Particle simulations of granular materials

Within the framework of the European project ITN2015 INFRASTAR, Geotechlab utilizes CloudVeneto to perform particle simulations of granular soils. Specifically, it leverages the available resources to conduct batch triaxial cyclic tests on virtual soil samples to model ratcheting phenomena, i.e., the accumulation of irreversible deformations. These models aim to understand how the mechanical behavior of the soil changes after millions of cycles of loading and unloading, and find application in the long-term design of structures such as wind turbine foundations or road infrastructure foundations.

The capabilities of this cloud include the allocation of large computing resources tailored to the computational needs of the model, the ability to launch multiple virtual machines remotely, and the availability of large volumes to allocate the output files of the simulations.

PhD candidate Gianluca Zorzi and Dr. Fabio Gabrieli