newsletter civelsurv env 2015

7/24/2019 Newsletter CivelSurv Env 2015

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No. 28

October

2015

CivSurvEnv

ENGINE

ERING

NE

WSLETT

ER

www.newcastle.edu.au

The most significant change in theDiscipline during 2014 - 2015 were theappointments of Shin-Chan Han to theSurveying Chair and In-Young Yeo to the

Senior Lecturer position inEnvironmental/Surveying Engineering.Shin-Chan joined the Discipline in January2015, he has a PhD from Ohio StateUniversity and brings with him many yearsresearch experience from the NASAGoddard Space Flight Centre. His researchfield is space geodesy, with special interestin the analysis of space geodeticmeasurements and theoretical modelling ofgeophysical processes that govern massdistribution and transport within the Earth

and the terrestrial planets. In-Youngcomes to us from Maryland University in

the USA where she held an Assistant Professorship.She is teaching undergraduate courses in bothenvironmental engineering and surveying at UoN.

The Discipline staff continued to thrive in bothresearch and teaching during 2014/2015. Scott Sloanwas elected Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) andFellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK);named NSW Scientist of the Year and one of the top100 most influential engineers by Engineers Australiain 2015.

Rob Melchers was awarded an Honorary Fellowshipby Engineers Australia with a dinner held in hishonour in May 2015.

Mark Stewart co-authored a second book onterrorism and security, Chasing Ghosts: The Policing ofTerrorism, to be published by Oxford University Presslater this year.

From late 2014 to mid 2015, the Discipline staff wereawarded five Australian Research Council (ARC)Discovery Projects and one ARC Linkage Project,clearly standing out as one of the top CivilEngineering Disciplines in Australia.

On the teaching side, the Discipline continued toattract the largest cohort of engineering students atthe University. Our graduates continue to rank ourteaching performance highly, with an overallsatisfaction score of 84.5 per cent, which places usamongst one of the top ones in Australia.

That is just a small taste of what has been happeningin the Discipline over the past year, read on to findout about all these achievements in full within thisNewsletter and no doubt you will be proud to beassociated with the Discipline.

Professor Daichao ShengHead, Discipline of Civil, Surveying &Environmental Engineering

A Few HoDRuminations

In this edition:

A Few HoD Ruminations Page 1

Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability (CIPAR) Page 4

Environmental and Water Engineering Roundup Page 8

Priority Research Centre for Geotechnical and Materials Modelling (CGMM)and CGSE

Page 13

Surveying Page 20

Laboratory Page 22

Staff 2015 Page 23

An Outstanding Year of Accomplishment for Laureate Prof Scott Sloan Page 2

New Professor Shin-Chan Han for Geodesy/Surveying Page 3


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at the inaugural NSW Premiers Prizes for Science andEngineering held at Government House in Sydney. Scott saidthat he was thrilled at the news of named NSW Scientist ofthe Year and highlighted it was a reflection of the quality of

the research work in geotechnical engineering that has beenachieved at UoN over the past 30 years.

"Being named NSW Scientist of the Year continues a greatyear of acknowledgment of my career and research. It alsoacknowledges the great geotechnical team at Newcastle, wholeads the world in its field and is home to a number ofoutstanding researchers of all ages," Scott said.

Premier Mike Baird of NSW congratulated Professor Sloanand said the benefits of his work would reverberate acrossthe world.

"His research is being used widely in the construction of arange of infrastructure, including roads, railway lines,tunnels, building foundations, dams, port facilities, pipelines,mining operations, as well as offshore oil and gas facilities.

"Our State is in the midst of a multi-billion dollarinfrastructure boom with a number of major projectscurrently underway and Professor Sloan's research willresult in those projects being completed more safely andmore cost effectively," Premier Baird said.

In addition, Scott was also elected by Engineers Australia as

one of Australias Top 100 Most Influential Engineers for2015 in May this year(http://engineerstop100.realviewtechnologies.com/#folio=16).

(See page 13 for more information about Laureate Professor Scott Sloanand the CGSE centre.)

This has been anoutstanding year ofaccomplishment forLaureate Professor Scott

Sloan.

Scott leads the Centre ofExcellence forGeotechnical Science andEngineering at UoN. Heis a pioneer of newmethods that enableengineers to predict thecollapse states ofgeostructures such astunnels, dams, highways

and foundations. Thesemethods have delivered anew tool for engineers todesign cheaper and safercivil infrastructure acrossthe globe. He also

pioneered the use of high-order elements for accuratepredictions with the standard finite element method, as usedin PLAXIS, as well as widely-used algorithms forimplementing practical soil models, generating meshes, andsolving large sets of finite element equations.

In May 2015, Scott was elected as a Fellow to the Royal

Society, which is a very rare honour for an Australianengineer. This scientific academy is the oldest in continuousexistence and has included past luminaries such as Sir IsaacNewton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.

Scotts election means that the CGSE now has the raredistinction of having two Fellows of the Royal Society asChief Investigators, with Mark Randolph from the UWAbeing the other.

The President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse saidscience and its application are at the core of so many aspectsof our modern lives. From treating infectious diseases, tobuilding safe bridges and tunnels, searching out life on otherplanets and even vacuuming our living rooms, science helpsus understand ourselves better and it makes our lives better.

In September 2015, Scott was elected as a one of only threenew international Fellows to the Royal Academy ofEngineering. The newly elected Fellows represent the best ofthe UK engineering profession, including technologists fromworld-leading engineering companies and distinguishedacademics from renowned research institutions. Three otherAustralians are amongst the 47 new fellows and 10 newForeign Members announced by the Royal Society in 2015: a

linguist and psychologist, an animal geneticist, and an earthscientist.

In October 2015, Scott was named NSW Scientist of the Year

An Outstanding Year of Accomplishment for LaureateProfessor Scott Sloan

Page 2No. 28

Scott Sloan admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Above: Scott Sloan signing theCharter Book of the Royal Society2015.


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Shin-Chan is also a winner of various prestigious awardsgiven by the American Geophysical Union, NASAHeadquarter, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USDepartment of the Interior, the American Congress onSurveying and Mapping, the Institute of Navigation, the

Ohio State University, and the South Korean government.

Since 2004, Shin-Chan has been participating as a scienceteam member for the Gravity Recovery And ClimateExperiment (GRACE) satellite mission. As a team member,he has demonstrated applicability of satellite geodetic data tovarious problems in the Earth sciences: many of them beingfirst-time applications. He has pioneered a number ofgeodetic techniques to process GRACE data and helped tomaximise the science return from the GRACE mission.

Shin-Chan gave a "UoN New Professor Talk" at NewcastleMuseum in July (hosted by UoN), entitled "Measuring ourrestless planet, Earth". The local community showed greatinterest and support for UoN geodesy/surveying research.All 160 seats were sold out!

After he joined UoN, Shin-Chan participated in the USNASA and German DLR's GRACE Science Team meetingheld at Austin, Texas in September 2015. He gave a talk onhis investigation on solid Earth deformation. Shin-Chan alsogave talks at the University of Tasmania in May and theAustralian National University in October.

Shin-Chan continues his research collaboration with NASA.

In September, he visited NASA GSFC to discuss the gravityinstrument development and the future Mars satellitemission for probing the atmosphere, climate, polar ice capsand time-variable gravity fields of Mars. The team membersfrom NASA GSFC geodesists and cryogenic engineers andUniversity of Maryland physicists met the NASA HQprogram manager and the industry people. They discussedthe present development of cryocooler and tensorgradiometer and future opportunities.

Shin-Chan said: "The UoN surveying program has beencontributing to the national and local community. I wouldlike to see the program expand especially responding to

growing demands on national infrastructure and on globalEarth observation research."

(see page 20 for more news about Shin-Chan Han.)

Professor Shin-Chan Han, from the NASA Goddard SpaceFlight Centre (GSFC), joined the Surveying group in January2015. His research focus is on the analysis of space geodeticmeasurements and theoretical modelling of geophysicalprocesses that govern mass distribution and transport withinthe Earth and the terrestrial planets.

Shin-Chan was born and grew up in South Korea. He waseducated originally in the field of Earth Science at the SeoulNational University, South Korea. In 1998, Shin-Chanstarted postgraduate work in the discipline of GeodeticScience and Surveying at the Ohio State University in theUnited States. After finishing his PhD in 2003, he stayed atthe Ohio State University for three years as a postdoc and

research scientist. In 2006, he accepted a position at NASAGoddard Space Flight Center to join the Space Geodesygroup.

Shin-Chans research focus is on the analysis of spacegeodetic measurements and theoretical modeling ofgeophysical processes that govern mass distribution andtransport within the Earth and the terrestrial planets. Hestarted out using GPS and other satellite rangingmeasurements to analyse spacecraft orbits as well as surfacedeformation and gravity fields of the Earth and recentlythose of the Moon and Mars. He endeavored to exploit spacegeodetic measurements to tackle various geophysical

problems, ranging from solid Earth, to terrestrial andatmospheric water, to ice mass and ocean, to ocean tides andbathymetry, to ionosphere, and to the gravity and topographyof the Moon and Mars.

Shin-Chan has demonstrated his ability to develop cross-disciplinary research program and establish collaborationwith scientists in various fields. He obtained a number ofresearch grants during his tenure in the US to pursueinterdisciplinary research in Geodesy and Satellite Surveyingfor the Earth and planets. During his tenure at NASA, a totalgrant was awarded over $2.4M and most of the funding was

secured as Chief Investigator. He has authored and co-authored a total 53 articles (32 lead authored plus 21 co-authored) and most of them published in top-tier journalsincluding one in Science.

