Grant: Alliance Grants

The geo-structure in cold regions of Canada commonly interact with frozen soils and permafrost layers that are sensitive to the effects of climate change. This project aims to establish a framework for early defect and failure detection in geo-structures, focusing on tailing embankments and permafrost layers. By leveraging acoustic emission (AE) monitoring data and applying principles from complex systems physics, the research intends to establish correlations between AE events and failure probabilities, shedding light on local progressive failure mechanisms. The progressive failure mechanism is treated as a self-organized criticality which can be characterized in terms of precursors based on temporal correlation between the AE events and the exponents describing the distribution of AE events. This innovative approach seeks to enhance the stability assessment of geo-structures beyond traditional methods and improve defect detection systems. The framework developed in this study will provide a significant advancement over traditional geotechnical stability assessment methods and contribute to more reliable defect detection systems, ultimately enhancing the safety and resilience of geo-structures in cold regions, with potential applications in tailing dams and permafrost layers. This project is inherently interdisciplinary, uniting researchers from the realms of applied physics, materials science, and engineering. Dr. Pouragha from Canada contributes expertise in geomechanics and geomaterial modeling, complemented by international collaborators. Drs. Baro and Casals from Spain specialize in complex systems approaches to acoustic emission (AE) in materials. Drs. Valera and Galceran, also from Spain, aid in bridging failure characteristics in soils with those in other complex materials. Dr. Nataf from France offers expertise in characterizing structured materials, and Dr. Stern-Taulats contributes to a more in-depth analysis of the criticality characteristics of AE recordings.