Publications related to Hydro-mechanical modelling of a natural slope affected by a multiple slip surface failure mechanism

Insights from an extensive triaxial testing campaign on a shale for comparative site characterization of a deep geological repository

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Eleonora Crisci

Several boreholes were drilled for site comparison of a deep geological repository (DGR) in Northern Switzerland. The main target of the exploration program was the >100m thick Opalinus Clay, the designated host rock encountered at approximately 450 to 100 ...

Elsevier2024

A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Denis Aloyse Joseph Steffen, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Louis Marie Cédric Guillet

Shallow landslides pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. Despite significant progress in the understanding of such phenomena, the evaluation of the size of the landslide release zone, a crucial input for risk assessment, still remains a c ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023

Mechanics, Modeling, and Upscaling of Biocemented Soils: A Review of Breakthroughs and Challenges

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ray Harran

Biogeotechnical research has inspired revolutionary ideas to claim the status of a distinctive branch of geotechnical engineering. Most notably, underground carbonate mineralization, most commonly referred to as microbially induced carbonate precipitation ...

ASCE-AMER SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS2023

Microscopic Digital Image Correlation Analysis of Strain Distributions in Stainless Steel 316L Induced by Multiaxial Cyclic Loading

Elif Cansu Kursun

Fatigue damage in materials results in localized strain at the microstructural level. In many engineering components of the cooling circuits of nuclear power plants, where austenitic steels are used, the material experiences multiaxial cyclic loading, eith ...

EPFL2023

Geotechnical Engineering in the Digital and Technological Innovation Era

The book collects the keynote contributions and the papers presented at the “8th Italian Conference of Researchers in Geotechnical Engineering 2023, CNRIG’23”. The conference was held on July 5–7, 2023, at the University of Palermo (Italy), and it was orga ...

Springer2023

A fully-coupled highly-parallelized geomechanical simulator for assessing induced seismicity

Jean-François Molinari, Guillaume Anciaux, Nicolas Richart, Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Emil Gallyamov

Induced seismicity caused by anthropogenic modification of the subsurface effective stress state has been observed in a number of industrial applications -- from hydrocarbon extraction (e.g., Groningen [1]), drilling waste-water disposal (e.g., [2]) to the ...

2023

Modeling the mechanics and rheology of porous and granular media: an elastoplastic continuum approach

Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny

The complex mechanics of porous and granular media play a significant role in various industrial processes and natural phenomena. As an example, understanding the mechanics of how failure occurs, localizes and propagates in porous brittle solids under vari ...

EPFL2023

Three-dimensional fluid-driven frictional ruptures: theory and applications

Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe

Fluid-driven frictional ruptures are important in a broad range of subsurface engineering technologies and natural earthquake-related phenomena. Some examples of subsurface operations where borehole fluid injections can induce frictional slip are deep geot ...

EPFL2023

Bounding the localized to ductile transition in porous rocks: implications for geo-reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

Porous rocks have long been the focus of intense research driven by their importance in our society as host to our most essential resources (oil, gas, water, geothermal energy, etc), yet their rheology remains poorly understood. With increasing depth, poro ...

2023

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

Shashank Kumar Anand, Sara Bonetti

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

Investigation of the effect of mineral dissolution on the geomechanical behaviour of geomaterials

Taeheon Kim

Geotechnical engineering scenarios engaged in internal erosion or mineral dissolution were found worldwide, from CO2 sequestration projects to internal erosion of earth dams. Materials subjected to loss of solid phase from their internal fabric vary from s ...

EPFL2022

Deformation capacity evaluation for flat slab seismic design

Aurelio Muttoni, António Manuel Pinho Ramos, Lorenzo Martinelli, 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

Design and temporal issues in Soil Bioengineering structures for the stabilisation of shallow soil movements

Giovanni De Cesare, Massimiliano Schwarz

In the last decades, soil bioengineering has gained considerable popularity worldwide, especially in hillslope, riverbank, and earth embankment stabilisation works. The use of plants as a building material transfers the plant multifunctionality within engi ...

2021

Onset of sliding across scales: How the contact topography impacts frictional strength

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Ramin Aghababaei

When two solids start rubbing together, frictional sliding initiates in the wake of slip fronts propagating along their surfaces in contact. This macroscopic rupture dynamics can be successfully mapped on the elastodynamics of a moving shear crack. However ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

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

Brittle faulting of ductile rock induced by pore fluid pressure build‐up

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Under upper crustal conditions, deformations are primarily brittle (i.e., localized) and accommodated by frictional mechanisms. At greater depth, deformations are ductile (i.e., distributed) and accommodated by crystal plasticity, diffusion mass transfer o ...

2021

Shear Response of Wet Weak Carbonate Rock/Grout Interfaces Under Cyclic Loading

Eleni Stavropoulou

The development and construction of offshore wind farms requires the correct estimation of the friction that can be mobilised at the rock/grout interface. In conventional studies, the shear behaviour of a joint is usually investigated with laboratory tests ...

2021

Fault Stability Across the Seismogenic Zone

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Across the seismogenic zone, the transition from brittle to plastic deformation corresponds to a semibrittle regime where brittle fracturing and plastic flow coexist at high strength conditions. Thorough experimental investigations on brittle-plastic trans ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2020

Experimental study of impulse waves generated by viscoplastic fluid

Zhenzhu Meng

Landslide-generated waves, also called impulse waves, occur as a result of the intrusion of landslides (such as rock falls, debris flows, and avalanches) into bodies of water (such as lakes, reservoirs, and seas). The objective of this thesis was to study ...

EPFL2020

Cyclic thermomechanical response of fine-grained soil-concrete interface for energy piles applications

Lyesse Laloui, Melis Sütman, Elena Ravera

Understanding the behaviour of soil-structure interfaces is critical for addressing the analysis and design of energy geostructures. In this study, the interface failure mechanism of energy piles (where a shear band is detached from the surrounding soil th ...

2020