New Professor Shin-Chan Han for Geodesy/Surveying

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Climate change and climate adaptationis increasingly an area of interest forMark Stewart. He leads the CSIROClimate Adaptation for Extreme EventsCluster (CAEx). The CAEx Cluster isassessing the impact of climate changeon damage and safety risks to

infrastructure, and assessing the cost-effectiveness of engineering adaptationstrategies. Mark is also leading researchon assessing vulnerability of buildingsto cyclones and extreme wind events.

Dr Paraic Ryan, a Research Academicworking with Mark in the Cluster, hasrecently taken up a lecturingappointment at National University ofGalway, Ireland. Lizhengli Peng hasjust about finished her PhD on theimpact of climate change on concrete

corrosion risks, and is currentlyworking as a Research Associate on anARC project with Mark and RobMelchers.

Mark Stewart continues to expand onhis terrorism and security risk research.Mark and John Mueller have finishedtheir second book Chasing Ghosts: ThePolicing of Terrorism to be published byOxford University Press on anappropriate day - Halloween 2015. Thebook focuses on the effectiveness andcosts of police and intelligence servicessuch as the FBI, NYPD and NSA, andthe nature of the terrorist threat to theUnited States. The book is aimed atgeneral readership, and will retail forapproximately $40. The book will be

officially launched at functions inWashington D.C. and New York inNovember.

Mark has recently secured U.S.Department of Homeland Security(DHS) funding to conduct a risk andcost-benefit analysis of aviation

security measures. In July 2015 at aDHS and Transportation SecurityAdminist ra tion avia tion securi tyconference in Los Angeles, he was aninvited speaker and the only foreignspeaker at the 2-day event. Mark wasalso an invited speaker at Security inGovernment and Safeguarding Australiasummits recently held in Canberra.

Michael Netherton and Mark Stewartcontinue to work on blast load

va ri ab il ity and vu lnerabi li ty ofinfrastructure to explosive blastloading. Michael will be conductingexplosive field trials at a localAustralian Defence Force facility laterthis year with the able assistance of 4thYear project s tudents DavidMcWilliam, Matthew Kerry and BenCoburg.

Yufeng Shi has just completed hisPhD on structural reliability ofreinforced concrete structures subject

to explosive blast loads. WingCommander Matt Grant is a part-time

PhD student working on system andreliability analysis of ImprovisedExplosive Devices, and thus how theymay be safely defused or managed in a

hostile environment. He is currentlybased at RAAF Base Edinburgh (nearAdelaide) as Commanding Officer forthe maintenance of P3C-Orion aircraftfor the Maritime Surveillance Group.

Not surprisingly, Mark Stewart is now co-leader of the recently establishedUniversitys Defence and SecurityResearch and Innovation Hub. The Hubaims to encourage greater engagementbetween the University and the defence

industry in the Newcastle and the HunterRegion. It also aims to engage moreactively with police and securityproviders tasked with counter-terrorismand personal and physical security.

Marks new book ChasingGhosts: The Policing of Terror-ism.

Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability(CIPAR)

CSIRO FlagshipCluster Climate

AdaptationEngineering forExtreme Events

Defence and

Security

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Members of the Masonry Research Group, from left to right, Dari-usz Alterman, Adrian Page, Mark Masia, Goran Simundic, YuriTotoev, Akhtar Hossain, Reza Forghani and Clive Allen.

The Masonry Research Group is part of the Centre forInfrastructure Performance and Reliability and is activelyinvolved in both teaching and research activities withinthe university. The group includes Mark Masia, YuriTotoev, Goran Simundic and Adrian Page, who despiteretiring in 2006, is still active in masonry research andhas maintained his close links with industry, includingcontinuing as Chairman of the AS3700 MasonryStructures Code Committee. Mark Stewart is alsoactively involved in the work of the group with hisresearch into the structural reliability of unreinforcedmasonry.

The research of the group covers areas related toearthquake performance and structural strengthening,lateral loading, wall tie design, material development andtesting, structural reliability and thermal performance of

housing via a number of ARC and industry (Think BrickAustralia) funded projects. Supporting the researchefforts of the group are several research staff andpostgraduate students. Dariusz Alterman is a SeniorResearch Fellow studying the thermal performance ofmasonry housing. This project is aimed at establishingthe optimum combination of thermal resistance andthermal mass for walling systems in housing to reducetheir dependency on artificial heating and cooling. Jie Lirecently submitted her PhD thesis for examination. Jieinvestigated the effects of spatial variability of materialproperties on the strength of masonry walls. Zhiyu(Summer) Wang (PhD), Reza Forghani (MPhil) and

Akhtar Hossain (PhD) are studying the strength andserviceability performance of a system of semiinterlocking masonry (SIM) developed by Yuri Totoev.

During May, Goran Simundic, Dariusz Alterman and AdrianPage attended the 12thNorth American Masonry Conference inDenver, Colorado, with papers being presented on the flexuralperformance of stack bonded masonry, the use of fibres inmasonry mortar, and the thermal performance of Australianhousing. This international involvement continues the longtradition of research collaboration with researchers in the UnitedStates, Canada and a number of European countries.

In February 2017, The Masonry Research Group, incollaboration with Think Brick Australia, will host the 10thAustralasian Masonry Conference. This successful conferenceseries began in 1991, chaired by Professor Adrian Page and hasbecome the lead forum for the exchange of masonry researchand innovation in the Australasian region over the past 25 years.

Masonry Research Group

The 3rd International Conference on ProtectiveStructures (ICPS3) was held in Newcastle in Februarythis year. There were over 90 presentations, and 110registrants. Approximately 50% of attendees were fromAustralia with an excellent turnout from DSTO anddefence, and the remainder from 19 countries. Therewas a very good mix of defence, industry and academewhich made for stimulating presentations anddiscussions. The featured speaker was Air Vice-MarshalKym Koz Osley AM, CSC (retd.) who spoke on thetopic The Science of Breaking People's Stuff: AWarfighter's Perspective. The conference banquet washeld at Fort Scratchley, and a highlight was the firing ofthe 6-inch guns. ICPS3 was chaired by Mark Stewart,and Michael Netherton acted as Conference Secretary.The conference proceedings is available on-line as anopen access publications:http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1058001

Firing guns at Fort Scratchley in the 3rd International Conferenceon Protective Structures, Newcastle, February 2015.



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Memorial Walk between Strzelecki and Bar Beach

Page 6No. 28

The industrial research project on the corrosion of mooringchains and wire ropes used by the offshore industry to moorso-called FPSOs in deep waters was concluded earlier thisyear, after more than four years effort. It included corrosionexposure tests for samples of the very high strength steelsused for the chains. Test sites were at Darwin, Taylors Beachand in Tasmania. Dr Robert Jeffrey managed the testingprogram. It presented many challenges, including how totransport, deploy and recover full-size links and to measuretheir corrosion loss. Links measured from 76 mm diameterof the steel (overall link length about 450mm) to themaximum sized links available at the time the program wasstarted of 150mm diameter steel, some 900mm long andnearly 200kg in weight, for just one link!

Another part of the project was to do with wear betweenlinks. For this we built a unique testing structure consisting

of a 10m long lever arm with up to 40 tonne weight tosupply, at the other end up to 400 tonne axial tension on aset of five links with the central one being displaced sidewaysat about 5-second intervals by a 50 tonne hydraulic jack.

Our laboratory staff (and in particular Andy Sullivan,Michael Goodwin and Ross Gibson) did a marvellous jobbuilding much of the rig and its electronic control system.After the wear tests were started we discovered that whenthe wear surfaces were wet the wearing process made anincredible amount of noise - contrary to our expectationswhich were that water would aid reducing friction. Well, itdid reduce friction but the noise! Fortunately it lasts onlyabout some 5000 cycles. But it did mean the tests all had tobe run at night so as not to annoy others and to obviateOH&S issues. However this in turn means the need for aremote monitoring system and automatic shut-down systemsin case something went wrong with no-one around.

For much of this work Dr Igor Chaves managed the testingprogram and the measurement of wear. Igor also wasinvolved in measuring the corrosion inside wire rope (up to100 mm diameter) with AMOG Consulting staff at Molycopcheck, the wire rope manufacturer in Newcastle, and theonly Australian industry partner in this international project.

The study was set up through the international FPSPResearch Forum and paid for by nearly all the maininternational classification societies (e.g., Det Norske Veritas,Bureau Veritas and American Bureau of Shipping), major oilcompanies (e.g., Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, BP and Total), aswell as a number of related industrial partners includingVicinay the internationally leading Spanish chain maker thatsupplied the samples of chains for the project and three wirerope manufacturers including Newcastle's Molycop.

Prof Rob Melchers spent a lot of time travelling tointernational meetings (often in Houston) to explain thetesting program, results as they became available and the

development of theory on which to hang the experimentalresults.

PhD student Clive Allen (supervised by Mark Masia andAdrian Page) has spent much of 2015 conducting a majorexperimental testing program to study the behaviour duringearthquakes of masonry shear walls with window and dooropenings (Figure below). The work ties into a broadercollaboration between the universities of Newcastle,Adelaide and Auckland which focuses on the seismicassessment of unreinforced masonry buildings.

Staff from the masonry research group are involved inundergraduate teaching across the full range of structuralengineering courses including an elective course (ResidentialFootings, Masonry and Timber Design) taught by MarkMasia. Dr John Mullard from Lindsay Dynan also played alarge role in our undergraduate teaching again in 2015,teaching courses in steel design, concrete design and final

year structural design project. Johns experience in bringingreal life design practice into the class room is invaluable andthankfully acknowledged.

