Numerical Modelling of the Anisotropic Mechanical Behaviour of Opalinus Clay at the Laboratory-Scale Using FEM/DEM

The Opalinus Clay (OPA) is an argillaceous rock formation selected to host a deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste in Switzerland. It has been shown that the excavation damaged zone (EDZ) in this formation is heavily affected by the anisotropic mechanical response of the material related to the presence of bedding planes. In this context, the purpose of this study is twofold: (i) to illustrate the new developments that have been introduced into the combined finite-discrete element method (FEM/DEM) to model layered materials and (ii) to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new modelling approach in simulating the short-term mechanical response of OPA at the laboratory-scale. A transversely isotropic elastic constitutive law is implemented to account for the anisotropic elastic modulus, while a procedure to incorporate a distribution of preferentially oriented defects is devised to capture the anisotropic strength. Laboratory results of indirect tensile tests and uniaxial compression tests are used to calibrate the numerical model. Emergent strength and deformation properties, together with the simulated damage mechanisms, are shown to be in strong agreement with experimental observations. Subsequently, the calibrated model is validated by investigating the effect of confinement and the influence of the loading angle with respect to the specimen anisotropy. Simulated fracture patterns are discussed in the context of the theory of brittle rock failure and analyzed with reference to the EDZ formation mechanisms observed at the Mont Terri Underground Research Laboratory.     

Perception of landslides risk and responsibility: a case study in eastern Styria, Austria

This paper presents a case study about the perception of landslide risk. Following a major set of landslides in the eastern part of Austria in June 2009, we surveyed local experts, residents who had suffered losses from the landslides, and others living in the affected communities. Overall, the risk perception was significantly higher among those who had been personally affected by a landslide, had knowledge of the geology in the study region, had been affected by another natural hazard, or spent a lot of time outdoors and in touch with nature. Non-experts viewed natural factors as the main causes for the occurrence of landslides, while experts viewed anthropogenic factors as more important. Likewise, non-experts placed a greater emphasis on hard measures (such as retaining walls) to reduce the risk, whereas the experts tended to focus on better information and land-use planning. In terms of responsibility for mitigative actions, a majority of inhabitants believed that public authorities should undertake most of the costs, whereby those who had personal experience with landslides were more likely to favor the government paying for it.     

Jet Deflection by a Quasi-Steady-State Side Wind in the Laboratory

We present experimental data on the steady state deflection of a highly supersonic jet by a side-wind in the laboratory. The use of a long interaction region enables internal shocks to fully cross the jet, leading to the development of significantly more structure in the jet than in previous work with a similar setup (Lebedev et al., 2004). The ability to control the length of the interaction region in the laboratory allows the switch between a regime representing a clumpy jet or wind and a regime similar to a slowly varying mass loss rate. The results indicate that multiple internal oblique shocks develop in the jet and the possible formation of a second working surface as the jet attempts to tunnel through the ambient medium.     

Use of LIDAR in landslide investigations: a review

This paper presents a short history of the appraisal of laser scanner technologies in geosciences used for imaging relief by high-resolution digital elevation models (HRDEMs) or 3D models. A general overview of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) techniques applied to landslides is given, followed by a review of different applications of LIDAR for landslide, rockfall and debris-flow. These applications are classified as: (1) Detection and characterization of mass movements; (2) Hazard assessment and susceptibility mapping; (3) Modelling; (4) Monitoring. This review emphasizes how LIDAR-derived HRDEMs can be used to investigate any type of landslides. It is clear that such HRDEMs are not yet a common tool for landslides investigations, but this technique has opened new domains of applications that still have to be developed.     

Biomonitoring of Atmospheric Heavy Metal Deposition by Mosses in the Vicinity of Industrial Sites

At four industrial regions, heavy metal concentrations and calculated depositions were investigated by sampling and analysing mosses. In each region, a special spatial pattern of heavy metal concentrations was detected, reflecting the industrial processes. Metals most likely originating from the industrial sites showed an exponential decrease of concentrations and depositions with increasing distance from the pollution source. The exponential deposition pattern was in some cases modified by a series of natural factors, like the main direction of winds or orographic conditions. The distance at which deposition dropped to background values was up to 20 km. Beside the fact that the moss-metho is a useful tool for deposition measurement in the vicinity of stationary sources, some improvements for using this method are discussed, highlighting factors such as a proper calculation of deposition from concentrations, or the better knowledge of correlations between heavy metal concentrations in mosses and effects on human health.     

Machine Learning Feature Selection Methods for Landslide Susceptibility Mapping

This paper explores the use of adaptive support vector machines, random forests and AdaBoost for landslide susceptibility mapping in three separated regions of Canton Vaud, Switzerland, based on a set of geological, hydrological and morphological features. The feature selection properties of the three algorithms are studied to analyze the relevance of features in controlling the spatial distribution of landslides. The elimination of irrelevant features gives simpler, lower dimensional models while keeping the classification performance high. An object-based sampling procedure is considered to reduce the spatial autocorrelation of data and to estimate more reliably generalization skills when applying the model to predict the occurrence of new unknown landslides. The accuracy of the models, the relevance of features and the quality of landslide susceptibility maps were found to be high in the regions characterized by shallow landslides and low in the ones with deep-seated landslides. Despite providing similar skill, random forests and AdaBoost were found to be more efficient in performing feature selection than adaptive support vector machines. The results of this study reveal the strengths of the classification algorithms, but evidence: (1) the need for relying on more than one method for the identification of relevant variables; (2) the weakness of the adaptive scaling algorithm when used with landslide data; and (3) the lack of additional features which characterize the spatial distribution of deep-seated landslides.     

The Density and Masses of Obscured Black Holes

Recent Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys have uncovered a large fraction of the obscured AGN responsible of the hard X-ray background. One of the most intriguing results of extensive programs of follow-up observations concerns the optical and near-infrared properties of the hard X-ray sources counterparts. More specifically, for a significant fraction of hard X-ray obscured sources the AGN responsible of the high X-ray luminosity remains elusive over a wide range of wavelengths from soft X-rays to near-infrared. This very observational result opens the possibility to investigate the host of bright obscured quasars in some detail. Here we briefly report on some preliminar results obtained for a small sample of elusive AGN in the HELLAS2XMM survey.