Postdoctoral position for 2009
Extended Finite Element Method applied to
geological faults

Job description

A postdoctoral research position in numerical method is currently available for 1 year term in the Department of Structural Geology of IFP. The research focuses on the design of a new enrichment of the displacement field to account for discontinuity of geological faults, including the intersections between the fault surfaces. The resulting new Extended Finite Element Method (X-FEM) will have to be adapted to the modeling of large sliding along non smooth and frictional fault surfaces, by exploiting previous work on the coupling between X-FEM and a large sliding contact algorithm. In order to produce a robust and convergent algorithm to solve the mechanical equilibrium, a particular attention will be paid to the numerical conditioning of the linear system and to the satisfaction of the LBB condition which relates the space of contact Lagrange multipliers to that of displacement.

 The advantages of the method will be demonstrated on a model of the tectonic deformation of a sedimentary basin. The new method developed during this postdoctoral stage should be highly attractive for many engineering domains with complex rupture surfaces. The main geological application which concern IFP is the characterization of subsurface sedimentary basins and reservoirs which are involved in CO2 storage and hydrocarbon production.

This work involves collaboration with EDF/R&D and the GeM laboratory of Ecole Centrale Nantes. Numerical implementation will be realized in the GNU GPL FEM code of EDF/R&D Code_Aster (http://www.code-aster.org/). The student will be located in the Department of Structural Geology of IFP, benefiting from the strong interdisciplinarity of this research group composed of geologists and mechanical engineers. He will also interact with Pr. Moës of GeM who is an international expert of X-FEM and with engineers of EDF/R&D for the restitution of his work in Code_Aster.

The remuneration is 3000 € gross per month plus 500 € if the candidate has not defended his PhD in France.

The applicant should have defended a PhD within the past two years in related areas and have expertise in FEM development and programming in Fortran and object-oriented languages like Python. Education in non-linear mechanics, fracture and or contact mechanics will be appreciated, and knowledge in structural geology will be considered but not mandatory. The candidate will be asked to have strong motivation, to contribute to the supervision of a Master student and to write an article in English for an international journal.

Candidates are kindly asked to submit applications, including a curriculum vitae and a list of publications and references via e-mail, to Dr. Martin Guiton  (martin.guiton@ifp.fr).

Contact :   Dr. Martin GUITON

IFP/ Structural Geology Department

1 à 4 av. de Bois-Préau

92852 Rueil-Malmaison Cedex

France

Email: martin.guiton@ifp.fr

Employer's web site: http://www.ifp.fr/