In August, former Newcastle graduate Mark Sturgess fromNorthrop Consulting Engineers offered his time to speak tostudents and staff about the structural design of theMemorial Walk between Strzelecki and Bar Beach. Thislandmark project presented the perfect opportunity for Markto remind students that simple design and hand calculationcan be every bit as powerful as advanced structural analysisand to emphasize the importance of communication andcooperation in engineering projects.

Cyclic in-plane shear wall test. Superimposed onto the photo-graph are strain contours generated via digital image correlation,which is used to record wall movements and study the evolu-tion of damage during the 5 to 6 hour duration cyclic test.

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on the validity of the so-called Linear PolarizationTechnique used by Sydney Water and Hunter Water (and afew other water utilities). The other part of this work is theprediction of the likely size of any holes formed as a resultof corrosion. PhD student Zohreh Soltani Asadi is makinggood progress with this.

Research on more fundamental aspects continues, largelyfunded by the Australian Research Council . We (Melchersand Jeffrey) are concluding a study of inland corrosion ofsteels and the possible effect of microbial corrosion,working on the detailed microbiological aspects withmicrobiologists at Curtin University. The study has involvedquite different exposure 10 sites, inland and near the coast.Robert Jeffrey and Ian Jeans in particular are pleased thefield work is over - plodding through feet-deep cow manureat the dairy farm site is not all that exciting. We are alsoworking on the interaction of pitting corrosion and generalcorrosion loss as a function of time - measured in years -and the influence of steel composition. This is somewhat

related to the research PhD student Daniel Wang is workingon for the internal corrosion of water-injection pipelinesused by the offshore industry for injecting waste or seawaterinto nearly depleted wells so as to extract more oil or gas.Internal corrosion is a major issue but the precise resinshave eluded the industry, with most blame being placed atthe foot of microbiological activity. Our research shows thismay be involved but it is unlikely to be the primary reasonfor the severe '6-o'clock' corrosion sometimes observed.

Recently 'Liz' Mengxia Kiang, a new research student fromChina and Mogtaba Mokhtan started as new researchstudents supervised by Rob Melchers. In the meantimeAmin Lotfollahi Yaghin and Ali Rajabipour submitted theirPhD theses on chain wear and on stress intensities andassociated cracking in pipes resulting from pitting corrosionrespectively.

As usual, members of the team have been busy presentingtheir work at conferences, including the AustralasianCorrosion Conference, International Conference onThinwalled Structures, International Offshore and PolarEngineering Conference, International Conference on Safetyand Reliability of Civil Engineering systems, ACMSM 2014,Eurocorr2015 and others.

The results from the study are now being used as the basisfor developing new practical rules for the design and for thecondition assessment of chain and wire rope moorings. Themajor break-through is that corrosion and wear are beingseparated, and allowance is being made for water quality(pollution) that makes corrosion worse. The practicalversions of the new rule proposals are being developed byBureau Veritas on behalf of the international consortium thatfunded the project. Australian consulting firm AMOGConsultants coordinated the project and our researchersworked closely with them in developing the test program andin ensuring delivery of the outcomes.

There is no doubt that all of the international projectparticipants are now well aware of the existence of theUniversity of Newcastle in Australia (as distinct fromNewcastle Uni in the UK with which we are often confused).

And our corrosion research is certainly seen as world-leading.As proof of that, we have received 'best paper' awards atinternational conferences, invitations for keynote lectures.Also as a result of this we are now involved with a newproject for mooring chains that looks specifically atmicrobiological influences on marine, mainly working withmicrobiologists at University of Arizona and several UK usedresearchers. This again was orchestrated by AMOGConsultants and is funded through the Deepstar consortiumof companies involved in offshore oil and gas explorationand development.

The other major industry project, running now for some fouryears and more to come, is about the exterior corrosion ofcast iron (and steel) water mains. Many of these are morethan 100 years old (we have one sample 129 years old) andtheir failure can have significant cost - direct and indirect -for water utilities. A research consortium of Australian waterutilities, led by Sydney Water, that includes Monash, UTS andNewcastle has been working on various aspects of theproblem. Our focus on corrosion of cast iron and steels invarious soils has led the utilities adopting new protocols fordata collection and for measuring in-situ soil properties. Theresults are now coming to fruition.

Using also research derived from our long involvement inseawater corrosion and the effects of various forms ofpollution we have found that microbiologically influencedcorrosion, long suspected as involved for in-groundcorrosion, is a significant influence for cast iron pipes. Aresearch report authored by Dr Robert Petersen and RobMelchers on this has just appeared. It shows that,unfortunately, many of the existing data bases are incompleteand thus of little use in helping to develop mathematicalmodels for predicting likely corrosion. Fortunately we nowhave good quality data for some 36 pipes, thanks to theproject and the efforts of staff at Sydney Water and HunterWater.

The other part of this project is to develop better tools forpredicting corrosion along lengths of pipe. Dr Tony Wellshas been working on this and the first task was to throw light

Corrosion


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The most significant announcement from the group this year

is the appointment of Dr In-Young Yeo as a replacementfor Stewart Franks. In-Young is a joint appointment with thesurveying group and comes to us with a background inremote sensing and water resources (see separate article).Patricia Saco has started her ARC Future Fellowship($855,460) and a replacement teaching position inecohydrology has been recruited and will arrive later this year.

As has been the case for the last few years our industrial andapplied water resources work continues to be focussed onclimate change impact and adaptation. Most of our researchsponsors have accepted that they need to be on top of thepotential risks for their business, and are focussed on what

might be needed in the way of changed operational policies,and/or potential infrastructure changes/investments(typically in conjunction with on-going investments for otherpriorities). This has involved a deepening collaboration withresearchers in our Environmental Processes Group in EarthSciences who work on natural climate variability.

Our blue-sky activities continue to be focussed on theinteraction between ecology/environment and water. Thisparallels developments internationally where one of thebiggest unknowns in climate change trends is the role of theinteraction between the land and the atmosphere and this islargely driven by a lack of sufficient knowledge of how soil

water and vegetation interact.

Conjoint Associate Professor Jeff Gleeson (BE Civil, 1976)continues to lead our final year Civil Engineering WaterEngineering Design class, although given the class size he hasbeen ably assisted by Daniel Turnbull (BE Civil, 2000). Weare grateful to their newly privatised employer Hunter H2Ofor supporting their continued involvement in Design. Jeff

has now been leading water design since its inception in ourCivil program around 30 years (nobody can rememberexactly), and in fact has been doing it longer than any of theacademic staff involved in the Structures, Water,Geomechanics and Environmental Design courses.

Further water and environmental teaching news includesgetting a range of our past graduates to lead ourEnvironmental Engineering Design classes over the last fewyears. These have included Luke Kidd (BE Env, 2002)(WBM-BMT),Andrew Krause (BE Env, 1995; PhD, 2002)(AKEnvironmental), Chris Kuczera (BE Env, then atSMEC), and Angus Brien (BE Civil, 2008) and Andrew

Brown (BE Env, 2000) (both at Northrop). This has beenexcellent on several levels, but most of all because thestudents get to see close up the careers of some of theirpredecessors. We are also grateful to their employers because

we are fully aware that at the rates the University pays this ispartly pro bono.

We dont have any new news of our water group alumni. If you

have any news of interesting things that our alumni are doingplease drop us an email and well let everybody know in nextyears newsletter. We are always interested to know what ouralumni are up to.

News from Prof George Kuczeras research group:A majorfocus of Georges current research is on urban drought security.In response to the Millennium drought there has been large-scale investment in desalination and other infrastructure tosecure water supply to Australias major cities. Georges group is

focusing on optimising the planning and operation of urbanwater supply systems to maximize drought security whileminimising economic, social and environmental costs thisinvolves multi-objective optimization to identify optimal trade-offs between competing objectives. This paradigm has beenadopted in the current round of the Sydney Metro Water Planand there are plans to expand to other water systems in NSW.Using the WATHNET5 software developed over the last tenyears, the Metropolitan Water Directorate (MWD) ofDepartment of Primary Industries is evaluating its operationaland investment options for the next decade. In pursuit of thisgoal, the MWD has invested in cloud computing to run largemulti-objective optimization scenarios. George serves on the

NSW Governments Independent Water Advisory Panel whichprovides oversight of whole-of-government planning for securewater supply for the Sydney metropolitan and Lower Hunterregions.

Research associate Lije Cui(PhD, 2003) will shortly commenceworking with George on an ARC Linkage project awarded thisyear with NSW Water as the partner. The focus of the work willbe to develop multi-objective planning tools to identify robustand flexible portfolio schedules in the presence of deepuncertainty about future climate and demand. Lijie recentlyfinished a major project with the Water Corporation of WesternAustralia to develop an optimization framework for Perthswater supply which is facing a drying climate that has forced ashift from surface water resources to groundwater anddesalination. Forty years ago Perths water supply was almostcompletely met by surface water. This year, a record dry year,surface water has met less than 5% of Perths needs, a chillingreminder of how quickly change can occur.

George maintains close links with colleagues at the University ofAdelaide, Prof Dmitri Kavetski (BE Env, 2001; PhD, 2004)and Mark Thyer (PhD, 2000) working on a range of ARC andindustry funded projects dealing with seasonal streamflowforecasting, new joint probability methods for flood estimation,calibration of distributed hydrological models and developmentof more realistic error models. They started a new ARC Linkage

project with the Bureau of Meteorology in July 2015 to linkdynamic weather and hydrologic models to develop moreskillful and reliable streamflow forecasts over time scales fromdays to seasons.

