Publications associées à Studies on the mechanical evolution of compacted bentonite subjected to environmental actions

A FEM modelling workflow to simulate THM effects in the rock around nuclear waste packages

High-level waste, stemming from nuclear electricity generation poses significant environmental and safety concerns. Currently, high-level wastes are stored in interim facilities needing constant monitoring and waiting for a definitive solution. Deep geolog ...

EPFL2024

Evolution of water content and suction of Opalinus Clay from recovery at the drilling site to handling in the laboratory

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Angelica Tuttolomondo

Advanced geotechnical engineering applications, such as shale gas extraction, CO2 geological sequestration, and geological radioactive waste storage, often involve various types of shales located at significant depths. Shales exhibit mechanical properties ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of the Callovo-Oxfordian claystone under thermal changes

Héloïse Manon Fuselier

Underground storage of radioactive waste is consensually recognised as the safest storage solution by European and worldwide countries relying mainly or partially on nuclear energy production. Over twenty years of research led by the French national agency ...

EPFL2024

Nature-based solution enhances resilience to flooding and catalyzes multi-benefits in coastal cities in the Global South

Jérôme Chenal, Paolo Perona, Charlotte Grossiord, Montana Marshall, Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Coastal cities are facing a rise in groundwater levels induced by sea level rise, further triggering saturation excess flooding where groundwater levels reach the topographic surface or reduce the storage capacity of the soil, thus stressing the existing i ...

2024

Microbial hydrogen sinks in the sand-bentonite backfill material for the deep geological disposal of radioactive waste

Rizlan Bernier-Latmani, Manon Frutschi, Niels Burzan, Aislinn Ann Boylan, Nicolas Louis Maurice Jacquemin, Simiao Wang, Camille Aude Rolland

The activity of subsurface microorganisms can be harnessed for engineering projects. For instance, the Swiss radioactive waste repository design can take advantage of indigenous microorganisms to tackle the issue of a hydrogen gas (H2) phase pressure build ...

Frontiers Media SA2024

Contribution of standardized indexes to understand groundwater level fluctuations in response to meteorological conditions in cold and humid climates

Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Understanding the fluctuations in groundwater levels in response to meteorological conditions is challenging, especially given the slow transit time associated with groundwater reservoirs and the short duration of time series for groundwater levels. Nevert ...

2024

Technical note: Two-component electrical-conductivity-based hydrograph separation employing an exponential mixing model (EXPECT) provides reliable high-temporal-resolution young water fraction estimates in three small Swiss catchments

Davide Canone, Jana Freiin von Freyberg

The young water fraction represents the portion of water molecules in a stream that have entered the catchment relatively recently, typically within 2-3 months. It can be reliably estimated in spatially heterogeneous and nonstationary catchments from the a ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2024

A novel fatigue life prediction methodology based on energy dissipation in viscoelastic materials, synergistic effects of stress level, stress ratio, and temperature

Thomas Keller, Abdolvahid Movahedirad, Lulu Liu

This work introduces a new methodology to predict the fatigue life of viscoelastic materials by considering the creep effect on fatigue behavior under the concurrent effects of stress level, stress ratio, and temperature. The model established based on the ...

2024

X-ray chemical imaging for assessing redox microsites within soils and sediments

Vincent Noel, Meret Aeppli

Redox reactions underlie several biogeochemical processes and are typically spatiotemporally heterogeneous in soils and sediments. However, redox heterogeneity has yet to be incorporated into mainstream conceptualizations and modeling of soil biogeochemist ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Experimental and ab initio derivation of interface stress in nanomultilayered coatings: Application to immiscible Cu/W system with variable in-plane stress

Claudia Cancellieri, Pandula Manura Liyanage, Giacomo Lorenzin

Interface stress is a fundamental descriptor for interphase boundaries and is defined in strict relation to the interface energy. In nanomultilayers with their intrinsically high interface density, the functional properties are dictated by the interface st ...

Elsevier2024

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

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Flow and Hydrochemistry in Drainage Networks

Izabela Bujak-Ozga

Despite their high ecological value, non-perennial streams have received less attention than their perennial counterparts. This doctoral thesis addresses this disparity by advancing knowledge on the dynamics of the drainage density and hydrologic processes ...

EPFL2024

On-Chip Fully Reconfigurable Artificial Neural Network in 16 nm FinFET for Positron Emission Tomography

Claudio Bruschini, Edoardo Charbon, Andrada Alexandra Muntean, Emanuele Ripiccini

Smarty is a fully-reconfigurable on-chip feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) with ten integrated time-to-digital converters (TDCs) designed in a 16 nm FinFET CMOS technology node. The integration of TDCs together with an ANN aims to reduce system ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

Data-driven statistical optimization of a groundwater monitoring network

Andrea Rinaldo, Gianluca Botter

We propose a comparative study of three different methods aimed at optimizing existing groundwater monitoring networks. Monitoring piezometric heads in subsurface porous formations is crucial at regional scales to properly characterize the relevant subsurf ...

Elsevier2024

Thermo-hydro-mechanical analysis of the complete lifetime of the bentonite barrier in the FEBEX in-situ test

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Yafei Qiao, Jose Antonio Bosch Llufriu

The FEBEX test was a large-scale demonstration project for the deep geological disposal concept of nuclear waste involving bentonite seals that lasted 18 years. One of the objectives of the test was to evaluate the capabilities of numerical methods to prov ...

2023

Shear strength and shear stiffness analysis of compacted Wyoming-type bentonite

Alessio Ferrari

Wyoming-type bentonite is one of the materials to be used as part of the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) in deep geological disposal facilities for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.In the KBS-3 type repository, the canisters containing the spent fue ...

ELSEVIER2023

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Water Exchange of Opalinus Clay Samples

Alessio Ferrari, Qazim Llabjani, Eleni Stavropoulou, Vincenzo Sergio Vespo

Opalinus Clay is a fine-grained sedimentary geomaterial with a mineral composition consisting mainly of silicates, carbonates and quartz. Due to its favourable barrier properties, this geomaterial has been selected as the host rock for the underground disp ...

Wei Wu, Universität für Bodenkultur2023

Hydro-Mechanical Characterization of a Shale by Unusually High-Pressure Oedometric Tests

Alessio Ferrari, Eleonora Crisci

The note presents selected results of an experimental campaign conducted with the aim to investigate the hydro-mechanical behaviour of a shale recovered at a depth of about 900 m below the ground. High-pressure oedometric tests were performed to investigat ...

Wei Wu, Universität für Bodenkultur2023

Effects of Unsaturated Flow on Salt Distributions in Tidally Influenced Coastal Unconfined Aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Zhaoyang Luo

Unsaturated flow influences both the seawater extent under steady-state conditions and the propagation of tides in coastal aquifers. However, its effects on salt distributions in tidally influenced coastal aquifers are little investigated. The present stud ...

2023

The influence of water-saturation on the strength of volcanic rocks and the stability of lava domes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Michael Heap

The rocks forming a volcanic edifice or dome are typically saturated or partially-saturated with water. However, most experiments aimed at better understanding the mechanical behaviour of volcanic rocks have been performed on dry samples, and therefore mos ...

2023