{"id":6763,"date":"2026-04-13T15:21:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/?p=6763"},"modified":"2026-04-13T15:25:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:25:31","slug":"zenan-huo-high-resolution-material-point-method-development-and-application-to-landslide-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/zenan-huo-high-resolution-material-point-method-development-and-application-to-landslide-dynamics\/","title":{"rendered":"Zenan Huo : “High-Resolution Material Point Method: Development and Application to Landslide Dynamics”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"image\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Zenan Huo<\/strong>
Director: Prof. Dr. Michel Jaboyedoff<\/em>,
Co-director : Prof. Dr. Yury Podladchikov
Jury: Prof. Dr. Giovanni Crosta, Prof. Dr. Johan Gaume, Dr. Ivan Utkin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing at the intersection of rapidly advancing computing hardware and emerging scientific programming languages such as Julia, numerical simulation development is undergoing a significant transition. This thesis presents a high-performance, end-to-end framework for post-failure landslide simulation based on the Material Point Method (MPM), integrating geometric preprocessing, backend-agnostic solver design, and real-case application into a unified workflow. To address the bottle-neck of structured particle generation, a multi-context framework is developed, providing identification of heterogeneous zones, with theoretical error analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typical models with over one hundred million material particles can be produced within seconds, enabling efficient, flexible, and reproducible high-resolution MPM preprocessing. To ensure performance portability across heterogeneous hardware, a backend-agnostic explicit solver is introduced, allowing a single code base to run efficiently on CPUs and diverse hardware accelerators. An effective memory-throughput metric is proposed to quantify the memory-bound characteristics of MPM relative to hardware peak bandwidth, providing a measurable connection between algorithmic structure and hardware performance. The integrated workflow is applied to the 2011 Akatani landslide in Japan, where a realistic failure surface is reconstructed from pre- and post-event DEMs using the sloping local base level (SLBL) method. Apparent basal friction parameters are selected using the empirical \u0394\ud835\udc4c\/\ud835\udc4d\u2013volume relation, and 56 high-resolution simulations are performed to systematically examine the roles of volume, basal friction, and strength parameters in controlling runout dynamics and deposition patterns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quantitative evaluation demonstrates that SLBL-derived failure geometry combined with \u0394\ud835\udc4c\/\ud835\udc4d-based apparent parameters can effectively reproduce the observed landslide kinematics, offering a practical modeling strategy when only pre-event DEMs are available. Overall, this thesis establishes an efficient, scalable, and reproducible paradigm for high-resolution MPM-based landslide simulation and provides a solid methodological and computational foundation for extending MPM toward real-world hazard assessment.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctoral dissertation in Earth Sciences, defended on February 11, 2026, by Zenan Huo, affiliated with the Institute of Earth Sciences (ISTE) at the FGSE.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zenan HuoDirector: Prof. Dr. Michel Jaboyedoff,Co-director : Prof. Dr. Yury PodladchikovJury: Prof. Dr. Giovanni Crosta, Prof. Dr. Johan Gaume, Dr. Ivan Utkin Standing at the intersection of rapidly advancing computing … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,81,73760],"tags":[75247,75241,75205],"class_list":{"0":"post-6763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog","7":"category-news","8":"category-theses_completed","9":"tag-75247","10":"tag-mpm","11":"tag-these-completed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6783,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763\/revisions\/6783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}