ALERT GeomaterialsNEWSLETTER - June 2019N 17 - year 13 http://alertgeomaterials.eu

In This Issue . . .EDITORIAL 1ALERT Workshop 2018 2 ALERT Workshop 2019 5ALERT PhD Prize 2018 2 ALERT Doctoral School 2019 5ALERT Doctoral School 2018 3 ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course 2019 6ALERT Special Lecture 2018 3 New Member of ALERT 7ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course 2018 4 ALERT Special Lecture 2019 7

ALERT PresidentGioacchino (Cino) Viggiani

ALERT DirectorFrédéric Collin

EDITORIAL

Dear ALERT members,

at this end of Springtime, the annual Newsletterof ALERT Geomaterials provides you informationabout our past and future activities, and shows thescientific vitality of our network.

This year, ALERT welcomes two new institutions:the international joint CNRS-MIT unit "MultiScaleMaterial Science for Energy and Environment"(MSE2), lead by Prof. Roland Pellenq, and DukeUniversity (Prof. Manolis Veveakis). It has tobe pointed out that, according to our statute,these two non-European institutions have the samerights as the others except for Election. Giventhe increasing number of ALERT non-Europeaninstitutions, a possible evolution of status for non-European members will be discussed during thenext Board of Directors.

Since October 2018, the Bureau has been workinghard for ALERT: organizing the ALERT-PhD prize,three Workshop sessions, and a Doctoral School(held as usual in Aussois, France), together withthe ALERT school - Olek Zienkiewicz Course, whichwill take place in Paris. We thank all the organiz-ers for their efforts that allow our network to bethe meeting point of so many researchers in Ge-omechanics. We take this opportunity to highlightthe fact that this year the Doctoral School on "The

Legacy of Ioannis Vardoulakis to the mechanics ofgranular materials" will be organized for two daysonly (rather than three). This should avoid theprogressive "erosion" of the number of attendantson Saturday morning; we expect therefore a partic-ipation of all the PhD students to the whole school– until Friday evening.

This year, the half-day session is devoted to "Themechanics of root-soil systems" and demonstratesthe possible interaction of Geomechanics and bio-engineering. This could be an inspiring develop-ment of our research: how all our theoretical, ex-perimental and numerical works can contributeto other scientific communities and cross-fertilize?We are strongly convinced that this is an impor-tant role of our association: to disseminate ourknowledge in other scientific fields.

Besides all these activities, the Bureau tries alsoto improve our communication within the ALERT-network. We recently sent a post on the ALERT-Website asking for your feedback on the website.Please feel free to send us any comments or sugges-tions! Finally, we would take advantage of this Ed-itorial to invite all of you to enrich this newsletter:all contributions for the next issues are welcome!

See you all in Aussois!

Frédéric Collin and Cino Viggiani

ALERT Geomaterials Page 2

0 20 40 60

Thessaloniki

Chalmers

Charles

Delft

ECN

ENPC

Heriot-Watt

INSA-Lyon

IRSTEA

Lund

NTU Athens

NTNU

Milano

Torino

Bari

TU Dresden

UPM

UPC

ULiège

UGA, CNRS

Montpellier 2

Perugia

Padova

Nonmember

Participants of the ALERTWorkshop 2018

ALERT Workshop 2018

In 2018 the annual ALERT Workshop was heldfrom October 1st to October 3rd again in Aus-sois, France. The regional distribution of theparticipants from the institutional members ofALERT Geomaterials is shown on the left handside. In total, 182 participants registered forthe ALERT workshop 2018.

As always since 2013, the session on Tuesdaylasted only half a day and was followed inthe afternoon, by the Board of Directors meet-ing, the PhD-prize ceremony, and the Speciallecture in the afternoon.

The three topics of the ALERT Workshop 2018are listed below:

1 Fluid flow and strain localization: fin-gering and fracture processes in par-tially saturated materialscoord. F. Casini, G. Sciarra, & J. Vaunat

2 Geomaterials under the nanoscopecoord. R. Pellenq, F. Radjai, F.J. Ulm

3 Offshore Geotechnicscoord. K. Gavin, F. Pisano, & G. Eiksund

We thank all active participants and coordina-tors for their effort.

