Publications associées à Rehabilitation of St-Marc dam: Model studies for the spillways

Inversing the actuation cycle of dielectric elastomer actuators for a facial prosthesis

Paolo Germano, Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Alexis Boegli, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Quentin Philippe Mario De Menech

Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) are a type of smart material described as compliant capacitors. They show impressive performances as soft actuators, such as a high strain and fast response. Nonetheless, replicating natural muscle function with DEAs h ...

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)2024

Flood, farms and credit: The role of branch banking in the era of climate change

Pejman Abedifar, Seyed Javad Kashizadeh

Using Iran's unexpected flood in April 2019 as a natural experiment, we show that local branches bridge the time gap between the disaster and governmental aids by immediately increasing their lending for two months following the flood. Analyzing proprietar ...

Elsevier2024

DEMO toroidal field coil fast discharge unit integration studies

Roberto Guarino, Alberto Ferro

The Fast Discharge Units (FDUs) of the Superconducting (SC) Toroidal Field (TF) coils in the European demonstration fusion power plant DEMO warrant the machine integrity over its full lifetime against severe failure events, such as SC coil quenches or any ...

Elsevier Science Sa2024

Characterization of low-temperature plasmas generated by dielectric barrier discharges for bacterial inactivation

Lorenzo Ibba

Low-temperature plasmas (LTPs) at atmospheric pressure hold great promise for disinfection and sterilization applications. When compared to traditional sterilization technologies like autoclaving, LTPs may offer several benefits, including reduced energy c ...

EPFL2024

Twenty years of irrigation acclimation is driven by denser canopies and not by plasticity in twig- and needle-level hydraulics in a Pinus sylvestris forest

Charlotte Grossiord, Eugénie Isabelle Mas, Christoph Bachofen, Alex Tunas Corzon, Hervé Cochard, Alice Jacqueline Frédérique Gauthey

Climate change is predicted to increase atmospheric vapor pressure deficit, exacerbating soil drought, and thus enhancing tree evaporative demand and mortality. Yet, few studies have addressed the longer-term drought acclimation strategy of trees, particul ...

Oxford Univ Press2024

Hydromorphological assessment of sediment augmentation measures in gravel-bed rivers

Christian Mörtl

In the riverine environment, the riverscape, sediment and flow regime are essential drivers for natural habitat dynamics. Today, most water courses in Europe are regulated, and their natural dynamics are impaired. Flood releases coupled with the artificial ...

EPFL2023

Enhancing Flood Resilience: Sediment Management in Le Bez Torrent

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Romain Nathan Hippolyte Merlin Van Mol

In the canton of Bern, Switzerland, the “Le Bez” torrent is known for its flash floods, causing sediment and wood debris buildup in Villeret village settled on the alluvial fan. To mitigate this issue, a sediment/wood trap system is being implemented upstr ...

Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT)2023

Ageing-aware battery discharge prediction with deep learning

Olga Fink, Luca Biggio

Electrochemical batteries are ubiquitous devices in our society. When employed in mission-critical applications, the ability to precisely predict their end-of-discharge under highly variable operating conditions is of paramount importance in order to suppo ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2023

Dynamic pulse scheduling in ASDEX Upgrade: Disruption avoidance and investigation of the H-Mode density limit

Federico Alberto Alfredo Felici, Alessandro Pau, Bernhard Sieglin

Operation of a tokamak device requires the coordinated operation of a multitude of systems. The sequence of operations during a discharge is both too complex and fast for human interaction. A common way of operation is a predefined sequence of operations w ...

2023

The importance of young professionals for dam engineering in Switzerland

Valentina Favero, Samuel Luke Vorlet

In Switzerland, hydropower is the main energy source and contributes to about 58.3% of the total production. The 2050 energy strategy aims to increase this share in the coming decades. This increase is a challenge for hydropower plants. The maintenance and ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Effects of water releases and sediment supply on a residual flow reach

Giovanni De Cesare, Camille Blanck, Robin Schroff

An artificial floods program has been implemented on the Sarine residual flow reach, downstream of the Rossens dam. Two artificial floods were released in 2016 (coupled with sediment augmentation) and in 2020. A natural flood occurred in 2021. The indicato ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Short-term dynamics of drainage density based on a combination of channel flow state surveys and water level measurements

Andrea Rinaldo, Izabela Bujak-Ozga, Jana Freiin von Freyberg

Headwater streams often experience intermittent flow. Consequently, the flowing drainage network expands and contracts and the flowing drainage density (DD) varies over time. Monitoring the DD dynamics is essential to understand the processes controlling i ...

Wiley2023

Real-time implementation of the high-fidelity NBI code RABBIT into the discharge control system of ASDEX Upgrade

Federico Alberto Alfredo Felici, Bernhard Sieglin

For the first time, a real-time capable NBI code, which has a comparable fidelity to the much more computationally expensive Monte Carlo codes such as NUBEAM, has been coupled to the discharge control system of a tokamak. This implementation has been done ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

Exploring the efficacy of reservoir fine sediment management measures through numerical simulations

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Samuel Luke Vorlet, Montana Marshall

Reservoir sedimentation is one of the main challenges in the sustainable operation of large reservoirs because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. To ensure the sustainability of deep reservoir ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Continuous monitoring of morphological changes from sediment augmentation by field measurements and flume experiments

Giovanni De Cesare, Christian Mörtl

In this study, we present results from continuous field monitoring and a flume ex-periment of a sediment augmentation measure in a residual flow reach of the Swiss midlands. A straight morphological channel with fixed bed material was constructed to repres ...

2023

Swiss dams: Overview of historical development

Anton Schleiss

With more than 220 large dams in operation, compared to its surface of some 41ʹ000 km2, Switzerland has a very large fleet. They were erected to meet various economic and protection needs. Their main assignments concern the storage of water for later use, ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Experimental modeling of fine sediment routing: SEDMIX device with thrusters

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Montana Marshall

Reservoir sedimentation is a key challenge for storage sustainability because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. A preliminary EPFL study proposed and studied an innovative device (called SEDM ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Splitting probabilities and mean first-passage times across multiple thresholds of jump-and-drift transition paths

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

We apply the stochastic-trajectory analysis to derive exact expressions for the mean first passage times of jump-and-drift transition paths across two or more consecutive thresholds. We perform the analysis of the crossing statistics in terms of dimensionl ...

2023

Investigations on Caesium Dispersion and Molybdenum Coating on SPIDER Components

Michele Fadone

SPIDER is the 100 keV full-size Negative Ion Source prototype of the ITER Neutral Beam Injector, operating at Consorzio RFX in Padova, Italy. The largest Negative Ion Source in the world, SPIDER generates an RF driven plasma from which Deuterium or Hydroge ...

2023

Breakdown development in a nanosecond pulsed dielectric barrier discharge in humid air in plane-to-plane geometry

Ivo Furno, Xin Yang, Lorenzo Ibba

We used the ns electric field induced second harmonic (EFISH) generation diagnostic to measure the electric field evolution in a 200 ns pulse, dielectric barrier, plane-to-plane discharge in humid air, on the time scale shorter than the laser pulse duratio ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2023