Cusatis Group Research

Hydraulic fracture and multiscale research on CSG material

Cemented sand and gravel (CSG) material is a new kind of geotechnical material. Through the three-point bending tests, unconfined compression tests and triaxial tests, the mechanical properties of CSG material with different cement contents are investigated. These parameters are used to investigate the water fracture interaction properties of CSG material. The modeling of wedge splitting tests with water pressure is established by use multiphysics lattice discrete particle modeling (M-LDPM). The results show that as water pressure increases, both the maximum splitting force values and crack mouth opening displacement under peak load decrease, the size of the fracture process zone (FPZ) is also reduced.

Multiscale research on CSG material and dam

Even with the computational power currently available, the adoption of meso-scale (discrete) approaches become computationally intractable in the case of fine grained materials, or in the case of large structures, such as dams. For this reason there is clearly a need for effective multiscale techniques suitable for upscaling discrete systems. My research is currently learning to use Homogenization Coarse Graining method to bridge fine scale and real size dam.