Thursday, July 27th, 2017. Time: 12h.

Place: O.C. Zienkiewicz Conference Room, C1 Building, UPC North Campus, Barcelona.

ABSTRACT

Although most geotechnical structures operate in the small deformation range, there are numerous problems within geotechnical engineering and related fields that call for methods where changes to the problem geometry as a result of deformation are taken into account. Typical examples include problems of landslides, debris flow, penetration of various devices such as cones and torpedo anchors into the ground, and the interaction, during installation or under operating conditions, of off-shore oil and gas infrastructure with the seabed.

The major objective of this presentation is to present the variant version of the PFEM developed at the University of Newcastle, Australia and its applications to large-deformation problems in geomechanics. Those problems solved include, but are not limited to, the collapse of granular columns, accretionary wedge, pipe-line soil interaction, flow-like landslides, and the progressive failure of geostructure in sensitive clays. In addition, the MSCA-IF project “Towards submarine landslides and their consequences” (ToSubC) undertaken at CIMNE will also be introduced briefly so that potential collaborations would be built up. The intended outcome of the proposed project is a robust computational tool, e.g. the PFEM, that can simulate the complete process of real-world submarine landslides, ranging from the initiation of failure through the sliding process to the final deposition and predicting their direct impact on offshore infrastructure as well as indirect impact on coastal human communities through the generation of tsunami.

SPEAKER CV

Dr. Xue Zhang is a Ph. D. Civil Engineer by the Newcastle University (Australia). He is currently a Marie Curie Post Doc at CIMNE.