New master students initiate their studies at LEMR
Nina Urfer, Salvatore D'Urso, and Federica Paglialunga © 2018 EPFL
Federica Paglilunga, Nina Urfer, and Salvatore D'Urso have joined the LEMR to continue their studies in Geomechanics.
Salvatore D’Urso (Italy) holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin and currently is finishing a M.S in Civil Engineering (Geotechnics) in the same University. He arrived at LEMR in the winter semester of 2017 under the support of the Erasmus program. The master project of Salvatore deals with the analysis of the unstable granitic cliff of “Madonna del Sasso”. The main objective is to evaluate the stability of the cliff of "Madonna del Sasso" which presents seasonal displacements due to the air temperature variation. The analysis will focus on the study of the fatigue mechanism and the crack propagation under cyclic load. Moreover, through the use of acoustic sensors, we will try to localize the initial fracture and the type of propagation.
His supervisors are Prof. Marie Violay, Dr Federica Sandrone, and Dr Lucas Pimienta from LEMR, EPFL.
Nina Urfer (Switzerland) got a Bachelor in Earth Sciences at the University Basel and then went to the ETH Zürich for the Master in Engineering Geology. During the master project, Nina wants to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of rock anisotropy on the fault reactivation in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). The goal of her Master’s thesis is to investigate the microphysics behind fault reactivation in the context of deep geothermal energy projects. The focus of the study is to understand if and how rock anisotropy and its orientation with respect to the fault plane affects frictional parameters and therefore, its reactivation. This will be achieved by running fault reactivation experiments on saw-cut gneiss samples, allowing the reproduction of earthquakes at laboratory scale.
The supervisors of Nina are Prof. Marie Violay (EPFL), Mateo Acosta (EPFL), Dr Claudio Madonna (ETHZ), and Prof. Simon Löw (ETHZ)
Federica Paglialunga (Italy) holds a Geotechnical Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Turin. She also attended a semester at the University of Grenoble-Alps in France. Her master project is entitled “Source directivity of bi-material interface during spontaneous rupture propagation”. The goal of this master project is to first contribute to the instrumentation of the large biaxial apparatus HIGHSTEPS by implementing the monitoring with acoustic sensors and dynamic strain gages, and second, to study the rupture directivity, influenced by a slight different young modulus. To achieve this, the fault system will be composed of two blocks of two different kinds of rock and the rupture will be assumed to propagate in 1D configuration, due to the small width of the fault.
The supervisors of Federica are Dr. Francois X. Passelègue and Prof. Marie Violay from LEMR, EPFL.
Good luck to all of them!