Our Team
Our Team
Geo-Resources and Geotechnical Laboratory
What's New
April 2021 – Check out our latest paper on the effect of 3D states of stress on the hydraulic fracturing processes, written with my former PhD student Dr. Gayani Gunarathna. The paper discusses the experimental results obtained in triaxial tests conducted in granite with real-time visual and acoustic emission monitoring.
January 2021 – Check out our most recent paper on using a geometric, mechanics-based, stochastic model - FracProp - that was developed to predict fracture initiation and propagation in rock.
May 2020 – Congratulations Dr. Gayani Gunarathna! Gayani defended her PhD Dissertation with great success and confidence! Her thesis work is a true contribution to the community of rock mechanics and material science. We miss her in the lab, but wish her the best of luck as she is joining WSP USA to work as a Geotechnical Engineer.
May 2019 - Check out our most recent paper evaluating the effect of vertical stresses on the hydraulic fracture initiation pressures in worldwide Enhaned Geothermal Systems and US hydrocarbon projects.
2018-2019 – Dr. Goncalves da Silva is the co-chair of the 2019 American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) Symposium, to be held in New York City, between June 23 and 26. Stay tuned at http://www.armasymposium.org/
12/1/2018 – Ehsan Mehryaar is joining the Geo-resources and Geotechnical Laboratory in January 2019, from Noshirvani University of Technology, Iran. Welcome, Ehsan!
8/1/2018 – US Department of Transportation through the University Research Centers awarded research contract to project “Improving the Durability and Extending the Life of Transportation Infrastructure”. Dr. Gonçalves da Silva is co-PI in the project “Structural Fire Resistance of Tunnels Considering Soil-Liner-Tunnel Interaction”
8/1/2018 – Catarina Pereira is joining the Geo-resources and Geotechnical Laboratory in September 2018, with a MSc in Petroleum Engineering and a BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal. Welcome, Catarina!
5/9/2018 – Dr. Gonçalves da Silva was joined by Dr. Michael Fehler, Deputy-Director of the Earth Resources Laboratory at MIT, as the invited speakers in the Technology and Society Forum at NJIT. The topic of the talks was “Can humans create earthquakes?”
07/01/2017 – NSF awarded research grant #1738081 to PI Dr. Gonçalves da Silva to study the “Effect of the Triaxial State of Stress in the Connectivity of Hydraulically-Created Fractures in Crystalline Rocks".
06/25/2017 – Dr. Gonçalves da Silva is one of the speakers in the Hydraulic Fracturing Workshop during the ARMA symposium in San Francisco. The presentation is entitled “HF monitoring with image and acoustic emission”.
12/1/2016 – Gayani Gunarathna is joining the Geo-resources and Geotechnical Laboratory in January 2017, with a MSc in Structural Design from Kingston University, UK and a BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Welcome, Gayani!