Environmental and Water Engineering Roundup

Undergraduate Teaching andAlumni News

Highlights

Staff News

Page 8No. 28


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emerge. We have six PhD students and Dr Natalie Lockart(BE Env, 2008; PhD, 2013) is a Post-doc on the project. Toexamine the security of water supplies on the east coast we areusing Georges WATHNET software to look at the reliability ofthe Hunter and Sydney water supply systems and two systemson the NSW north and south coast. Key factors are the impactof natural variability on ECL occurrence (they tend to fill dams),the impact of climate change on ECL occurrence, and the effectof climate change on normal, non-ECL and rainfall. A key data

source is a high resolution gridded climate dataset, calledNARCLIM, developed by the Climate Change Centre atUNSW.

PhD student Kamal Chowdhury has developed a syntheticrainfall generator that can incorporate climate change and whichwe are using to feed WATHNET rainfall. PhD studentNadeeka Manage is working on validation of the hydrologypredictions of NARCLIM and defining the limits ofapplicability of the NARCLIM dataset. She has alreadyhighlighted a number of artefacts. Dr Natalie Lockart has usedthese works and WATHNET to examine the Hunter Watersupply system and has highlighted a number of areas where we

lack sufficient knowledge. PhD student Lanying Zhang hasbeen enhancing WATHNET to improve its ability to assess theimpacts of systematic changes in climate. The three PhDs inEarth Sciences (Callum Toomey,Andrew Magee, and ProloyDeb) continue their work on identifying the links betweenbroad scale climate and ocean drivers, and ECL occurrence andmagnitude.

Our (Garry, Natalie and George) antecedent wetness andextreme rainfall project we had working for the last two yearshas finished the current stage of work (to develop guidelines forAustralian Rainfall and Runoff) and the NSW government isconsidering where to go from here. Our insights into climatechange trends for NSW will hopefully find their way into

Australian Rainfall and Runoff.

Garrys soil pedogenesis work continues in collaboration withGreg Hancock (PhD, 1997; Earth Sciences),Alex McBratneyand Budi Minasny (Agriculture at U. Sydney) and PhD alumusSagy Cohen (PhD, 2010; U. Alabama). PhD student DimuthWelivitiya has coupled the soilscape evolution model with anew landform evolution model. This bodes well as it now lookscomputationally feasible to use this approach to model the long-term stability and evolution of soil covers/caps for rehabilitatedmine sites, and nuclear waste repositories. Dimuth presented hiswork at the European Geophysical Union meeting in March.Garry presented this work (and chemical weathering work hedid in Colorado) in a plenary at the Pedometrics 2015 workshopin Spain. He was also a presenter in a computational soilpedogenesis workshop prior to this conference that kicked offthe Computational Pedogenesis Working Group in theInternational Soil Science Society.

Many participants considered this the best workshop they hadbeen to on this topic. A group of new European soil sciencecollaborators are planning to visit for a few months early in2016 to continue the new work initiated at this workshop.Finally, flowing out of the Pedometrics conference, collaboratorArnaud Temme at Wageningen University on The Netherlandsis organising a European Post-graduate Student Workshop inmid-2017, that Garry and Patricia have been invited to present

our work at.

In other water resource system research, PhD student GarethWilliams (BE Env) is working on a forensic approach withHunter Water Corporation to identify operational system factorsthat contribute to water mains failures. PhD student LanyingZhang is working on how to use information about multi-decadal climate variability to improve the security of urban watersupply. For more detail on her work see the ESCII-ECL updatebelow. PhD student Emily Barbour (now at Oxford) isfinishing up her work on ecological response models of inland

wetlands and multi-objective optimization using the Cumbungwetlands on the Lachlan River as her case study. RebeccaBorwellhas started her masters working on management of theMacquarie Marshes using multi-objective optimization.

PhD studentAmanda Newman (BE Civil, 2009) is working ondeveloping new particle filters for inclusion in the Bayesian totalerror analysis framework developed by George, Dmitri andMark. PhD student Youwei Qin has gone back to basics todevelop a new optimization algorithm for calibrating modelsthat is as robust as the best available algorithm but is vastly moreefficient; its main application will be in large distributedhydrologic models which are notoriously difficult to calibrate to

data.This June research associate Dominik Jaskierniakconcluded a4-year ARC linkage project with George and University ofMelbourne foresters, Richard Benyon and Patrick Lane, andMelbourne Water, to estimate forest water use that may beaffected by logging and wildfire using a coupling of Lidar remotesensing, plot scale experimental data and modelling. MelbourneWater have extended Dominiks funding for one year to applyhis model to other mountain ash catchments and to prepare afunding application to extend the work to other high rainfallforest species.

George continues his major involvement with the revision of

Australian Rainfall Runoff (ARR), which will be launched inDecember 2015. Apart from serving on the ARR technicalsteering committee, he is working on the national rollout of newmethods for estimating peak flows at ungauged catchments withAtaur Rahman and Khaled Haddad at University of WesternSydney, the commercial release of his flood frequency softwareFLIKE with the consultant BMT-WBM and on drafting ARRchapters.

News from Prof Garry Willgooses group: The work thatGarry Willgoose leads continues under two main themes, (1) thehydrology impacts of climate change and potential adaptationmeasures to minimise these impacts, and (2) the evolution oflandforms, soils and vegetation 1,000-10,000 years into thefuture for mining and nuclear waste containment applications.Garry was on sabbatical for the first half of the year at ColoradoUniversity in Boulder. Most of this time was spent on writing hisnew book on Landscape and Soilscape Evolution (the text is dueto be delivered to Cambridge Press in early 2016), andcollaborating with workers there on new models for thechemical weathering of soils. He was based in the CSDMS(Community Surface Dynamics Modelling System)computational group, which is developing global models for theterrestrial environment, and how the terrestrial environmentinteracts with the climate and the ocean.

The ESCCI-ECL (Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative

East Coast Lows) Water Security project, (supervised by Garry,George, Anthony Kiem (PhD, 2003) and Danielle Verdon-Kidd (BE Env, 2002; PhD, 2007) from Earth Sciences) hasbeen running now for two years and results are starting to



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Netherlands earlier this year and presented research papers onriver bedforms stability, unsteady flows and modelling of theMacquarie Marshes. During the conference, Jos participated inmeetings of the Fluvial Hydraulics Committee of theAssociation, of which he is now the president elect. Jos alsocontinues his involvement on another professional society, theAmerican Association of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as AssociateEditor of the prestigious ASCE Journal of HydraulicEngineering.

It was very satisfying this year to see that our design of inletcontrol structures for the restoration of Area E of theKooragang wetlands is performing exceptionally well. AlumniAlice Howe(PhD 2007) and Jos Rodrguez studied the flowrequirements to limit mangrove encroachment on theendangered saltmarsh of the wetland and very recently theirproposed design was implemented by the Kooragang WetlandRehabilitation Program. The next sequence of figures fromGoogle Earth speak for itself, showing important mangrovedieback (lighter colour trees) in the vicinity of the new inletstructure in Fish Fry Creek occurring in the last couple of years.The sequence starts with 2004 before mangrove encroachment,

continues with 2012 when encroachment was at its peak, andfinishes with 2014 showing the dieback and the tendency toreturn to pre-encroachment conditions.

PhD student Nalin Senevirathnesubmitted his PhD on ruralflash flooding on the east coast of Australia, and will very shortlyhave finalised the examination modifications. He has been ableto identify a number of geomorphic properties of catchmentsthat lead to a high risk of flash flooding, and he has tested themin the Lockyer Valley. He used this software to map the entireeast coast of Australia. This map identifies high-risk areas wheresite-specific hydrology studies can be focussed. Coincidentallythe Dungog area, which had a serious flash flood area earlier this

year (yet another East Coast Low), was one of the areasidentified.

Garry is a member of the NSW Governments Mining andPetroleum Gateway Science Panel and this work continued thisyear. Despite the downturn in the coal industry it seems that ithas yet to hit the pipeline of potential projects. Garrys PeerReview work for Community Consultative Committees (CCC)on the water impacts of possible CSG projects that he has beendoing for a number of years has finished for the moment. In themiddle of the year AGL sold its Hunter Valley explorationlicences back to the government and accordingly the AGL peerreviewing is now finished as the CCC was shut down a few

weeks back.

Finally, Garry is nearing completion of a major upgrade toVersion 5 of his EAMS-SIBERIA mine rehabilitationassessment modelling system. This has involved a completerewrite of the graphical interface code and the addition of manynew tools that have been developed subsequent to the lastversion. Most of the new code is now complete and testing iswell advanced. Release is on track for early 2016.

News from Drs Patricia Saco and Jose Rodriguez researchgroups:PhD students Esmaeel Bayatand Elham Vahidiandundergraduate student Ross Jeans have been working very hard

sorting sediments for the setup of their experiments in the largeflume in the Laboratory, under the supervision of JoseRodriguez. They are testing the effects of sediment grain sizeon the stability of natural bedforms in rivers. These bedformsprovide habitat for fish and invertebrates and their stability is avery important issue, particularly if future climate conditionschange significantly. Their research, which was presented in thelast World Congress of the International Association for HydroEnvironment Engineering and Research (IAHR) in The Haguethis year, is in collaboration with the University of Southampton,UK and the University of British Columbia, Canada. Elham willalso present some of her findings at the American GeophysicalUnion meeting in San Francisco later this year.

Jos Rodrguez attended the IAHR World Congress in The

Above: It is not a carpet!

Fish Fry

2004

Fish Fry

2012

Fish Fry

2012

Above: Important mangrove dieback (lighter colour trees) inthe vicinity of the new inlet structure in Fish Fry Creek occur-ring in the last years of 2004-2012.

