On Monday, June 8, a seminar titled “Micro-scale evolution of pore water characteristics in unsaturated sand under triaxial compression” will be held in Fassò Room (Building 4A) at 11:00 CET.
The seminar will be given by Ryunosuke Kido, Associate Professor at Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University.
Abstract
Unsaturated soil consists of granular particles and pore fluids (liquid and gas), and understanding its behavior requires clarifying the relationship between microscale phenomena and macroscale responses to better understand and predict the failure of earth structures and slopes. My research focuses on microscale phenomena in unsaturated soils that cannot be captured using conventional techniques. The objective is to visualize these invisible processes during laboratory testing through X-ray micro-computed tomography (CT) and advanced image analysis. In this seminar, I will introduce the microscale evolution of pore water characteristics in unsaturated sand during triaxial compression, with a particular focus on water retention states, the spatial distribution of liquid bridges, and the curvature of air–water interfaces. These observations provide new insights into the mechanisms governing the deviatoric stress responses observed in triaxial compression tests.
Bio-sketch
Dr. Ryunosuke Kido is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Program at Hiroshima University, Japan. He received his Doctor of Engineering from Kyoto University in 2019. During his doctoral studies, he was awarded a Research Fellowship for Young Scientists by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Following the completion of his doctorate, he served as an Assistant Professor at Kyoto University before joining Hiroshima University as an Associate Professor in 2024. In 2023, he spent 10 months as a visiting scholar at Université Grenoble Alpes in France. Dr. Kido has received multiple awards, including Paper Awards for Young Researchers from both the Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) and the Japanese Geotechnical Society (JGS). He is an active member of the Japanese domestic committee of ISSMGE Technical Committee TC105 (Geo-Mechanics from Micro to Macro). His research focuses on the micromechanics of geomaterials using a microfocus X-ray CT, image analyses and discrete element method. Main research topics include unsaturated soils, soil-structure interaction, internal erosion/clogging, and so on.