The team focuses on supporting Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DoD), and key industrial partners’ research needs. Within DOE support, the team concentrates on providing direct support to the Lab’s mission spaces for gas migration studies and seismic propagation analysis. DoD efforts are directed via the Laboratory’s Strategic Analysis and Assessments Office. Industrial support efforts revolves around oil and gas industries, carbon sequestion and other applications

Our group develops and applies sophisticated numerical methods and advanced computing techniques to analyze and predict the mechanical and physical behavior of rocks, soils, and other geological materials. Our work plays a crucial role in the fields of remote sensing, energy, and national security.

What We Do

• Develop, maintain, and support the HOSS (Hybrid Optimization Software Suite)
  • state-of-the-art combined finite-discrete element methodologies (FDEM) - consisting of finite element analysis (FEA) and discrete element methods (DEM)
    • non-locking finite element formulations for large deformation and large rotation
    • smooth contact algorithm
    • unified cohesive zone model
    • 1D spherical, 2D axisymmetric, and 2D/2.5D/3D cartesian solvers
  • Efficient parallelization engines
  • Integrated computational fluid dynamics
    • integrated solid-fluid interaction solver
    •  fluid-solid interaction solver
• Coupled hydro-thermo-mechanical reservoir modeling
• Advanced material modeling approaches based on hyper- and hypo-elastic elasto-plastic formulations.
• Integration of machine learning solutions for material modeling and fracture propagation purposes.
• Extension of the numerical platforms to new computing architectures, such as GPGPU.

Primary Expertise

• Computational Mechanics, including continuum-based, discontinuum-based, fluid dynamics, and discrete particle physics.
• Advanced software engineering solutions for grand challenge simulation platforms for the future.
• Geomechanical material science.
• Coupling frameworks to connect different numerical solvers, i.e., HOSS-to-reservoir, HOSS-to-radiation solver, HOSS-to-CFD, etc.

Featured Research

• Mars impact analysis
  • Froment, M., Rougier, E., Larmat, C., Lei, Z., Euser, B., Kedar, S., et al. (2020). Lagrangian-based simulations of hypervelocity impact experiments on Mars regolith proxy. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL087393. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087393
• Earthquake rupture modeling
  • Jara Jorge, Bruhat Lucile, Thomas Marion Y., Antoine Solène L., Okubo Kurama, Rougier Esteban, Rosakis Ares J., Sammis Charles G., Klinger Yann, Jolivet Romain and Bhat Harsha S. 2021 Signature of transition to supershear rupture speed in the coseismic off-fault damage zoneProc. R. Soc. A.4772021036420210364http://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2021.0364
  • Klinger, Y., Okubo, K., Vallage, A., Champenois, J., Delorme, A., Rougier, E., et al. (2018). Earthquake damage patterns resolve complex rupture processes. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 10,279– 10,287. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078842
• Hypervelocity impact paper
  • Caldwell, W.K.; Euser, B.; Plesko, C.S.; Larmat, C.; Lei, Z.; Knight, E.E.; Rougier, E.; Hunter, A. Benchmarking Numerical Methods for Impact and Cratering Application. Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 2504. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11062504
• Special Issue on Computational Particle Mechanics
  • Rougier, E., Knight, E.E. & Munjiza, A. Special issue titled “combined finite discrete element method and virtual experimentation”. Comp. Part. Mech. 7, 763 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-020-00364-z