Page 10No. 28


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Watershed Connectivity was visitingPatricia during August. Saskias visitwas funded by a University ofNewcastle Visiting Scholarship. Thisvisit has strengthen ongoingcollaboration with key Europeanresearchers from the COST ACTION.In addition to publications, this effort

is expected to attract additionalfunding and joint PhD studentsworking on catchment Hydrologic andSediment Connectivity. The work oflocal postgraduate students Samira

Azadi and Jeff Soltanjalili, who aresupervised by Patricia and GarryWillgoose is also expected to benefitfrom this collaboration.

Patricia gave an invited keynote latelast year at the Chapman Conferenceon Spatial organization and complex

behaviour of intermediate scalecatchments in Luxemburg. TheAmerican Geophysical Union worldrenowned Chapman Conferences aresmall specialists meetings on newly

emerging research fields. In January shegave a Seminar at the University of LosAngeles of her work on coevolution oflandforms, vegetation, soils and waterprocesses. She was also recently askedto deliver a Lecture on this topic duringa Conference on Hydrological andErosion processes in Mediterranean

Landscapes next March in Palermo.Patricia has been invited to continue fora second two-year period as Editor ofHydrology and Earth Systems Sciences,and Associate Editor of WaterResources Research. These journals arethe flagship publications of theEuropean and American GeophysicalUnions respectively, and are ranked inthe top four out of 83 journals in theWater Resources Category by theThompson and Reuters JournalCitation Reports.

The research project on the MacquarieMarshes ecogeomorphology that Jos isleading is receiving ongoing supportfrom NSW Office of Environment andHeritage and a visit to the marshes hasbeen scheduled for October to see first-hand the effect of environmental flowreleases on wetland vegetation. George

Kuczera, who is leading the wateroptimization studies in the marshes willalso be traveling, together withpostgraduate students Steven Sandiand Rebecca Borwell. Prof Paul Batesfrom Bristol University in the UK willbe visiting Newcastle in 2017 as part ofthis project.

Patricia Sacohas started work on herARC Future Fellowship project. Thisproject with funding of $855,460 willdevelop a modelling framework to

study the impacts of past and futurehuman and climatic stresses ontemperate humid environments. Themain aim is to identify and prevent soildegradation and erosion at thecatchment scale, to be used inapplications to adaptive landscape andwater resources management programs.Linked to work in this project, Patriciais collaborating with colleagues inEurope (Spanish National Council,University of Valencia, DurhamUniversity, and Wageningen University)and the US (University of Illinois). PhDstudent Hanieh Kosari is working inthe ecohydrology aspects of the project,her study will involve collaborationwith researchers from the University ofIllinois.

Associate Professor Saskia Keesstrawho is currently the president of thesoils section of the EuropeanGeosciences Union and leader of theEuropean COST ACTION project on From left: Esmaeel Bayat, Hanieh Kosari, ElhamVahidi, Samira Azadi, Saskia Keesstra,

Patricia Saco, Jose Rodriguez and Jeff Soltanjalili at the Shortland Wetlands Centre.

students might work on include site assessments, watercatchment and reuse, on-site sewage treatment, energyefficient construction methods, solar panels and wind energy,wetland design, and town planning just to name a few.Several students have now been assigned to the project andthey all think that this is a fantastic opportunity that iscurrent, relevant and interesting. It is likely that this project

site will be accessible by our students for the next few years.

Dr Shaun Manning was approached by a land owner atLochinvar who is proposing to sub-divide and redevelop his40 Acre residential lot. The lot will contain 24 dwellings andwill aim to be energy and water self- sufficient, only usingmains services as emergency back-up. The owner is keen toengage with the University and has offered to work withstudents both to assist his planning and project initiation,

whilst providing our students access to his site for honoursand work experience projects. This is a multi-disciplinaryinitiative that will provide an excellent real world andcutting edge experience for our students. Areas that our

Water Laboratory News



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in water resources. She is very muchinterested in innovating the uses of thegeospatial technologies and physicalmodels to develop new ideas and

problem solving methods in hydrologyfrom the spatial perspectives. She hasapplied various geospatial technologiesand analytical methods, process-basedmodels, and spatial optimizationscheme, to monitor changes inlandscape (e.g., wetlands, agro-forestecosystem, urbanized area), to studythe implications of managementpractices on water resources under theclimate and land use changes, and toprovide science-based guidelines forthe land conservation practices.

In recent years, she has been workingto quantify the effectiveness of covercrops on water resources inNortheastern US, with long termresearch collaboration with USDepartment of Agriculture (USDA).This research is to support thenational, multi-agency effort toquantify the cumulative impacts ofconservation programs and practicesled by the USDA. She is working withvarious research scientists to improvethe water and soil monitoring schemes

with innovative remote sensing, and todevelop new modelling approach tobetter represent crop growth andwetland processes in the watershed

context.She has led a number of NASA fundedresearch projects to monitor and modelthe terrestrial water storage and changedynamics from the field to the regionalscale. In particular, the work of herresearch team on inundationmonitoring of (small, isolated) wetlandsinfluenced the recent US Clean WaterRules (published in June 2015),enforcing the protection for wetlands inthe Northeastern US.

While In-Young will continuecollaborative work with USDA andNASA, she is excited to have newopportunities to study important waterresources issues in Australia. Hitting theground running in February GarryWillgoose and In-Young submitted anARC grant within three weeks of herarrival on the interactions between soilmoisture, soils and hydrology buildingon her hydrologic remote sensingexpertise.

Dr. In-Young Yeo joined the Disciplinethis year as a Senior Lecturer. She hasbeen broadly educated and experiencedin Civil/Environmental Engineering,Urban Planning, and Geodetic/Geographical Sciences. Prior to comingto UoN, she taught at University ofMaryland, Cornell University, and theOhio State University.

In-Young has a strong background in

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)and Remote Sensing, with applications

Page 12No. 28

New Staff Prof ile - Dr In-Young Yeo

The Water Group (and partners) at the annual Christmas party held at George and Lesley Kuczeras house.


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PRIORITY RESEARCH CENTRE FOR GEOTECHNICAL AND MATERIALS MODELLING

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR GEOTECHNICAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

from Trinity College to undertake a PhD at the University ofCambridge in 1978. He later won a Rouse Ball Scholarship atTrinity College, which he held for one year. After three yearsas a WW Spooner Fellow at New College Oxford, hereturned to Australia in 1984 to take up a lectureship in CivilEngineering at the UoN. Scott was appointed Director of the70-strong UoN Priority Research Centre for Geotechnicaland Materials Modelling in 2007 and made a LaureateProfessor in 2008. He is also the founding Director ofAustralian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence forGeotechnical Science and Engineering, which isheadquartered at the UoN.

Scott has published over 340 refereed papers and deliveredover 40 plenary, keynote and invited papers at conferences.He accumulates in excess of 600 Scopus citations per year,and was elected to Fellowships of the Australian Academy ofTechnological Sciences and Engineering in 2000 and theAustralian Academy of Science in 2007.

2015 has been another productive year for the ARC Centreof Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering andthe Priority Research Centre for Geotechnical and MaterialsModelling, with success in securing competitive grants andrecognition for both staff and students through awards andhonours as well as testimonials from industry on the impactof our research.

Laureate Professor Scott Sloan was named the NSW Scientistof the Year at the inaugural NSW Premiers Prizes forScience and Engineering held at Government House inSydney on Wednesday evening 7th of October 2015. He hasbeen elected to a Fellowship of The Royal Society, a

fellowship of the worlds most eminent scientific minds. Hewas also elected by Engineers Australia as one of AustraliasTop 100 Most Influential Engineers for 2015 (see also p.2).

Scott studied for his BEng (Civil, Hons I) and MEngSciDegrees at Monash University, before winning a scholarship


The CGSE Annual Workshop held in December 2014

The 2014 Annual Workshop was held during December at

The Anchorage in Port Stephens, New South Wales. Theevent attracted over 100 participants with representationfrom across all three centre nodes, industry and academia. Ahighlight of the program was the Keynote address deliveredby Professor Guy Houlsby from Oxford University, whopresented the 54th Rankine Lecture entitled Interactions inoffshore foundation design.

The full two-day program also included presentationsessions, a 3-minute thesis completion, research programworkshops as well as Advisory Board and ManagementCommittee meetings.

Thirty-five PhD students participated in the 3-minute thesiscompetition, which was an excellent opportunity for ourstudents to showcase their work and develop newrelationships with other centre students and staff.

The judges, led by Professor Houlsby had a difficult task inselecting the winners. Congratulations to:

Kirti Choudhary, Experimental analysis ofconsolidation and degradation properties of jutevertical drains in Ballina Clay

John Morton, Assessing the undrained shear strengthwith an instrumented freefall sphere

Thanh Trung Nguyen, Modelling of bio-degradable ofjute drains and implication on soft soil consolidation

A new category of the peoples choice award was

introduced, with all workshop participants invited to vote on

their favourite presenter. Congratulations to Peoples ChoiceAward winners: Cathal Colreavy, Piezoball dissipation testing at

Ballina Sinniah Navaratnarajah, Use of energy absorbing

shock mats for mitigating ballast degredation

Throughout the workshop there was also opportunity fordelegates to mingle with their colleagues, providing aninformal setting in order to discuss collaborative projects andideas for future research. Holding the workshops off-campusprovides a relaxed setting that lends itself to enhanced

collaboration.

Fro left: L-R Thanh Trung Nguyen, Kirti Choudhary, GuyHoulsby, John Morton, Sinniah Navaratnarajah, CathalColreavy.


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Professor Daichao Sheng, Dr Jubert Pineda and ProfessorAntonio Gens were awarded $782,600 for an ARCDiscovery Project that aims to develop a theoretical andpractical framework for characterizing the transitionalbehavior of hard soils and soft rocks.

