The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance.
Abstract
Sand is a fascinating and complex material. It is made up of many individual grains and so it can rest in place like a solid or flow like a liquid. It can act as a filter to prevent movement of fine particles or a drain to let water flow freely. Sand has huge economic and societal importance. The foundations of many buildings lie on sand deposits and sand is used in engineered structures including embankment dams and flood embankments. However, the particulate nature of sand makes it difficult to predict sand behaviour in engineering design; for example, sand strength and stiffness depend on the pressure applied.
Traditionally engineers have considered sand to be a continuous material for the purposes of engineering design and analysis. This lecture will show how recent developments in computer simulation and x-ray imaging now allow the particle-scale interactions to be explicitly considered in a way that is useful to practicing engineers.
The specific multi-scale application considered will be the design of flood embankments and embankment dams. These structures form a vital infrastructure to prevent flooding. The talk will demonstrate that particle-scale analyses can improve the reliability of engineering design by considering the filters that provide vital protection to the embankment cores.
Limitations in our current understanding of soil across from the micro to the macro scale will be highlighted as a challenge for future research.
Biography
Catherine O’Sullivan is a Professor in Particulate Soil Mechanics at Imperial College London. Originally from Ireland, she obtained her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. Since arriving at Imperial College in 2004 she has continued to develop research that examines soil behaviour focussing on the particulate scale.
Catherine has authored a textbook on the use of discrete element modelling in geomechanics and has authored/co-authored over 80 contributions to international journals. In 2015 she delivered the Géotechnique lecture. Funding for her post-graduate studies and research has been provided by the Fulbright Programme, the O’Reilly Foundation, the IRCSET, the EPSRC, the ICE, the Leverhulme Trust and ARUP. Catherine was a member of the Géotechnique Advisory Panel 2010-2012 and is currently a member of the editorial boards of Soils and Foundations, Computers and Geotechnics, Granular Matter and the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. She served on the BGA Executive Committee from 2009-2012 and is currently a member of the committee of the British Dam Society.