We’re delighted to report that Gonçalo Cunha has passed his PhD viva for his thesis titled “Rock single rough fractures: Spatial continuity applications, coupled Thermo-Hydraulic-Mechanical-Chemical numerical models and their validation against experiments”. Gonçalo was supervised by Alex Bond at Quintessa and Chris McDermott and Andrew Fraser Harris at the University of Edinburgh. He was an active member of Task G (SAFENET) in DECOVALEX-2023, and his PhD work was co-funded by Nuclear Waste Services and the University of Edinburgh.
Gonçalo’s work has been published as part of synthesis work for the DECOVALEX task and as well as individual papers. The work has provided valuable insights into the methods we use to describe fracture aperture geometry and how to describe connectivity of fracture apertures, both aspects being critical for fundamental understanding of fracture permeability. This topic has a wide interest for fractured rock masses in geo-engineering applications, but particularly when considering describing fracture permeability evolution adjacent to potential deep geological radioactive waste repositories. Such work has helped support the UK and international research base in understanding coupled processes in fractured potential host rocks.
We wish Gonçalo all the best in his future career, and we expect that the valuable experience he gained being part of DECOVALEX, as well as the supervision by Alex, Chris and Andrew will stand him in good stead.