Keynotes > Micro-to-Macro Lecture

Jacques Desrues, CNRS & Univ. Grenoble Alpes (France) - Emeritus Research Director at Laboratoire 3SR

Title: Filling the gap between microscopic and engineering approaches of granular soils

Jacques Desrues, born in 1951, graduated in Civil Engineering at INSA in Rennes in 1974. He defended a first thesis at the Grenoble Institute of Mechanics (IMG) on the behavior of foundation piles (1977). After a post-doc on snow cover mechanics, he joined the French Center for Scientific research CNRS. In 1984 he defended a Doctorate of Science thesis on Strain Localization in Granular Media, a research project that he developed throughout his career. Successively Chargé then Director of Research at the CNRS, he obtained the status of Emeritus upon his retirement in 2017. Involved throughout his career in leading teams and working groups around deformation and fracture in geomaterials, in Grenoble he was successively team leader then geomechanics group leader of the IMG, member of the board of directors of this laboratory which subsequently gave birth to the 3SR laboratory. At the national level, he led the “localization” group of GRECO “Geomaterials” (1986-89) and the “Shear Bands” theme of the GDR “Geomechanics of Deep Rocks” (1990-1998). He was responsible for European and French public research contracts, and industrial contracts in particular with ANDRA, and in this context he established ongoing and lasting international collaborations, e.g. “Adjunct Professor” in Kumamoto (Japan). He was a member appointed and then elected to the French National Committee for Scientific Research in section 9 from 2000 to 2008. As Director of the 3SR laboratory (2008-2013) he led the project for the “Mechanics and Risks” platform of the EDD building project of the Grenoble campus plan, which led to the construction of the “Galilée” building, today the main site of the 3SR laboratory. In 2012-13 he was Vice-President of the Scientific Committee of the ICSMGE XVIII (2013) in Paris, and editor of the Proceedings of this congress (5 volumes). Within the 3SR Laboratory, he created and ran for many years the Tomography and Field Measurements platform, which has enjoyed, and still enjoys undeniable success, for the benefit of local, French and international teams. He authored more than 250 publications, including more than 50 journal papers, giving rise to approximately 8,000 citations. He authored two articles “1st most cited paper” in the journal Géotechnique in 1996 and 2010; he was “1st most cited author” in Géotechnique in 1996 and 2010; in 2007 in strain; in 2012 in Acta Geotechnica; in 1999 in IJNAMG. His most cited article has received over 900 citations. His scientific activity has focused on the observation and modeling of deformation processes, up to rupture, in geomaterials. Around this objective, his areas of work were:

Strain Localization: Experimental and theoretical study of fracture in geomaterials: shear bands, cracking, bifurcation theory, full field measurement methods, tomography, 3D image correlation.

Soils and Rocks Behaviour: experimental characterization of behavior - laboratory tests - then behavior modeling using constitutive laws. More recently, since 2008: discrete mechanics of granular media, 3D experimental approach with exhaustive characterization of the grain kinematics of a sample tested under a tomograph.

Numerical Modeling: Modeling of highly localized phenomena, double scale FEM-DEM and FE² analyses. This last point is, with tomography and field measurements, its current main project.

Over the years and the development of this research, he has supervised the work of around twenty doctoral students, experimenters and modelers, often both.