Professor Scott Sloan and Dr Chet Vignes were awarded$453,900 for an ARC Discovery Project that willdevelop new methods, supported by scientificpublications and software, which can be used to guidethe natural gas industry and inform regulatoryauthorizes of the risks inherent in hydraulic fracturing.

Dr Klaus Thoeni and Dr Anna Giacomini were awarded$124,780 from the Australian Coal AssociationResearch Program for extending their research into the

analysis of safer haul roads.

Dr Brett Turner, Associate Professor Kristian Krabbenhoftand Associate Professor Gregory Hancock wereawarded $570,000 for an ARC Discovery IndigenousProject that aims to examine the impact of climatechange on the biogeochemical processes of estuarinesediment in relation to: geotechnical properties; soft soilstability under sea level change and soil carbonsequestration.

Professor Christophe Gaudin, Professor Mark Cassidy,Associate Professor Conleth OLoughlin and Dr Jim

Hambleton were awarded $571,800 for an ARCDiscovery Project that aims to establish a geotechnicaldesign framework for shared anchoring systemssubjected to multidirectional cyclic loading for largeintegrated arrays of floating wind turbines and floatingwave energy converters.

The Centre was successful in obtaining the followingresearch funding in 2014-2015:

Members of the CGSE collaborated on a successful bid for a2014 LIEF Grant, with a total value of $1,720,000, toestablish a National Facility for Cyclic Testing of HighSpeed Rail. This grant was led by The University ofWollongong in collaboration with The University ofWestern Australia, The University of Melbourne, TheUniversity of Western Sydney, Swinburne University ofTechnology, The University of Queensland, TheUniversity of New South Wales, Curtin University ofTechnology, Monash University, University ofTechnology Sydney and Metro Trains Melbourne.

Dr Shanyong Wang was awarded $761,579 from the ARC for

a Future Fellowship investigating the fundamentals offracture-controlled compensation grouting in soils.

Dr Anna Giacomini and Dr Klaus Thoeni were awarded$259,590 from the Australian Coal Association forrockfall hazard matrix for risk reduction in mines.

Professor Scott Sloan and Dr Richard Kelly collaborated ona project led by Professor Buddhima Indraratna fromthe CGSE node at the University Wollongong, alongwith a number of investigators from a range ofinstitutions as well as industry, and were awarded anARC Linkage Project valued at $735,000 to investigate

the use of vacuum pressure and prefabricated verticaldrains.

Dr Thomas Fiedler and Professor Erich Kisi were awarded$335,500 for an ARC Discovery Project that aims toaddress the intermittency of renewable energy sourcesusing novel thermal storage media.

Dr George Kouretzis, Professor Daichao Sheng andAssociate Professor Kristian Krabbenhoft wereawarded $463,900 for an ARC Discovery Project thatwill develop a general framework for handling various

unsaturated soil-structure interaction problems ingeotechnical engineering, aiming to reduce the risk offailure of buried pipeline networks.

Professor Graeme Murch is one of the team of investigatorsof an EXMONAN grant from the EuropeanCommission that was awarded 201,400 Euros to studydiffusion and reactions at the nano-scale level.

Dr Majidreza Nazem and Professor John Carter wereawarded $583,900 for an ARC Discovery Project thataims to address a highly significant and timely class ofproblems in civil engineering, and in particular soil

mechanics. The outcomes are expected to result inimprovements in the design and construction of civilinfrastructure.

New Research Funding for 2014 - 2015

Page 14No. 28


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Professor Scott Sloan (Director)Professor Daichao Sheng (Co-Director)Professor Gernot Beer (Conjoint Professor, TU Graz)Professor Irina Belova (Co-Director, MechanicalEngineering)

Professor John Carter (Emeritus Professor)Professor Andrei Lyamin (ARC Future Fellow)Professor Graeme Murch (Mechanical Engineering)Professor Peter Wriggers (Conjoint Professor, University ofHannover)Professor Andreas Ochsner (Conjoint Professor, Universityof Malaysia)Professor Stephen Fityus (Research Associate)Professor Andrei Lyamin (ARC Future Fellow)Associate Professor Andrew Abbo (Research Associate)Associate Professor Olivier Buzzi (Research Associate)Associate Professor Kristian Krabbenhoft (ResearchAssociate)Associate Professor Shanyong Wang (ARC Future Fellow)Dr Yousef Ansari (Research Associate)Dr Daniel Bishop (Research Associate)Dr Alexander Evteev (Research Associate)Dr Thomas Fiedler (Research Associate)

Dr Anna Giacomini (Research Associate)Dr Jim Hambleton (Research Associate)Dr Jinsong Huang (Research Associate)Dr Mina Kardani (Research Associate)Dr Richard Kelly (Research Associate)

Dr George Kouretzis (Research Associate)Dr Elena Levchenko (Research Fellow)Dr Xianfeng Liu (Research Associate)Dr Marti-Lloret Cabot (Research Associate)Dr Majid Nazem (Research Associate)Dr Jubert Pineda (Research Associate)Dr Laxmi Prasad Suwal (Research Associate)Dr Hassan Sabetamal (Research Associate)Dr Klaus Thoeni (Research Associate)Dr Brett Turner (Research Associate)Dr Chet Vignes (Research Associate)Dr Chao Yang (Research Associate)Dr Qiong Wang (Research Associate)Dr Daniel Wilson (Research Associate)Dr Xue Zhang (Research Associate)Mr Mason Crumpton (Research Associate)Mr Lachlan Bates (Business Manager)Ms Kirstin Dunncliff (Centre Coordinator)

Personnel (PRCGMM)

Current Research Higher Degree Students

Abid Ali (Application of Limit Analysis & StochasticModeling to Slope Stability Problems)

Leonie Bradfield (Reliable Geotechnical StabilityAssessment for Very High Spoil Dumps)Glen Burton (Unsaturated Soil Mechanics - Experimentaland Theoretical Study of Reconstituted Soils)Qianqian Cai(Remediation of Groundwater Contaminant)Davide Casagrande (Numerical and Physical Modelling ofJointed Longwall Stability)Anna Effeindzourou(Numerical investigation of the energyabsorption capacity of barriers in surface mining)Ryan De Carteret (The Relationship Between Salinity andRoad Pavements)Ebrahim Fathi Salmi (Geomechanics of Multi-SeamMining)

Javad Ghorbani(Dynamic Compaction)Pooya Karambakhsh(Assessment of Soil Parameters UsingNumerical Modelling of Cone Penetration Test)Elaheh Kashizadeh (Computational Methods forEvolutionary Plasticity Problems)Mohammad Khishvand (Development of CoupledDiscontinuous Deformation Analysis and Discrete ElementModels (DEM-DDA) and Its Application to MiningProblems)Kai Koosmen (Reliable Geotechnical Stability Assessmentfor Waste Dumps Containing Inclusions of Mixed CHPP

Fine and Coarse Rejects)Jingjing Meng(Slope stability analysis with DEM)

Sam Mirlatifi (Modelling of embankments on improved softsoils)Mohammad Moavenian (Dynamic Soil StructureInteraction)Peter Newton (Extinguishing Coal Seam Fires by Extractionof Geothermal Energy)Hoang Viet Nguyen (Stress Path-Dependency of SoilModuli)

Van Ngoc Pham (Study of soil-cement piles applied tocoastal areas as breakwater)Nathan Podlich(The Formulation of Parallel and IterativeAlgorithms for Large-Scale Limit and Shakedown Analysis)Seyed Nima Salimi Eshkevari (Geotechnical Aspects inthe Design of Working Platforms)Sufyan Samsuddin (Fundamental Study on the DynamicCompaction Grouting (DCG) in Soft Soil)Scott Sleap (Georemediation: The Removal of InorganicContaminants from Soil and Groundwater)Cyrus AG Todeshkejoei (Capacity of Multi-Helix ScrewAnchor Foundations)Shengyang Yuan (Microstructural changes of expansivesoils upon swelling and its effect on permeability)Nadia Zakrzewski (Numerical analysis of offshorefoundations)



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New Staff at PRCGMM / CGSE

Mr Mason Crumpton has taken up a position as research associate under the supervision of LaureateProfessor Scott Sloan. Mason is currently researching methods of limit analysis and their application ingeotechnical engineering.

Dr Hassan Sabetamal has taken up a post-doctoral position at the University of Newcastle during2014. He is working under the supervision of Dr Majid Nazem on a DP project Discovery Project thataims to address a highly significant and timely class of problems in civil engineering, and in particular soilmechanics.

Current Research Higher Degree Students

Hana Abu Zaher (Georemediation - The Removal ofFluoride from Spent Potliner (SPL) ContaminatedGroundwater Using Calcite and Zeolite)

Abid Ali (Application of Limit Analysis & StochasticModeling to Slope Stability Problems)Leonie Bradfield (Reliable Geotechnical StabilityAssessment for Very High Spoil Dumps)Glen Burton (Unsaturated Soil Mechanics - Experimentaland Theoretical Study of Reconstituted Soils)Qianqian Cai(Remediation of Groundwater Contaminant)

Davide Casagrande(Numerical and Physical Modelling ofJointed Longwall Stability)Mason Crumpton (Computational Methods in Limit

Analysis)Yousef Ansari completed his PhD degree in 2013 on thetopic 'Evaluation of hydraulic conductivity characteristics ofclays via piezocone dissipation tests'.

