Hydraulic structures ensure the protection of persons and goods, the production of electricity and water storage. The failure of such structures can lead to significant human and material disasters. This can be caused by several factors, but the predominant one is the internal erosion phenomenon.
Internal erosion can be defined as the migration of particles due to the effect of underground water flow. This migration of components from the ground produces changes in mechanical and hydraulic characteristics of the hydraulic structure. A change in the permeability can create a loss of seal or an increase of the pore pressure, and then can lead to the breakdown.
I am interested in the problem of internal erosion through numerical modeling of this phenomenon. The models are based on the discrete element method with a full consideration of the coupling between the fluid and the solid particles.
More specifically, in a first part, I try to identify the parameters which are responsible of the detachment of grains in a medium subjected to an internal flow. The second part of this work is devoted to the study of the mechanical behavior, in terms of deformation and fracture, of a material with erosion of its components.
