Publications related to Plate tectonics

Fault roughness controls injection-induced seismicity

Surface roughness ubiquitously prevails in natural faults across various length scales. Despite extensive studies highlighting the important role of fault geometry in the dynamics of tectonic earthquakes, whether and how fault roughness affects fluid-induc ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

From concrete waste to walls: An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Stefana Parascho, Maxence Grangeot

The research presented in this paper highlights current practices for the end-of-life of concrete and explores opportunities in using unaltered concrete rubbles from demolition for the digital construction of structural walls. Through research by iterative ...

2023

A reduced-order, rotation-based model for thin hard-magnetic plates

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Dong Yan, Bastien Freddy Gustave Aymon

We develop a reduced-order model for thin plates made of hard magnetorheological elastomers (hard-MREs), which are composed of hard-magnetic particles embedded in a polymeric matrix. First, we propose a new magnetic potential, as an alternative to an exist ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

RUM: Reconfigurable Umbrella Mesh

Mark Pauly, Florin Isvoranu, Uday Kusupati, Seiichi Eduardo Suzuki Erazo

We propose Reconfigurable Umbrella Meshes (RUMs), a new class of preassembled deployable structures. A RUM has a compact rest state that can be easily altered to deploy into different bending-active 3D target shapes. RUMs consist of elastic beams and rigid ...

De Gruyter2023

Dynamic environmental flows using hydrodynamic-based solutions for sustainable hydropower

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona

Water diversions from rivers and torrents for anthropic uses of the resource alter the natural flow regime. As a measure, environmental flows have been prescribed and often are enforced by law to follow policies (e.g., minimal flow, proportional redistribu ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Electromagnetic actuator design for distributed stiffness

Jamie Paik, Fabio Zuliani

Origami robots characterized by rigid plates linked together with flexible joints have inherent compliance and large deformations. Their low-profile design and folding mechanical transmissions provide substantial force and torque, especially for wearables ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

A new perspective on the punching resistance of edge columns with and without shear reinforcement applying refined measurement techniques

Aurelio Muttoni, Diego Hernández Fraile

Despite edge columns being instrumental components of flat slabs, most punching research has focused on internal connections. Several particularities of edge columns, such as load eccentricity and moment transfer, require additional experimental investigat ...

Fédération Internationale du Béton (fib)2022

Umbrella Meshes: Elastic Mechanisms for Freeform Shape Deployment

Mark Pauly, Florin Isvoranu, Uday Kusupati, Yingying Ren, Tian Chen, Davide Pellis

We present a computational inverse design framework for a new class of volumetric deployable structures that have compact rest states and deploy into bending-active 3D target surfaces. Umbrella meshes consist of elastic beams, rigid plates, and hinge joint ...

2022

On the scale dependence in the dynamics of frictional rupture: Constant fracture energy versus size-dependent breakdown work

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Federica Paglialunga, Fabian Barras

Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, frictional dissipation and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it is expected to control the n ...

2022

Weakly-supervised Action Transition Learning for Stochastic Human Motion Prediction

Mathieu Salzmann, Wei Mao

We introduce the task of action-driven stochastic human motion prediction, which aims to predict multiple plausible future motions given a sequence of action labels and a short motion history. This differs from existing works, which predict motions that ei ...

IEEE COMPUTER SOC2022

Analytical Studies in Support of an Improved Approach to the Design of Acceleration-Sensitive Nonstructural Elements

Dimitrios Lignos, Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed Elkady

This paper summarizes a series of analytical studies that were conducted in connection with an improved approach for the design of acceleration-sensitive nonstructural elements. In the new approach, bracing to secure nonstructural elements to the structure ...

Applied Technology Council, Sponse2022

Deformation capacity evaluation for flat slab seismic design

Aurelio Muttoni, Lorenzo Martinelli, António Manuel Pinho Ramos, Andri Setiawan

In flat-slab frames, which are typically designed as secondary seismic structures, the shear failure of the slab around the column (punching failure) is typically the governing failure mode which limits the deformation capacity and can potentially lead to ...

SPRINGER2022

Growth, timing, & trajectory of vortices behind a rotating plate

Diego Francescangeli

The presence of aerodynamic vortices is widespread in nature. They can be found at small scales near the wing tip of flying insects or at bigger scale in the form of hurricanes, cyclones or even galaxies. They are identified as coherent regions of high vor ...

EPFL2022

Inception of Regular Valley Spacing in Fluvial Landscapes: A Linear Stability Analysis

Sara Bonetti, Shashank Kumar Anand

Incipient valley formation in mountainous landscapes is often associated with their presence at a regular spacing under diverse hydroclimatic forcings. Here we provide a formal linear stability theory for a landscape evolution model (LEM) representing the ...

2022

Stick-slip phenomena and Schallamach waves captured using reversible cohesive elements

Jean-François Molinari, Thibault Didier Roch, Evelyne Pélagie Ringoot

Reversibility is of paramount importance in the correct representation of surface peeling in various physical settings, ranging from motility in nature, to gripping devices in robotic applications, and even to sliding of tectonic plates. Modeling the detac ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

The Influence of Loading Path on Fault Reactivation:a Laboratory Perspective

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Carolina Giorgetti

The loading path the fault experiences is often neglected when evaluating its potential for reactivation and the related seismic risk. However, stress history affects fault zone compaction and dilation, and thus its mechanics. Therefore, in incohesive faul ...

2021

Experimental Evaluation of Steel Columns under Seismic Hazard-Consistent Collapse Loading Protocols

Dimitrios Lignos

This paper presents results from 21 large-scale experiments on steel columns that examined their collapse behavior as related to steel moment resisting frames (MRFs). The test specimens included wide-flange and square hollow structural shapes (HSS) and wer ...

2021

Moored observations of turbulent mixing events in deep Lake Garda, Italy

Sebastiano Piccolroaz, Marco Toffolon

Deep water circulation and mixing processes are responsible for the transport of matter, nutrients and pollutants in deep lakes. Nevertheless, detailed continuous observations are rarely available. To overcome some of these deficiencies and with the aim of ...

2021

Predicting exposure concentrations of chemicals with a wide range of volatility and hydrophobicity in different multi-well plate set-ups

Kristin Schirmer, Julita Maria Stadnicka-Michalak

Quantification of chemical toxicity in small-scale bioassays is challenging owing to small volumes used and extensive analytical resource needs. Yet, relying on nominal concentrations for effect determination maybe erroneous because loss processes can sign ...

NATURE RESEARCH2021

On the effects of fluid pressure variations on rock-mass and fault mechanical behaviour

Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël

In the past 20 years, the growing interest in deep geo-reservoirs for purposes such as carbon storage, waste water disposal, or geothermal energy exploitation have led to large-volume fluid injections into the upper continental crust. These fluid injection ...

EPFL2021