Anna Effeindzourou(Numerical investigation of the energyabsorption capacity of barriers in surface mining)Ryan De Carteret (The Relationship Between Salinity andRoad Pavements)Ebrahim Fathi Salmi (Geomechanics of Multi-Seam

Mining)Ahmad Ghasemi Todeshkejoei (Capacity of Multi-HelixScrew Anchor Foundations)

Javad Ghorbani(Dynamic Compaction)Pooya Karambakhsh(Assessment of Soil Parameters UsingNumerical Modelling of Cone Penetration Test)

Elaheh Kashizadeh (Computational Methods forEvolutionary Plasticity Problems)Mohammad Khishvand (Development of CoupledDiscontinuous Deformation Analysis and Discrete ElementModels (DEM-DDA) and Its Application to MiningProblems)Kai Koosmen (Reliable Geotechnical Stability Assessmentfor Waste Dumps Containing Inclusions of Mixed CHPPFine and Coarse Rejects)

Jingjing Meng(Slope stability analysis with DEM)

Mohammad Moavenian (Dynamic Soil StructureInteraction)Peter Newton (Extinguishing Coal Seam Fires by Extractionof Geothermal Energy)Hoang Viet Nguyen (Stress Path-Dependency of SoilModuli)Nathan Podlich(The Formulation of Parallel and IterativeAlgorithms for Large-Scale Limit and Shakedown Analysis)Hassan Sabetamal (Finite Element Algorithms forDynamic Analysis of Geotechnical Problems)Mansour Sharafisfa (Application of Combined Distinct-Finite Element Method in Mining Engineering)

Seyed Nima Salimi Eshkevari (Geotechnical Aspects inthe Design of Working Platforms)Sufyan Samsuddin (Fundamental Study on the DynamicCompaction Grouting (DCG) in Soft Soil)Scott Sleap (Georemediation: The Removal of InorganicContaminants from Soil and Groundwater)

Alumni and Previous Staff

Hana Abu Zaher completed her PhD in the area of Georemediation the removal of fluoride from spent potliner(SPL) contaminated groundwater using calcite and zeolite.

Page 16No. 28


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Promotions, Awards and Honours for 2014-2015

One of the Centres achievements in 2014 was to have itsresearch featured in the December 2014 edition of AustraliaGeomechanics, the journal of the Australian GeomechanicsScoiety. The Australian Geomechanics Society is the largest

technical society of Engineers Australia with nearly 1,800members, and each member receives the journal quarterly inhard copy. The CGSE Special Issue include 18 peer-reviewed technical papers authored by Centre members andtheir collaborators. The collection of articles highlights therange of work being conducted in the centre as well as thecomplementary skills and facilities brought together fromeach of the nodes. A full electronic copy of the special issueis freely available through the journals website: http://australiangeomechanics.org/journal/

Associate Professor Olivier Buzziwas invited to join the

editorial board of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal.Emeritus Professor John Carter received the John JaegerMemorial Award from the Australian Geomechanics societywhich was presented at ANZ2015.

Dr Jim Hambletonwas invited to join the editorial board ofComputers and Geotechnics.

Dr Jinsong Huangwas invited to join the editorial board ofGeorisk.

Dr Anna Giacominiwas invited to join the editorial board

of Computers and Geotechnics.

Dr Anna Giacomini, along with colleagues from theUniversity of Newcastle, was invited to meet the ItalianPrime Minister Matteo Renzi, at an event for Sydneys Italian-Australian representatives, business community leaders andItalian researchers. The meeting took place at Doltone Housein November.

Dr Marti Lloret Cabot,Michael Hicks and Gordon Fentonhave been recently awarded the 2014 Best Paper Award inGeoRisk Journal for the paper On the Estimation of Scaleof Fluctuation in Geostatistics.

Dr George Kouretziswas invited to join the editorial boardof Computers and Geotechnics.

Dr George Kouretzis, Dimitrios Karamitros andLaureate Professor Scott Sloans paper Analysis of buriedpipelines subjected to ground surface settlement and heavewas selected as one of the Canadian Geotechnical JournalEditors Choice papers for 2015.

Dr Majidreza Nazemwas invited to join the editorial boardof Computers and Geotechnics.

Professor Daichao Shenggave a plenary lecture at the 6thInternational Conference on Unsaturated Soils, Sydney,Australia.

Professor Daichao Shengwas invited to deliver a Keynotelecture at the 10th International Symposium on PermafrostEngineering at Harbin, China.

Professor Irina Belova and Graeme Murch both gaveKeynote lectures at the 10th International Conference onDiffusion in Solids and Liquids at Paris, France.

Professor Graeme Murchgave a Keynote lecture at the 4thInternational Conference on Mass, Charge and SpinTransport in Inorganic Materials: Fundamentals to Devicesheld within the 6th Forum on New Materials, MontecatiniTerme, Italy.

Professor Graeme Murch gave a Keynote lecture at the 9thInternational Conference on Diffusion in Materials at

Muenster, Germany .Professor Graeme Murch gave a Keynote lecture at theMaterials Science and Technology Conference, Pittsburgh,USA.

Professor Irina Belova and Professor Graeme Murchboth gave Keynote lectures at the 11th InternationalConference on Diffusion in Solids and Liquids at Munich,Germany.

Professor Irina Belova, Professor Graeme Murch andProfessor Andreas Oechsner (conjoint professor) were

invited to be the founding Editors-in-Chief of the flagshipbook series: Diffusion Foundations published by TTP,Switzerland.

Laureate Professor Scott Sloan was elected as a Fellow ofthe Royal Society, London.

Laureate Professor Scott Sloan was selected in EngineersMedias list of Australias Top 100 Most Influential Engineersfor 2015.

Laureate Professor Scott Sloan was acknowledged byFederal MP for Newcastle, Sharon Claydon on his election tothe Royal Society in her speech to Parliament on 25/5/2015.

Associate Professor Shanyong Wang was invited to jointhe editorial boards of Soils and Foundations journal as well asthe Board for the Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the

Environment.

Associate Professor Shanyong Wang received the 2014Pro Vice Chancellors Award for Excellence in ResearchPerformance from the Faculty of Engineering and BuiltEnvironment at the University of Newcastle.


18/23

Greta Azzini from the University of Parma, Italy visited theCGSE for five months from September 2014 to work underthe supervision of Dr Anna Giacomini, Dr Klaus Thoeni andDr Federica Ferrari on a new qualitative methodology for

assessing rockfall hazard.Thomas Bauer from Polytech Clermont Ferrand, Francevisited for six months from March to September 2015 tostudy the extraction of geothermal energy in mine spoilsunder the supervision of Associate Professor Olivier Buzzi.

Jeremy Bleyer a PhD candidate from Ecole National desPonts Paris Tech visited the CGSE for six weeks fromJanuary to February 2015 to work under the supevsion ofAssociate Professor Kristian Krabbenhoft and ProfessorAndrei Laymin in the field of numerical methods applied tothe yield design/limit analysis of civil engineering structures.

Emil Dojcev from the University of Parma, Italy visited theCGSE for six months from September 2014 to work underthe supervision of Associate Professor Olivier Buzzi andPeter Newton studying soil characterisation and thermalconductivity of soils with the purpose of exploitinggeothermal energy.

Benjamin Goujonfrom Polytech Clermont Ferrand, Francevisited for six months from March to September 2015studying the behavior of expansive soils under thesupervision of Associate Professor Olivier Buzzi.

Dr Frederic Collin from University of Lige, Francevisitedthe CGSE during July 2015 to collaborate with AssociateProfessor Olivier Buzzi.

Professor Gordon Fenton from Dalhousie University,Canada visited the CGSE from June to August 2015 tocollaborate with Laureate Professor Scott Sloan and DrJinsong Huang in the area of sophisticated random fieldmodels into design office including reliability based seismicgeotechnical design.

Davide Guccione visited the CGSE for six months from

September 2015 to work under the supervision of Dr AnnaGiacomini on the application of UAS for geostructuralanalysis of mine highwalls, interpretation of photogrammetricdata for geomechanical applications and integration ofgeomatic techniques for geotechnical applications.

Faming Huangfrom China University of Geosciences wasawarded a Chinse Scholarship Council funded study abroadplacement and is visiting the CGSE for one year fromOctober 2015 to work under the supervision of Dr JinsongHuang to carry out research investigation in landslideaffective factors and deformation characteristic analysis.

Professor Wenxiong Huang visited the CGSE from July toAugust 2015 to collaborate with Professor Daichao Sheng.

Professor Antonio Gens from Universitat Politcnica de

Catalunya will visit the CGSE during December 2015 towork in collaboration with Professor Daichao Sheng on ajoint ARC project (mechanics of hard soil and soft rocks).

Dr Jim Hambleton visited UWA node of the CGSE fortwo weeks during April 2015 to work with Sam Stanier andConleth OLoughlin as well meet with PhD students CyrusTodeshkejoei and Elaheh Kashizadeh.

Dr Jim Hambletonattended the 2015 ATSE Clunies RossAwards and the Wonder of Extreme Science event inBrisbane, 28-29 May, as a representative of the Universityand the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment. He isseen here demonstrating the phenomenon of dynamicliquefaction in sands to Year 10 science students for the'Speed Meet a Scientist' session in which groups of studentsrotated through Q & A sessions with the Clunies Ross

Awardees, Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt, and

other leading entrepreneurs, scientists, and technologists.Akira Kato from Yamaguchi University, Japan visited theCGSE from January to June 2015 to work under thesupervision of Professor Stephen Fityus.

Qionglin Li a PhD candidate from Harbin Institute of

Technology, China was awarded a Chinese ScholarshipCouncil study abroad placement and visited the CGSE for ayear from June 2014 to work under the supervision ofProfessor Daichao Sheng in the area of cyclic behavior andconstitutive equations of frozen soils.

Sophia Mahe from Polytech Nantes, France completed atwo month placement from February to March 2015 in thearea of geothermal energy extraction under the supervisionof Associate Professor Olivier Buzzi.

