Publication

Hydro-chemo-mechanical behavior of a sand/bentonite mixture upon wetting paths

Publications associées (26)

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Barnaby Padraig Fryer, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël

Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...

2024

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

Dynamic Effective Porosity Explains Laboratory Experiments on Watertable Fluctuations in Coastal Unconfined Aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Zhaoyang Luo

Watertable fluctuations are a characteristic feature of coastal unconfined aquifers. They interact with the vadose zone creating a dynamic effective porosity, for which a new (empirical) expression is proposed based on a dimensionless parameter related to ...

2023

Role of Stress History on the Swelling-Shrinkage Behavior of Compacted Scaly Clay

Alessio Ferrari

Compacted scaly clays are complex geomaterials widely used for the realization of dam cores and waste dump liners. This research aims to investigate the swelling/shrinkage behavior of these geomaterials subjected in an oedometric cell to complex hydromecha ...

ASCE-AMER SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS2022

Life cycle environmental assessment of retaining walls in unsaturated soils

Alessio Ferrari, Gianluca Speranza

Retaining structures above groundwater level support soils that are usually in a state of partial saturation and subject to the actions of atmospheric agents. The current design approach considers the possible extremes of soil conditions - either totally d ...

ELSEVIER2022

The Permeability of Porous Volcanic Rock Through the Brittle-Ductile Transition

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer, Michael Heap

The permeability of volcanic rock controls the distribution of pore fluids and pore fluid pressure within a volcanic edifice, and is therefore considered to influence eruptive style and volcano deformation. We measured the porosity and permeability of a po ...

2022

Increasing temperature and vapor pressure deficit lead to hydraulic damages in the absence of soil drought

Pascal Turberg, Laura Mekarni, Charlotte Grossiord, Eugénie Isabelle Mas, Leonie Corine Schönbeck, Philipp Schuler

Temperature (T) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) are important drivers of plant hydraulic conductivity, growth, mortality, and ecosystem productivity, independently of soil water availability. Our goal was to disentangle the effects of T and VPD on plant h ...

Wiley2022

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

Jose Antonio Bosch Llufriu

Deep geological disposal is currently the most feasible option for the long-term isolation of radioactive waste, consisting in emplacing the waste into tunnels or drifts excavated at great depths in suitable geological formations. The use of bentonite, a h ...

EPFL2021

Systematic design of millisecond gasification reactor for the incorporation of gas-sieving nanopores in single-layer graphene

Kumar Varoon Agrawal, Shiqi Huang, Luis Francisco Villalobos Vazquez de la Parra, Shaoxian Li, Kuang-Jung Hsu

Etching an ensemble of vacancy defects (nanopores) in single-layer graphene (SLG) to obtain a high density of nanopores with an effective size that enables high-performance gas sieving is challenging. This is because nanopore nucleation and expansion are u ...

2021

Temperature of artificial freshwater recharge significantly affects salinity distributions in coastal confined aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Li Pu

Artificial freshwater recharge is commonly used to mitigate seawater intrusion and restore salinized aquifers in coastal zones. While the temperature of recharged freshwater often differs from that of aquifers, effects of temperature differences on water f ...

2021

Effects of large macropores on soil evaporation in salt marshes

David Andrew Barry

The occurrence of macropores in salt marsh sediments is a natural and ubiquitous phenomenon. Although they are widely assumed to affect pore-water flow in salt marshes significantly, the mechanisms involved and their extent are not well understood. We cond ...

2020

Thermal Effects on Flow and Salinity Distributions in Coastal Confined Aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Li Pu, Ho Ling Li

Coastal aquifers provide an important hydrologic connection between terrestrial freshwater and oceanic seawater. Understanding the water flow and salinity distributions in those aquifers is essential to manage seawater intrusion and regional groundwater re ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2020

Watertable fluctuation-induced variability in the water retention curve: Sand column experiments

David Andrew Barry, Zhaoyang Luo

The soil water retention curve (WRC), describing the relation between the soil water content and its corresponding capillary pressure, relies not only on whether drying or wetting occurs but also on the pore scale water flow velocity. Here, we investigated ...

2020

Effects of temperature on tidally influenced coastal unconfined aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Li Pu, Chenming Zhang

Aquifer-ocean temperature contrasts are common worldwide. Their effects on flow and salinity distributions in unconfined coastal aquifers are, however, poorly understood. Based on laboratory experiments and numerical simulations, we examined the responses ...

2020

Geotechnical and environmental performance of retaining structures in unsaturated soils

Gianluca Speranza

Presently, environmental issues are considered as critical aspects concerning the market competitiveness in the building and construction sector. However, the construction sector is regarded as one of the main areas contributing to CO2 emissions and resour ...

EPFL2020

Effects of deep pools on salinization in coastal reservoirs

David Andrew Barry, Jing Xu

Coastal reservoir contributes to alleviating the freshwater shortage in stressed areas, and the salinization of reservoir water is one of the most important challenges that coastal reservoir faced. Field-investigation indicates that there are many deep poo ...

2019

Microbial life in porous systems

David Scheidweiler

Microbial life in porous systems dominates the functioning of numerous ecosystems, ranging from stream sediments to soils. While these environments are characterized by structures that vary spatially over orders of magnitude, the traditional research focus ...

EPFL2019

Velocities, Residence Times, Tracer Breakthroughs in a Vegetated Lysimeter: A Multitracer Experiment

Michaël Bensimon, Pierre Claude Jean Queloz, Andrea Rinaldo, Paolo Benettin

Flow velocities, residence times, and tracer breakthroughs at the lysimeter scale are affected by matrix properties and preferential flow. Despite their relevance to transport processes, however, the relative timing of preferential flow, and its link to tr ...

2019

Crystallization of gas-selective nanoporous graphene by competitive etching and growth: a modeling study

Kumar Varoon Agrawal, Soumajit Dutta

A robust synthesis methodology for crystallizing nanoporous single-layer graphene hosting a high density of size-selective nanopores is urgently needed to realize the true potential of two-dimensional membranes for gas separation. Currently, there are no c ...

Nature Research2019

Desalinization and Salinization: A Review of Major Challenges for Coastal Reservoirs

David Andrew Barry

Coastal reservoirs are a possible solution to water supply and management issues in coastal zones. However, salinization can degrade the utility of such reservoirs. Two related major challenges affecting the operation of a coastal reservoir are desalinizat ...

2019