydro-mechanical simulations” by E. Papachristos, L. Scholtès, FV. Donzé and B. Chareyre has been accepted in the International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136516091730076X).

Continue reading →