Dr Lingyu Meng from Hiroshima University, Japan visitedthe centre for six moths from March to September 2015 to

collaborate with Professor Daichao Sheng to study numericalsimulation of unsaturated soil.

Page 18No. 28

Other Highlights for 2014 2015

Jim Hambleton at Wonder of Extreme Science


19/23

Embankment Prediction Symposium

Practising engineers and academics are invited to make andsubmit predictions of the performance of an embankmentconstructed using prefabricated vertical drains on soft clayand/or load displacement response of a shallow foundationloaded to failure on soft clay.

Field observations and the time histories of the embankmentand footing behaviour, as well as the various predictions of

that behaviour will be presented and discussed in a specialPrediction Symposium to be held on 1213 September inNewcastle on 1213 September 2016 at Fort Scratchley,Newcastle, Australia.

Instructions for predictors, site investigations, laboratorytesting data, embankment construction records, drawings andwritten papers synthesising the data have been released.

Close to 150 practitioners from around the globe haveregistered their interest. There are limited places stillavailable, for more information, visit our website:

http://cgse.edu.au/news/2015/01/embankment-prediction-symposium

continued from page 18

Dr Majidreza Nazem spent a month at UWA node duringApril 2015 to work with Professor Mark Cassidy.

Professor David Potts from Imperial College, UnitedKingdom visited the CGSE during April 2015 to collaborate

with Laureate Professor Scott Sloan.

Associate Professor Mario Vicente da Silva fromUniversity of Lisbon, Portugal visited the CGSE duringMarch 2015 to collaborate with Associate Professor KristianKrabbenhoft on computational mechanics and numericalimplementation of the limit analysis theorems.

Professor Yanping Yao from Beihang University, Chinavisited the CGSE during September 2015 to collaborate with

Professor Daichao Sheng.

Nadia Zakrezewski spent a month at UWA node duringApril 2015 to work with Professor Mark Cassidy.

Changjie Zheng a PhD Candidate from Hohai University,

China visited the CGSE from August 2014 for a year on aChinese Scholarship Council funded study abroad placementto work under the supervision of Laureate Professor ScottSloan in the area of dynamic response of pile supportedembankment.

Dong Zheng from Wuhan University, China visited theCGSE for one year from September 2015 to work under thesupervision of Dr Jinsong Huang in the area of numericalmodelling and programming.



20/23

Professor Will Featherstone from special sciences at CurtinUniversity of Technology visited Newcastle from 16-22 Feb-ruary 2015. Will is the director of the Western AustralianCentre for Geodesy. He was invited to chair the confirmationcommittee for Xiaolis PhD student Armin Aghakarimi. Will

presented a talk on AUSGeoid and Perth Subsidence tolocal surveyors at the seminar held by the Institution of Sur-veyors NSW and Hunter Manning Group on 20 February2015. Will also had discussions about further research collab-orations with Shin-Chan and Xiaoli.

Attending Conference - Xiaoli Deng and her two PhD stu-dents (Zahra Gharineiat and Armin Aghakarimi) attended the26th General Assembly of International Union of Geodesyand Geophysics (IUGG) in Prague in July 2015. Xiaoli wasan invited speaker and gave a 30-minute presentation titledEstimating extreme sea levels from satellite altimetry aroundnorthern Australian coasts at the IUGG. Zahra gave twooral presentations on sea-level changes and sea-level ex-tremes in the northern Australian coastal regions, while Ar-min gave an oral presentation on his investigation of the Aus-tralian height datum.

Xiaoli continues her role as mission chair and member of thescientific committee at the International Association of Ge-odesy (IAG) and coastal altimetry conference. In July thisyear, she visited the National Oceanography Centre in South-ampton, UK, and met Dr Paolo Cipollini and his researchgroup. Issues related to coastal altimetry and sea-level ex-tremes were discussed during the visit. Xiaoli was appointedthe Fellow of IAG in June 2015.

The PhD student Heidi Viladsen from DTU Space, Tech-nical University of Denmark, supervised by Dr Ole Andersen

(DTU) and Xiaoli visited Newcastle between November2014 and April 2015. During her stay in Newcastle, she close-ly worked with Xiaoli on her PhD research into the hydro-logical field determination from space using satellite altimeterCryosat-2 SAR measurements.

Staffing The new Professor Shin-Chan Hanfrom NASAGoddard Space Flight Center joined the surveying group inJanuary 2015. Together with Dr Karl Bretreger and DrXiaoli Deng, there are now three academics in the surveyinggroup. Assistance with teaching has still been achieved with

the help of Dr Eric Kniest. Mr Ron Murtaghhas been em-ployed as a surveying technical officer one to two days aweek, as well a part-time teaching assistant for surveyingcourses. We again greatly appreciate teaching support by ourpart time staff Ian Donovan (for Town Planning), PhilCraine (for Land Valuation) and Brian Mott (for LandBoundary Definition).

ARC Discovery Project Success - Xiaoli Dengas a chiefinvestigator and her collaborators from University of Tasma-nia were awarded a ARC-DP grant Quantifying sea-leveltrends and extremes along Australia's coastal margin com-mencing in 2015. This is the first ARC grant received in theSurveying group since 2002.

Equipment- The Leica C10 laser scanner bought in 2014 isvery popular with students preparing their final year projects.Projects involving historic structures and monitoring move-ment such as sand dunes are very popular and of communitybenefit. Our new theodolites were deployed within an hourof delivery in August 2015. Our students are pleased to beworking with up to date equipment. The Agisoft Photoscansoftware is also a popular solution for measurement of speci-mens for both undergraduate and post graduate Projects in-cluding PHD's. Other units throughout the University appear

to be using this software too.

Shin-Chan has been organising the entire geodesy sectionfor the AGU meeting in December 2015. A total of 34 oraland poster sessions covering 500 abstracts were submitted tothe geodesy section. There are 22,000 people from all disci-plines of Earth Sciences anticipated to join the meeting thisyear. Two PhD students under Shins supervision arrivedand join the surveying group in October this year.

Surveying

Surveyors and Prof Will Featherstone at the seminar held bythe Institution of Surveyors NSW and Hunter ManningGroup on 20 February 2015. From left: Tony Proust, John

McNaughton, Will Featherstone and Rachel Brown.

Shin-Chan (3rdfrom left) has been warmly welcomed by theInstitution of Surveyors NSW and Hunter Manning Group

Page 20No. 28


21/23

Surveying Student Society BBQ

For many years there has been a Surveying Student Societyat the UoN run by the students with assistance from staffand local Institution of Surveyors NSW Hunter ManningGroup (HMG). In 2015 semester one, a fourth year studentGuy Robertson was instrumental in organising a lunchtimeBBQ for Surveying students to meet with new SurveyingProf Shin-Chan Han, Dr In-Yong Yeo and HMG membersincluding Alan Cavanagh, Rick Muldoon and John Minehan.

Mr Fardin Seifi started his PhD study inApril 2015. Fardin will focus on satellitecoastal altimetry research into retrackingaltimeter data and modelling ocean tides inAustralian coastal regions under the supervi-

sion of Xiaoli Deng and Ole Andersen.

New PhD student Current PHD Students

Zahra Gharineiat (Coastal Altimetry for Sea Level Changesin Northern Australian Coastal Oceans)

Andrew Marshall (Satellite Altimetry for HydrologicalCycles)Heidi Viladsen (Optimised Radar Altimetry WaveformRetracking for Water Surface Elevation Measurement OverHeterogeneous Inland Waters)

Armin Aghakarimi (Investigation of the Australian HeightDatum from Satellite Altimetry Data and GlobalGeopotential Models)

The Poster Prize Competit ion Winner

Xiaolis PhD studentArmin Aghakarimi(left) was a winner of the Faculty of Engineering

and Built Environments Postgraduate Research Prize for the 2015 Poster PrizeCompetition. His poster showed a part of his PhD study that investigates the south-northslope of the Australian height datum using satellite altimetry data and Earth geopotentialmodels. Well done, Armin!



22/23

Civi l Engineering Lab

UPBox can print in a variety of plastics and colours. TheUPBox has a print size of 255mm in height and 205mm x205mm in width. 3D printing in research is a powerful tool toprototype ideas. It also can be used for moulding bricks andodd shapes, you are only limited to your imagination. I look

forward to your ideas on how to best utilise this printer forresearch.

Big John (Large shear box) is starting to get a good workoutthrough an industry consulting project the proceeds in whichwill go to supporting technical staff. This project is set toexpand soon as Stephen Fityus has a new PHD student whois planning to do over 100 shear tests.

The Lab is buzzing! With students completing practicalclasses, urgent repairs of test equipment, open day lab tours,a large queue for workshop requests, a ever increasing needfor more space, consulting work and undergrad projects.Murphies Law States: The remaining work to finish in order

to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches SoTrue!

Earlier this year a strong push was made to try and retain ourvaluable technical staff within the lab. You all know theimportance that our technicians play within the Lab.Unfortunately upper management rejected our bid for apermanent technician position which we desperately needed.All was not lost; a decision was made by the Discipline tosupport our technical and surveying professional officer bycontributing all the RIBG funds for this year to retain ourirreplaceable expertise. Thanks for the support fromDaichao and the Discipline.

Lab tours for open day were a success with quite a fewpeople giving up a beautiful winters day to view our facility.There was a strong interest for Civil, surveying andenvironmental disciplines from each tour group. It wasrefreshing to have interactive tour groups that really engagedin what we do in the Lab.

This year through the minor equipment fund the Labpurchased a new 3D printer. The new machine, called an

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The

newsletter civelsurv env 2015

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