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Hadrien Rattez(Université Paris-Est)

ALERT PhD Prize 2018

The jury of the ALERT PhD Prize 2018 wascomposed of the professors G. Viggiani (Pres-ident of ALERT), R. Pellenq (ALERT InvitedLecturer for 2018), J.Dijkstra (chosen mem-ber) and P. Kotronis (chosen member). OnlyPhD students from one of the institutions be-longing to ALERT are eligible candidates forthe prize, which consists of a certificate and areward of 1000 Euros.

The three finalists, Hadrien Rattez (Univer-sité Paris-Est), Laura Gonzalez-Blanco (Uni-versitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and EleniStavropoulou (Université Grenoble Alpes)

were chosen by the jury out of 10 applica-tions.

The jury finally awarded the PhD studentHadrien Rattez for his work entitled

Thermo-hydro-mechanical couplingsand strain localization in Cosseratcontinua : application to stabilityanalysis of rapid shear in faults

The abstract of this PhD thesis is available onthe ALERT website.

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ALERT Geomaterials Page 3

0 10 20 30

Thessaloniki

Chalmers

Charles

Delft

ECN

ENPC

Heriot-Watt

INSA-Lyon

IRSTEA

Lund

NTU Athens

NTNU

Milano

Torino

Bari

TU Dresden

UPM

UPC

ULiège

UGA, CNRS

Montpellier 2

Perugia

Padova

Nonmember

Participants of the ALERTDoctoral School 2018

ALERT Doctoral School 2018

The ALERT Doctoral School 2018 lasted fromThursday, 4th October to Saturday, 6th Octo-ber and was attended by 79 participants. Thetopic of the school was

Energetical methods in geomechanics

This school was organized by Itai Einav (Uni-versity of Sydney) and Eleni Gerolymatou(Chalmers Universty of Technology).

The lectures were presented by

• Mario Liu (University of Tübingen)• Ioannis Stefanou (Ecole Nationale des

Ponts et Chaussées, IFSTTAR, CNRS)• François Guillard (University of Sydney)• Itai Einav (University of Sydney)• Eleny Gerolymatou (Chalmers University

of Technology)• Manolis Veveakis (Duke University)• Yida Zhang (University of Colorado)

The school included topics ranging from basicconcepts of energetical methods (Thermody-namics, Principle of virtual power), to specificexamples and applications that illustrate howenergetical methods lead development of con-

stitutive models for soil and rock mechanics.

In order to tackle this topic, the first two daysof the school were divided into :

• Basic thermodynamic definitions• Definition and uses of virtual power• Energetics in granular media from the

viewpoint of DEM• Landau’s approach for advanced thermo-

dynamics• Hierarchal derivation of constitutive rela-

tionships using thermodynamics• Energetical background of common ap-

proaches• Multiphysics and multicomponent applica-

tions• From Fracture to Breakage Mechanics

On Saturday, these lectures were followed upby exercise examples that evidenced the effectof constitutive choices on the energetics.

On behalf all the ALERT members we wantto thank the lecturers and the organizers fortheir commitment.

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The accompanying book, containing articles referring to the lectures, as well assome books of previously held doctoral schools can be downloaded from the ALERTwebsite.

http://alertgeomaterials.eu/publications/

The ALERT Special Lecturer 2018Prof. R. PELLENQ

Special Lecture 2018: Prof. Rolland Pellenq

The ALERT Special lecture 2018 was deliv-ered by Prof. Rolland Pellenq, Director ofResearch at CNRS and MIT Senior ResearchScientist.

The title of the lecture was:

The potential of mean force: the toolto model dense colloidal systems

The lecture was recorded during the presenta-tion and is available for downloading on theALERT website.

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ALERT Geomaterials Page 4

Organising Institutions of theALERT OZ Course 2018

Participants to the ALERT OZCourse 2018

ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course 2018

The 10th ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course washeld for five days in November 2018 in Bari,Italy.

The school was coordinated by Federica Cotec-chia (Politecnico di Bari), Jean Vaunat (Uni-versitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaT-ech), Claudia Vitone (Politecnico di Bari).

