ROCKMECH
Rock Mechanics, Geomaterials, Slope Stability and Tunnelling

Energy geostructures at SEG2023: real-world implementations, numerical modelling and artificial intelligence to drive the energy transition

This week (October 3rd-5th, 2023), the Delft University of Technology hosted the 2023 edition of the Symposium on Energy Geotechnics. Here, inspiring keynote lectures, as well as amazing contributions from all the participants, shared a common driving thread: accelerating the energy transition.

Among all, the contributions from the Politecnico di Torino and the Rockmech team were the following:

- "Lesson learnt from a full-scale installation of energy walls" by Marco Barla, Alessandra Insana and Andrea Benincasa di Caravacio.
This contribution reminisces of the construction phases needed to build the Politecnico di Torino underground car park, whose diaphragm walls were equipped for shallow geothermal energy exploitation. This corresponds to one of the biggest energy diaphragm walls all around the world (see more at https://proceedings.open.tudelft.nl/seg23/article/view/517).

- "A case study of thermal interaction at urban scale" by Maria Romana Alvi, Alessandra Insana and Marco Barla.
Here, the authors focused on thermal interactions from different geothermal usages at an urban scale, with reference to the case of the city of Turin and the project of the new metro line 2 (see more at https://proceedings.open.tudelft.nl/seg23/article/view/527).

- "An example of thermal retrofitting for the Piedicastello tunnel” by Simone De Feudis, Alessandra Insana and Marco Barla.
This contribution presented a method for converting an existing partly disused tunnel into an energy geostructure to harvest ground-trapped energy that would otherwise remain unexploited (see more at https://proceedings.open.tudelft.nl/seg23/article/view/533).

- "A neural network approach for quick dimensioning of energy walls" by Alessandro Poveromo, Alessandra Insana, Davide Papurello and Marco Barla.
To discover the thermal efficiency of energy walls, the authors proposed a new data-driven approach and trained an artificial neural network based on the evidence from the Geothermskin test site (see more at https://proceedings.open.tudelft.nl/seg23/article/view/521).

Congratulations to Alessandra Insana, Maria Romana Alvi and Simone De Feudis for brilliantly sharing the results of the whole research group.

Energy screw piles

Volete saperne di più sulle geostrutture energetiche? Mai sentito parlare di "Phase Change Materials"? Nell’ambito dei Geotechnical Meetings @PoliTO il giorno Venerdì 15 Settembre alle ore 16:30 presso l'aula Albenga (DISEG, Ingresso 1, 2° piano) il Dr. Luis A. Bandeira Neto, proveniente dall'Università di Melbourne, terrà un seminario dal titolo:
“Energy Screw Piles: Group thermal interferences and use of Phase Change Materials”.
Vi invitiamo a partecipare numerosi/e!
Altre info qui: https://lnkd.in/drTV9buS
#enertun #geothermskin #geostruttureenergetiche #PCM

CNRIG 2023 just ended - tunnels, rockfalls and snow among the topics presented

The VIII edition of the CNRIG (Convegno Nazionale dei Ricercatori di Ingegneria Geotecnica) was held in Palermo between the 5th and the 7th of July.
The conference entitled “Geotechnical Engineering in the Digital and Technological Era” was organised through the unity of purpose of "Università degli Studi di Palermo", "Università degli studi di Enna Kore", "Università degli studi di Catania" and "Università degli studi di Messina".
It has been an intensive and fruitful three-day conference through which attendees shared their research developments in the form of oral presentations or posters.
Among all, the contributions from the Politecnico di Torino and the Rockmech team were the following.

- "A Simple Parametric Numerical Model to Assist the Design of Repair Works and Maintenance of Tunnels" by Simone De Feudis, Alessandra Insana and Marco Barla.

This contribution, presented during the poster session, analysed the support that numerical modelling, even kept at a very basic level, could provide to designers to define the proper conditions of applications of typological prompt interventions aimed at temporarily counteracting tunnel ageing.

- "A Semi-quantitative Approach to Assess the Propensity of Rockfall Source Areas to Instability Based on the Susceptibility Index to Failure (SIF): the Case Study of Capo Calavà (Italy)" by Maria Lia Napoli, Monica Barbero, Francesco Castelli, Marta Castelli and Valentina Lentini.

This contribution, which was shared through an oral presentation during the "Processes involved in deformations and instabilities" session, presented a practical semi-quantitative methodology to assess the probability of failure of unstable rock blocks for different environments and scales of interest.

- "Some Improvements of a Visco-Plastic Constitutive Model for Snow" by Gianmarco Vallero, Monica Barbero, Fabrizio Barpi, Mauro Borri-Brunetto and Valerio De Biagi.

This contribution, shared in the form of a poster, presented some improvements to an existing constitutive model for snow that was developed in the framework of the nonlinear theory of elasto-visco-plasticity.

Congratulations to Maria Lia Napoli, Monica Barbero and Marta Castelli, whose paper was selected as one of the five contributions to be submitted for an extended version to the RIG (Rivista Italiana di Geotecnica).