Geomechanica is looking forward to presenting some recent research and development at the 49th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium (ARMA 2015) , to be held at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, California, from June 28 to July 1, 2015.

On Saturday June 27, 2015, Dr. Bryan Tatone will be offering a short course on the use of the hybrid finite-discrete element method (FEMDEM) to simulate fracture processes in rocks. The course will cover the theoretical principles of the numerical method and will offer the opportunity to gain valuable “hands-on” experience using Geomechanica’s pre-released Irazu FEMDEM software . We encourage petroleum, mining, geological and geotechnical engineers, graduate and post-graduate students with an interest in brittle rock behaviour to attend this short course.

The complete conference technical program can be found here . The topics of our oral presentations deal with the numerical simulation of hydraulic fracturing, discontinuity shearing behaviour, rock reinforcement, and thermo-mechanical wellbore instability within an FEMDEM framework. The specific titles include:

• Paper 299 – 3D simulation of fluid-pressure-induced fracture nucleation
• Paper 302 – Verification of the implementation of rock-reinforcement elements in numerical analyses based on the hybrid combined finitediscrete element method (FDEM)
• Paper 304 – A combined experimental (micro-CT) and numerical (FDEM) methodology to study rock joint asperities subjected to direct shear
• Paper 421 – FDEM modelling of thermo-mechanical wellbore instabilities within shale formations