Itasca Consultants S.A.S.

In a few words

Founded in 1991, ITASCA CONSULTANTS S.A.S. is the European subsidiary of HCItasca, Inc. a group of international experts in numerical modeling that provides computer modeling solutions to further understanding and resolve current engineering-related problems in the following fields.

GEOTECHNICS AND NATURAL HAZARDS

Design, analysis and audit of projects such as tunnels, foundations, dams, slopes, reinforcements, excavations, etc.

Project examples

WASTE DISPOSAL

Analysis of the fracture and damage of materials, flow and transport of particles.

Project examples

MATERIALS AND PROCESS ENGINEERING

Water resources management in porous and fractured media; Pollution diagnostics and design of methods for the decontamination of polluted sites.

HYDROGEOLOGY AND GEOCHEMISTRY

Water resources management in porous and fractured media; Pollution diagnostics and design of methods for the decontamination of polluted sites.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Custom software development based on existing ITASCA codes.

ITASCA develops and sells three classes of two- and three-dimensional codes dedicated to the modeling of:

Continuous media (FLAC and FLAC3D)
Discontinuous media (UDEC and 3DEC)
Granular media (PFC2D and PFC3D)

	FLAC / FLAC3D	UDEC / 3DEC	PFC	3FLO
Geotechnics and natural hazards	•	•	•
Hydrogeology and Geochemistry				•
Waste disposal	•	•	•	•
Materials and process engineering			•

THE STAFF

Among the 70 engineers who work for HCItasca worldwide, the following are ITASCA CONSULTANTS, S.A.S.:

Daniel BILLAUX
d.billaux@itasca.fr
Managing Director
Dr. Billaux's expertise is in numerical modeling, fractured rock hydrogeology and geomechanics. He has developed and applied numerical models to simulate the flow of water in fractured rock. He has been a program manager for projects in the area of nuclear waste storage and geothermal energy and has provided consulting on many mining and civil engineering projects.

Céline BOURDEAU
c.bourdeau@itasca.fr
Numerical modeling for stability studies in static and dynamic conditions
Dr. Bourdeau has worked on the characterization of the triggering factors of earthquake-induced landslides in dry and wet environments in El Salvador (Las Colinas landslide, 2001) and in Kyrgyzstan (Suusamyr landslide, 1992; Kainama landslide, 2004). She has studied the static response of reinforced slopes in Morocco and geogrid efficiency to prevent the local collapse of a road located above an ancient mine likely to fail in Eastern France. Dr. Bourdeau has participated in several dam studies in Morocco that included thermo-hydro-mechanical processes and reinforcement elements and has studied fracture development in a possible site for nuclear waste disposal in the Northeast of France.

Caroline DARCEL
c.darcel@itasca.fr
Hydrogeological modeling
Dr. Darcel has worked on geometrical characterization and hydrogeological modeling of fractured media. She has focused on the multi-scale properties of network fractures, characterized by power-law fracture size distributions and fractal spatial density distributions. Dr. Darcel also has developed unsaturated flow codes.

Fabian DEDECKER
f.dedecker@itasca.fr
Numerical modeling & soil and rock mechanics
Dr. Dedecker is a civil engineer with over 8 years of experience in the geotechnical and mechanical engineering fields. His areas of specialization are nuclear-waste disposal research, the static and dynamic stability of rock dams, and the study of flow in fractured rock masses, based mainly on discrete approaches.

Yoann Hebert
y.hebert@itasca.fr
Numerical modelling in geomechanics.
Yoann Hebert has worked on the determination of the mechanical properties of a soil by inverse analysis, during the digging of a tunnel in Toulon (France). He has performed a stability analysis of a 30 years old cavern, and participated in mechanical study of a rock fill dam, constructed above a concrete gallery.

Romain LE GOC
r.legoc@itasca.fr
Numerical modeling in hydrogeology
Mr Le Goc works on numerical modeling of fractured media. He is a graduate engineer in computer sciences and has gain experience in a unit of research in hydrogeology (France). He is skilled in grasping natural media issues and developing efficient numerical models. He has worked on the inverse problem in hydrogeology for highly channelled flow in heterogeneous media. He has participated in discrete fractured network modeling for a nuclear-waste disposal site (Sweden).