Matteo’s research interest is in theoretical soil mechanics, rock mechanics, and environmental geomechanics, as well as in theory of plasticity. His current projects deal with crushable soils, hydro- and chemo-plasticity of soft rocks, and in general in mechanics of materials composed of chemically reacting solids and liquids. The above subjects involve mathematical modelling and model-driven laboratory experiments. In particular to develop coupled constitutive models for soft-rocks and soils innovative approaches to uncouple processes at the laboratory scale are required. In particular, Matteo has developed methodologies to uncouple plastic mechanisms induced by hydro-chemo-mechanical weathering processes and crushing/breakage in soils by means of ad-hoc experimental tests. Matteo is also active in numerical modelling. His expertise includes standard Finite Element formulations and the Discrete Element Method. Matteo he has recently started to use the Particle Finite Element Method to model-driven piles in geomaterials in collaboration with the Barcelona UPC group.
– Aug 2017 -> Ongoing:
Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering in the School of Science and Engineering at Dundee University.
– 1 Feb 2018 -> 31 Dec 2018:
Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales (Australia): – invited to collaborate in a project with a number of universities and industry partners looking at liquefaction of mine tailings.
– Oct 2015 -> Sept 2017
Imperial College Research Fellow
– Feb 2013 -> Sept 2015:
Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.
– March 2013:
PhD at the Politecnico di Milano
– Sustainable Chemical Consolidants as an alternative to Portland cement grouting: Experiments and Numerical Methods £2.5k – funding body: Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering, SRPe-PECRE (2018-2019).
– On the Critical State of crushable materials using LAMMPS: CIRRUS Scottish Academic Access (1,000,000.0 CPUhs) – EPSRC Tier2 platform.
– Numerical models of driven pile installation in chalk for offshore renewables £5k – funding body: Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering, SRPe-PECRE fund (2017-2018).
Titles of undergoing PhD projects I am supervising:
1. DEM modelling of dynamic penetration tests in crushable soils
2. Borehole stability in rock salt
3. Stability of trees under lateral loading from natural hazards
Ciantia, M. O., Boschi, K., Shire, T. & Emam, S. (2018) Numerical techniques for fast DEM large-scale model generation, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Engineering and Computational Mechanics (accepted)
Castellanza, R., Lollino, P. and Ciantia, M., (2018). A methodological approach to assess the hazard of underground cavities subjected to environmental weathering. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 82, pp.278-292.
Ciantia, M.O., Castellanza, R. and Fernandez-Merodo, J.A., (2018). A 3D Numerical Approach to Assess the Temporal Evolution of Settlement Damage to Buildings on Cavities Subject to Weathering. Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, pp.1-24.
Ciantia, M.O., Arroyo, M., O’Sullivan, C., Gens, A. and Liu, T., (2018). Grading evolution and critical state in a discrete numerical model of Fontainebleau sand. Géotechnique, pp.1-15.
Hueckel, T., Ciantia, M., Mielniczuk, B., El Youssouffi, M.S. and Hu, L.B., 2017, May. Modeling physico-chemical degradation of mechanical properties to assess resilience of geomaterials. In International Workshop on Bifurcation and Degradation in Geomaterials (pp. 65-79). Springer, Cham.