The topic of the Course was

Natural versus compacted soils: frommicro to macro behaviour and

modelling

Lectures and tutorials were held by:

• Eduardo Alonso, Antonio Gens, EnriqueRomero Jean Vaunat (UPC, Spain)

• Angelo Amorosi (Sapienza University ofRome, Italy)

• Beatrice Baudet, Matthew Coop (UCL, UK)• Federica Cotecchia, Francesco Cafaro, Gae-

tano Elia, Claudia Vitone (Politecnico diBari, Italy)

• Pierre Delage (Ecole des ponts Paris Tech,France)

• Cristina Jommi (Politecnico di Milano,Italy)

• Cino Viggiani (Université Grenoble Alpes,

Laboratoire 3SR, France)

They covered several issues:

• Fundamentals about the genesis of claysand different scales of structures

• Consolidated unfissured clays: fundamen-tals to advanced analysis of the mechani-cal behaviour

• Compacted clays: fundamentals to ad-vanced analysis of the mechanical be-haviour

• Hard clays/weak claystones: analysis andmodelling of the hydro-mechanical be-haviour

• Transitional soils, fissured and weath-ered clays: analysis of the mechanical be-haviour

The 10th ALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course wasattended by 43 PhD students, among which26 coming from ALERT member institutionsand 17 non-ALERT institutions. On behalfall the ALERT members, we want to thankthe lecturers and the organizers for their com-mitment. For more information, please visitthe post-school notes and info on the ALERTwebsite.

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ALERT Geomaterials Page 5

Organising Institutions of theALERT Workshop & School 2019

ALERT Workshop 2019

The ALERT Workshop in 2019 will be or-ganized from Monday, 30th September toWednesday, 2nd October. The workshop willagain take place in the Centre Paul Langevinin Aussois, France.

The focus of the three workshop sessions andthe responsible coordinators are listed below:

1 Upscaling in Geotechnical Engineeringcoord. C. di Prisco, C. Jommi & C. Tam-agniniclaudio.diprisco@polimi.itcristina.jommi@polimi.itclaudio.tamagnini@unipg.it

2 The mechanics of root-soil systems:from microscopic to macroscopic ap-proaches

coord. E. Kolb & L. Sibilleevelyne.kolb@upmc.frluc.sibille@3sr-grenoble.fr

3 Computational methods in snow andavalanche release mechanicscoord. J. Gaume, P. Hagenmuller, F. Nicot& G. Chambon

johan.gaume@epfl.chpascal.hagenmuller@meteo.frfrancois.nicot@irstea.frguillaume.chambon@irstea.fr

All the sessions include invited speakers aswell as contributions from the abstract sub-mission process.

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The online registration for the ALERT Workshop & School will open in July and willbe announced in http://alertgeomaterials.eu/.

Organising Institutions of theALERT School 2019

ALERT Doctoral School 2019

The workshop is followed by the ALERT Doc-toral School which will be hosted from Thurs-day, 3rd October to Friday, 5th October alsoin Aussois. The topic of the ALERT Schoolwill be dedicated to

The Legacy of Ioannis Vardoulakis tomechanics of granular materials

and will be organized by Jean Sulem (Univer-sité Paris-Est) and Cino Viggiani (UniversitéGrenoble Alpes).

Lectures will be held on two days and willinclude the following topics:

• Mechanics of granular materials I. Experi-mental approach

• Mechanics of granular materials II. Mod-elling

• Landslide mechanics and growth of slipsurfaces

• Modelling of strain localization in geoma-terials - Higher order continuum theoriesand regularization techniques

• Petroleum Geomechanics• Hydro-mechanics of porous and granular

material - Poroelasticity and beyond

The Lectures will be held by Edward Ando,Itai Einav, Euripides Papamichos, Panos Pa-panastasiou, Sasha Puzrin, Holger Steeb,Ioannis Stefanou, Jean Sulem and Cino Vig-giani.

The online registration for the ALERT Work-shop & School will be open on the ALERTwebsite in July.

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ALERT Geomaterials Page 6

Organising Institutions of theALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course

2019

The 11th edition of the ALERT OlekZienkiewicz Course will be held from Mon-day, 28th October to Thirsday, 31st October2019 in Paris, France. The topic of the schoolis

Petroleum Geomechanics

The school is organised by Siavash Ghabezloo(Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France), and Eu-ripides Papamichos (Aristotle University ofThessaloniki, Greece).

