On Saturday, May 17th, 2025, we opened our laboratory doors as part of the KIT Open Day and Campus Day and welcomed numerous interested visitors with exciting insights into the world of soil mechanics and rock mechanics.
Highlights included:
- An interactive dam model that could be built and flowed through by the visitors themselves.
- A point load test for visitors to try out on their own.
- A hands-on soil mechanics lab, where guests could get actively involved.
In addition, we presented some of our current research topics – such as gravity-based underground energy storage and innovative methods for artificial ground freezing.
We would like to thank everyone who stopped by for their great interest and the many inspiring conversations – and we’re already looking forward to the next event!
We are looking for a research assistant / doctoral candidate (m/f/d) for an exciting research project with excellent development opportunities. More information here.
The program for our geotechnical seminar series in the summer semester 2025 is now available! We are looking forward to nine exciting lectures, offering practical insights into current construction projects as well as innovative research topics.
You can find the full program here, and more information here.
In the past few weeks, the IBF team presented its latest research findings at several national and international conferences. These events gave us the opportunity to engage in valuable discussions with colleagues and establish new scientific connections that will enrich our future research.
The kickoff was the 2nd Sino-German Offshore Geotechnical Workshop at our project partners' institution at ZJU. There, we presented the new model of generalized intergranular strain and its coupling with constitutive models. At the XVIII European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE 2024) in Lisbon, Portugal, Ms. Gehring presented her research on the Influence of Lateral Stress on Soil-Structure Interface Tests in a Hollow Cylinder Apparatus. Mr. Zürn presented our publication on the Method for Triaxial Experiments for Unconventional Strain Paths and Back-Calculation Using Neohypoplasticity. At the International Symposium on Geomechanics from Micro to Macro (IS-Grenoble 2024) in France, Mr. Mugele discussed our findings on the Experimental Study of the Soil Structure Variable z Used in Constitutive Models Such as Neohypoplasticity or Sanisand. At the same time, we presented recent results from our large-scale triaxial tests at the 38th Geotechnical Conference 2024 in Bremen, Germany. Prof. Stutz gave a talk titled Großtriaxial-Versuchstechnik: Erfahrungen und Möglichkeiten für den Grund- und Erdbau.
The final event was the Alert Geomaterials Workshop, where Ms. Li, Ms. Gehring, and Mr. Gebremeskel, Mr. Pena, and Mr. Mugele presented their research during the poster session.
These conferences were a great opportunity to share our latest developments and discuss innovative solutions to current challenges with experts.
In the article "Novel Experimental Method for Rate-Independent Triaxial Tests Under Partial Drainage Conditions" published in Géotechnique Letters (J. Zürn, L. Mugele, and H.H. Stutz), we introduce a novel yet straightforward method for conducting partially drained triaxial tests. Unlike many methods in the literature, the assumptions of an element test are maintained. The partial drainage condition is effectively achieved by coupling the sample’s volumetric deformation with the change in pore water pressure. This coupling is facilitated by the bulk modulus of a gas bubble integrated within the experimental setup. Monotonic triaxial tests performed on Karlsruhe fine sand, under varying initial densities, sample preparation techniques, loading rates, and sample dimensions, underscore the potential and versatility of the proposed method.
On August 19, 2024, the 2nd workshop of the SINO-GERMAN project entitled “Lifecycle performance of offshore wind turbine piles” will take place in Hangzhou, China.
You can find the program here.
We are pleased to announce that Mr Häring has won the Young Engineering Award 2024 of the Baden-Württemberg Chamber of Engineers in the category Bachelor Thesis, Research.
With his outstanding thesis on the title „Investigations on the calibration and variation of material model parameters of neohypoplasticity“, Mr Häring convinced the jury and prevailed against the competition. The research provides valuable insights in the field of soil modelling and shows innovative approaches to improve the application of neohypoplastic models.
We congratulate Mr Häring on this well-deserved success and his commitment.
We wish Mr Häring continued success!
In our publication “Generalized intergranular strain concept and its application to hypoplastic models” in the journal “Computers and Geotechnics” (L. Mugele, H.H. Stutz and D. Mašín) we present a further development for constitutive modeling of cyclic deformations in soil: the Generalized Intergranular Strain Concept (GIS). This work is the result of a collaboration between KIT and Charles University Prague.
One of the advantages of the GIS approach is that it prevents overshooting and simultaneously enables the modeling of non-linear accumulation effects. The concept can be easily applied to many hypoplastic and elasto-plastic constitutive models and is based on the widely used intergranular strain approach.
In addition, we were able to extend the hypoplastic model according to von Wolffersdorff for the first time by the so-called asymptotic state surface, which offers decisive advantages for the coupling of the model with the GIS approach. The implementation of the resulting constitutive model be downloaded and tested in UMAT format.
Link to the publication
In our new publication ‘Field test on the installation of vibratory tamping columns and observations on cavity expansion’ in geotechnik, we analyse the effects of vibratory tamping column installation on the condition of the in-situ soil. Together with Dr Lukas Knittel, Dr habil. Vladimir Osinov, Dipl.-Ing. Paul Pandrea, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans Henning Stutz and in co-operation between Keller Grundbau GmbH and the IBF, we have examined both a large-scale field test and numerical simulations of the monotonic and cyclic expansion of a cavity. In coarse-grained soils in particular, considerable positive installation effects were observed, which can be explained at least quantitatively by means of corresponding simulations.
Link to the publicationWe congratulate Mr Maximilian Tillmanns on being awarded the DYNAmore Prize 2023 for his master's thesis ‘Execution safety of single-phase sealing walls’, which he wrote at the IBF. Congratulations!
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Current progress of our research project WINSENTvalid can be found here.
