IRN GeoMech workshop on hydromechanical instabilities. Booklet of abstracts (original) (raw)

Dear all, It is our pleasure to welcome you in Aix-en-Provence for this international workshop co-organized by the international research network GeoMech and the research department AQUA of INRAE. Granular materials are involved in many natural hazards, such as landslides, avalanches, dike or dam failures, etc. Due to their discrete nature, they have a complex mechanical behavior resulting from local interactions between grains and collective behaviors organized at different scales. Thus, the failure modes of geomaterials can take several forms: diffuse failure possibly resulting in liquefaction, localized failure with shear bands at several scales (from a few grains to the size of the complete system), mixed mode failure, etc. Moreover, granular materials being porous, they are very often subjected to water infiltration likely to induce important changes of microstructure that can affect their physical, hydraulic and mechanical properties. The main objective of this workshop is to review recent advances in the understanding of the elementary mechanisms of destabilization of granular materials and their impact on failure modes (e.g. liquefaction, strain localization). The topics addressed during the workshop may be related, for instance, to the mechanical response and stability of geomaterials in the presence of capillary or solid bridges (sintering, biocalcification, dissolution/precipitation, ...), internal erosion (suffusion and clogging), surface erosion, etc. We hope that the list of forthcoming talks will lead to fruitful discussion and possibly to future collaborations.