Abstract: Petroleum Geomechanics is the en-gineering discipline which deals with the me-chanical behavior and response of the geolog-ical formations, at the reservoir scale or at thewell bore scale, during exploration and pro-duction of oil and gas, or injection and storageof fluids deep in the subsurface. It is tightlyrelated to engineering geology, soil and rockmechanics and seismology. Ensuring safety, in-tegrity and optimization of various operationsin petroleum industry are highly dependentand based on geomechanical considerationsand modellings. The progressive depletion ofeasily exploitable oil and gas resources duringthe past decades lead the petroleum industryto bore in deeper formations and more diffi-cult conditions in terms of stress state, temper-ature, deformability and permeability. Thisleads to challenging operational conditionsand the use of unconventional exploitationmethods. Ensuring the safety, integrity andeconomical rentability of infrastructures inthese conditions, in addition to the engineer-ing challenges related to the integrity assess-ment of CO2 sequestration systems, lead to anincreasingly important part for geomechanicsfor industry applications.

In this context, the 11th edition of theALERT Olek Zienkiewicz Course is dedicatedto Petroleum Geomechanics. The aim is tomake PhD students familiar with the mainproblems of oil and gas exploration and pro-duction, related to geomechanics and show

them various analysis and design methodsused to tackle them. A broad range of subjectswill be covered by the instructors from thepetroleum industry and the academic world.The course will begin with a presentation ofmain problems, challenges and perspectivesin the petroleum industry in relation to ge-omechanics. A good understanding of theseproblems needs a knowledge of the geologi-cal conditions of subsurface and the structuralcomposition of petroleum reservoirs. This isfollowed by a presentation of the exploita-tion and production methods for conventionalreservoirs, drilling mechanics and completiontechnology, before moving to the exploitationof unconventional reservoirs by hydraulic frac-turing. The analysis and design of these pro-duction methods need a presentation of thehydro-mechanical behavior of various rocksin the system and the experimental methodsused for evaluation of their properties in thelaboratory, which will be followed by a visitof the laboratory facilities of Ecole des PontsParisTech. The evaluation of rock proper-ties deep in the subsurface is largely basedon the interpretation of well logs and elasticwave propagation in rocks which will be pre-sented before addressing the in-situ stress de-termination which is another important ingre-dient needed for every geomechanical anal-ysis. The information concerning rock be-havior and properties and the in-situ stressstate will be used to calculate the boreholestresses for wellbore stability analysis andsand production prediction. The course willend with a presentation of the consequencesof petroleum production or fluids injection inthe reservoir and the overburden formationsand the resulting stress changes in terms ofground movements or faults reactivation.

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More details and registration:

http://alertgeomaterials.eu/category/oz-course

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New Institutional Members of ALERT

During its meeting in Aussois, held in Octo-ber 2018, there were two applications for themembership in ALERT Geomaterials and theyhave been accepted by the board of Directors.

MSE2represented by prof. Rolland Pellenq

Duke Universityrepresented by prof. Manolis Veveakis

With these decisions, the present number ofmembers of ALERT Geomaterials is 34!

It has been pointed out that, according to ourstatus, these two non-European institutionshave the same rights as the others except forElection.

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The ALERT Special Lecturer 2019Prof. Alexander Puzrin

Special Lecture 2019: Prof. Alexander Puzrin

The Special lecture during the coming ALERTWorkshop 2019 will be presented by Prof.Alexander Puzrin, Professor and Chair ofGeotechnical Engineering at the ETH Zurich,Switzerland. He is engaged in the constitu-tive modeling of geomaterials and the anal-ysis of progressive and catastrophic failurein soils, with applications to onshore and off-shore slope stability problems. He will talkabout

Growth of slip surfaces

(life is dangerous)

Growing slip surfaces are commonly encoun-tered in the mechanisms of many natural

geo-hazards, such as earthquakes, landslides,snow avalanches, tsunamis, etc.. The talkwill explore the basic mechanics of progres-sive and catastrophic slip surface growth in aslope using recent advances in experimental,analytical and numerical approaches. Impor-tance of the proper understanding of this phe-nomenon will be illustrated via the followingthree novel applications: (i) defining influ-ence zones for terrestrial landslides, (ii) relat-ing geomorphology of submarine landslidesto their tsunami generating potential, and (iii)exploring plausibility of a delayed release forearthquake-triggered snow avalanches. In theprocess, it will be demonstrated how the slipsurface growth can negatively affect life of anordinary citizen. Back to Contents

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