Mei Li, a PhD candidate under the supervision of Professor Giovanni Grasselli, secured second place at the recent 2024 Canadian Geotechnical Society-Southern Ontario Section Graduate Student Competition. The competition, held by our Department Friday, January 19, included representatives from institutions from Southern Ontario: Toronto Metropolitan, U of T, Waterloo; York, Western, and McMaster.
In her presentation titled ‘Utilizing High-Resolution Imaging and Machine Learning to Characterize Fracture Network Generated by Laboratory True-Triaxial Hydraulic Fracturing,’ Mei presented new findings that contribute to our understanding of how subsurface fracture complexity is generated. This was achieved through the quantitative characterization of the geometry of a shale fracture network artificially induced by laboratory hydraulic fracturing testing.