The objective of this International Travel Grant is to support a U.S. delegation of researchers in geotechnical engineering to the Biot Conference on Poromechanics, to be held at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 14-16 September 1998.
The conference will serve as an international forum to exchange information and experience on deformable porous materials, with applications in geomechanics, material sciences, geophysics, acoustics and biomechanics. Related topics include: thermodynamics and constitutive modeling, coupled diffusion-deformation processes, wave propagation and dynamics. Topics of particular interest to the US delegation include consolidation and subsidence processes, poroplasticity and poroviscoelasticity, partially saturated porous materials, micro-macro relations and homogenization procedures, fractured porous media, thermo-hygro-chemo-mechanical couplings. Experimental, numerical and theoretical contributions are equally welcome.
The U.S. delegation will benefit by being able to interact with researchers from other disciplines and from around the world, who are working on similar issues. At the conclusion of the meeting, the U.S. delegation will develop a recommended course of action for future research in particulate mechanics as it applies to geotechnical earthquake engineering: this will be widely distributed via the Internet to US researchers in the field.
