Technical Papers and Presentations

A benchmark study was carried out by the Swiss Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (ENSI) in collaboration with the Laboratory for Waste Management (LES) of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in order to evaluate the capabilities of the program COMSOL for the calculation of the transport of ... Read More

Advances in visualization and discretization of pore structures by means of Computed Tomography, and rapidly increasing computational capabilities, allow numerical modeling of pore-scale fluid flow based on the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations rather than using a macroscopic ... Read More

The method to derive upscaled expressions for the dispersion coefficients for reactive flow in a porous medium uses a periodic unit cell (PUC), which consists for instance of a spherical grain in a cube, but nothing prohibits defining more complex PUC's. Homogenization leads to a coupled ... Read More

We combine the potentiality of COMSOL with Monte Carlo optimization procedures, referred to as Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithm, in order to analyze and interpret ground deformation measured in active volcanic areas. Through MATLAB® subroutines, we use FE (Finite Element) ... Read More

Structural, morphological and ground deformation studies suggest that the eastern flank of Mt. Etna (eastern Sicily) is spreading seaward. Three contrasting models have been proposed: deep-seated spreading, shallow sliding and tectonic block movements. In order to better understand the ... Read More

Safe short term storage of CO2 depends mainly on structural and solubility trapping. On longer term, mineral trapping is also contributing to the trapping of CO2. To be able to investigate the importance of these different storage mechanisms, a finite element model for simulation of CO2 ... Read More

Using 2D viscoelastic plane strain models we investigate the dependency of the stress field of slabs on geometry and kinematics of subduction zones (relative velocity of interacting plates and their absolute velocity with respect to the mantle). We conclude that the concentration of Von ... Read More

We use GPS measurements and Finite Element analysis to investigate strain accumulation in the interaction between active fronts of the Southern Alps and Dinarides at the northern edge of the Adriatic micro-plate. We develop a three dimensional model of the area taking into account the ... Read More

Ensuring the quality of underground water and controlling its quantity is of major concern for the population. Therefore, this subject attracts many students from different specialties at different levels of their curriculum. In fact, the pedagogic objectives of the course may be ... Read More

We present COMSOL solutions for a coupled gas flow and heat transfer problem, which occurs particularly when traffic pathways are constructed in high altitude and arctic regions, where the underground is frozen soil. To avoid melting of the frozen ground (which usually leads to ... Read More