Publications de Dimitrios Terzis

Biocementation beyond the Petri dish, scaling up to 900 L batches and a meter-scale column

Microbial-induced calcite precipitation (MICP), which leverages ureolytic microorganisms, has received significant attention during the past decade as a promising method for sustainable building and geoenvironmental applications. However, transitioning fro ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Bacillus megaterium favours CO₂ mineralization into CaCO₃ over the ureolytic pathway

Dimitrios Terzis

Microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) has long been the focus of material scientists, environmental microbiologists and civil engineers because of its potential to yield biosynthesized binders that can serve as alternatives to cement or resins. ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

A bio-chemo-hydro-mechanical model of transport, strength and deformation for bio-cementation applications

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis

Bio-cementation through microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) has the potential to overcome several technical and environmental limitations of conventional cement-based soil improvement techniques. While a significant amount of research has been ...

Springer Heidelberg2024

Multiphysical numerical modelling of an MICP upscaling experiment with ex-situ hydrolysis

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Jose Antonio Bosch Llufriu, Sofie Elaine ten Bosch

Microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) is an innovative biogeochemical ground improvement technology that can be used in-situ to improve soil stiffness and strength, by precipitating calcite within the soil. Bio-chemo-hydro-mechanical processes a ...

Argo-E Group2023

Addressing the challenges of homogeneity, quality control and waste handling in soil bio-cementation: A large-scale experiment

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ray Harran

In an attempt to go beyond the conventional laboratory experiments widely reported in literature around the emerging technique of soil bio-cementation, this work addresses key challenges related to its large-scale application. Precisely, a state-of-the-art ...

JAPANESE GEOTECHNICAL SOC2023

A unified Bio-Chemo-Hydro-Mechanical formulation for soil improvement with microbially-induced calcite precipitation

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Jose Antonio Bosch Llufriu

This paper reports recent advances in modelling MICP at the engineering scale, in particular with respect to the stress-strain-strength modelling of bio-cemented soils. A complete Bio-Chemo-Hydro-Mechanical (BCHM) model is presented. The BCH model is based ...

Argo-E Group2023

3-D contact and pore network analysis of MICP cemented sands

Dimitrios Terzis, Nimisha Roy

The study describes a comprehensive methodology to evaluate X-Ray micro-computed tomography data from sand samples and to characterize their 3D microstructural properties. Fine and medium-grained sands are analyzed in their natural and bio-cemented states. ...

SPRINGER2023

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

Characterizing the Deformation Evolution with Stress and Time of Biocemented Sands

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ray Harran

Soil biocementation represents an emerging technique that has dominated the development of sustainable and innovative geotechnics during the past decade. Despite numerous studies focusing on peak strength behavior and the ensuing softening response, less i ...

2022

Microfluidic study in a meter-long reactive path reveals how the medium’s structural heterogeneity shapes MICP-induced biocementation

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ariadni Elmaloglou

Microbially induced calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitation (MICP) is one of the major sustainable alternatives to the artificial cementation of granular media. MICP consists of injecting the soil with bacterial- and calcium-rich solutions sequentially to ...

Nature Research2022

Monitoring innovation metrics in construction and civil engineering: Trends, drivers and laggards

Dimitrios Terzis

The study presents and analyzes innovation metrics in construction and civil engineering, domains which are found to lag behind other fields of science and technology in terms of innovation output. A specific line of focus is put on research and developmen ...

2021

Method and system for producing a carbonate-containing species-rich, nitrogen-containing species-free solution

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis

A method for producing a carbonate-containing species-rich, nitrogen-containing species-free solution from a urea-rich solution is proposed. The method comprising the steps of: providing a first reservoir comprising a first mixture including urea and a cat ...

2021

Controlling the calcium carbonate microstructure of engineered living building materials

Lyesse Laloui, Esther Amstad, Dimitrios Terzis, Alexandra Clarà Saracho, Hannes Markus Peter, Matteo Hirsch, Lorenzo Lucherini

The fabrication of responsive soft materials that enable the controlled release of microbial induced calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitation (MICP) would be highly desirable for the creation of living materials that can be used, for example, as self-healin ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2021

Microfluidic-Based Study on the Activation and Evolution of Calcite Bio-Mineralization for Geotechnical Applications

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ariadni Elmaloglou, Filippo Miele

The field of geotechnics is moving fast towards benefiting from new methods and tools to improve the understanding of couplings among complex transport, chemical and biological phenomena. Calcite bio-mineralization, result of bio-grouting, stands out as su ...

ASCE2020

System and method for ground consolidation

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Patrick Gabriel Yihsiu-Ming Hicher

The present invention relates to a method for inducing ground consolidation. The method comprises providing a first chamber (7) in a first hole (3) in the ground (5), and a second chamber (7) in a second hole (3) in the ground (5), the first and second cha ...

2020

Benefits and drawbacks of applied direct currents for soil improvement via carbonate mineralization

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Patrick Gabriel Yihsiu-Ming Hicher

The study presented herein adopts a new vision of the processes involved in carbonate mineralization induced by MICP from an electrochemical and crystal growth perspective. More precisely a specific line of focus refers to the species involved in the bio-c ...

EDP Sciences2020

Direct currents stimulate carbonate mineralization for soil improvement under various chemical conditions

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Patrick Gabriel Yihsiu-Ming Hicher

The present study integrates direct electric currents into traditional calcium carbonate mineralization to investigate electrochemical interactions and the subsequent crystalline growth of CaCO3 bonds in sand. A specific line of focus refers to the effect ...

Nature Research2020

A Full-Scale Application of Slope Stabilization via Calcite Bio-Mineralization Followed by Long-Term GIS Surveillance

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ray Harran

The field of soil bio-improvement, through microbial-induced calcite mineralization, has gained significant momentum in scientific literature in the past years. The phenomenon, which is inspired from natural environments, has been extensively applied at la ...

American Society of Civil Engineers2020

Cell-free soil bio-cementation with strength, dilatancy and fabric characterization

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis

A multi-disciplinary approach is adopted in the present work towards investigating bio-cemented geo-materials which extends from sample preparation, to microstructural inspection and mechanical behaviour characterization. We suggest a new way to induce “ce ...

2019

A decade of progress and turning points in the understanding of bio-improved soils: A review

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis

Research and practice in the broader fields of civil and geotechnical engineering had long ignored the presence of living microorganisms in the subsurface and the way it impacts conventional practices. In the last 10 years, the term “microbial induced calc ...

2019