Laboratory of Mechanics and Technology

Research at the LMT is devoted to the modeling of solids and structures (mechanics of materials, experimental mechanics, numerical simulation and high-performance computing) in a multi-scale, multi-physics and multi-technique context.

Our goal in RESPORE is to catalyze our comprehension of the physical phenomena that control the behavior of Civil Engineering porous materials in order to improve our understanding of the behavior of current materials and to design new, more efficient materials with, for example, controlled performance specifications with respect to the : 

• Volume stability and mechanical performance in environments with variable temperature and relative humidity ;
• Confinement capacity of materials used as barriers, such as in waste storage facilities; as well as in the thermal performance of building envelopes ;
• Environmental balance (grey energy, emission and storage of greenhouse gases) ;
• Aging civil engineering materials in order to extent the durability of materials and structures.

The research themes concerned are :

• Civil engineering porous materials, especially cement-based and biobased materials;
• Dimensional variations related to hydro-chemo-thermo-mechanical loads;
• Multiscale modeling (molecular and granular simulation, micromechanics, particle lattice) of the mechanical, thermal, transfer and dielectric properties of porous materials;
• 2D, 3D and 4D multi-technique characterization (microtomography, digital surface and volume image correlation, environmental SEM, FIB-SEM); 
• Coupling cracking permeability.