Le futur en vedette - First-Order Investigation of Thermal Creep Characteristics in Frozen Geomaterials: Implications for Northern Dams

May 22, 2025

2025-05-22 12:00 PM 2025-05-22 01:00 PM Le futur en vedette - First-Order Investigation of Thermal Creep Characteristics in Frozen Geomaterials: Implications for Northern Dams N.A. America/New_York

WEBINAR - May 22, 2025 - 12:00 – 1:00 pm EST

CDA is pleased to offer a webinar featuring the research of the 2024 winner of CDA's Gary Salmon Scholarship.

Thermal creep-induced deformations pose a significant threat to the stability and life-cycle performance of dams, particularly in northern regions where these structures are built on traditionally frozen foundations. As climate change accelerates permafrost degradation, time-dependent, irrecoverable deformations can intensify, compromising structural integrity and increasing the risk of failure. This issue is especially critical in upstream-raised tailings storage facilities, where incremental mechanical loading further exacerbates creep-induced instabilities. Given the rapid warming in permafrost regions, a comprehensive understanding of the thermal creep behavior of geomaterials is essential for developing performance-based design strategies. Advancing this understanding will be crucial for developing more effective engineering solutions and risk mitigation measures, ensuring the long-term stability and resilience of dams and storage facilities in cold regions. To address this, thermal creep characteristics of frozen geomaterials subjected to different mechanical and thermal loading conditions are investigated through a Critical State Soil Mechanics (CSSM)-based Thermo-Elasto-Viscoplastic (TEVP) constitutive modeling approach.

Anyone in the CDA community working on dams in northern climates along with students and YP members are encouraged to attend to hear about Dana’s research and applications to the dam industry.

Presenter

Dana Amini

Dana Amini from the University of Manitoba with his PhD thesis: “Performance Analysis of Northern Infrastructure Affected by Climate Change” Dana is a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on Geotechnical Engineering in the Department of ‎Civil Engineering at the University of Manitoba (UofM). His research is about the development of an advanced numerical tool for the design and performance analysis of northern infrastructure affected by climate change.