Current projects

• Analytical Framework for Batter Micropile System

  PhD student

  Chin F. Tsang

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Associate Prof Guillermo Narsilio

• Impacts of internal erosion on soil fabric and mechanical behaviour

  PhD Student

  Chen Dong

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Associate Prof Guillermo Narsilio

• Behaviour of Driven Battered Minipiles: Field, Physical and Numerical Modelling under Lateral Loading

  PhD student

  Sanchari Mondal

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Associate Prof Guillermo Narsilio

  It is an Australian Research Council linkage project focussed on analysing the behaviour of laterally loaded battered minipiles and their soil-structure interaction through 1g model laboratory tests, full-scale field investigation and numerical modelling in both cohesionless and cohesive soil. The driven battered minipile footing is an innovative foundation system that is low-cost, easily installable in inaccessible areas and free from carbon footprint. The project also involves advanced usage of fibre optic sensing technology as an instrumentation technique. The output or the findings are not only applicable for the minipiles but can also be applied to understand the soil-structure interaction of general piles, mainly battered. As a result, the implementation of battered piles/minipiles by professional engineers will become a more confident choice as a cost-effective alternative to existing deep foundations.

• Mechanical Performance of Waste Tyre-based Permeable Pavements

  PhD student

  Ramin Raeesi

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Associate Prof Guillermo Narsilio, Dr Amir Soltani

  Waste tyre-based permeable pavements are bound soft-rigid mixtures, made of granular geomaterials, recycled tyre rubber granulates and a polyurethane binder. Covering surfaces with this porous material, specially in dense urban areas, not only can reduce the risk of flash floods, but also gives the waste tyres another purposeful life. My research mainly focuses on the mechanical performance of waste tyre-based permeable pavements under different loading conditions as well as their failure mechanism. The results of my experiments from both laboratory element testing and field performance monitoring (in real scale) has provided a better understanding of the behaviour of this novel material and been used to optimise the mixture for different applications.

• Investigation of Mechanical Behaviour of Rockfill Materials

  PhD student

  Reza Asadi

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Dr. Behrooz Ghahreman-Nejad

  Rockfill; a granular material with particle sizes usually in the range of 5 cm to 1 m is commonly used in a range of civil engineering applications such as retaining walls, railways, and rockfill dams. Rockfill’s complex behaviour which mainly stems from inherently discrete and heterogeneous nature on one hand and expensive and time-consuming experimental tests which require large apparatuses on another hand, highlight the need for the numerical investigation of this material using Discrete Element Methods. Consequently, a thorough and comprehensive investigation of behaviour and associated parameters of rockfill seems necessary so that uncertainties surrounding the design and safety of rockfill structures can be addressed. In other words, establishing a framework based on assimilating studies in the literature and conducting investigations on unclear aspects of rockfill behaviour and the effective parameters, is the ultimate goal of this study. The primary results show a very good agreement with the realistic behaviour of Rockfill in micro and macro-scale including breakage pattern and stress-strain behaviour.

• Behaviour of Battered Mini Pile System Subject to Complex Loading in Cohesive Soil

  PhD student

  Haran Prashadh Gananathan

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Associate Prof Yinghui Tian, Associate Prof Guillermo Narsilio

  Battered mini pile systems are widely used deep foundation systems to support small to medium scale structures such as electricity poles, transmission towers, and onshore and shallow offshore renewable energy structures. They are advantageous as they are relatively cheaper than other supporting structures and can be quickly installed using hand-held or lightweight hammers, especially in sites with limited access. The nature of these systems support structures requires them to resist significant eccentric cyclic lateral loads due to wind and waves and vertical loads from the superstructure. The combination of eccentric cyclic lateral and vertical loads creates a complex load regime acting on the systems. However, the existing design guidelines fail to incorporate the effect of complex cyclic loadings when determining the lateral performance of the systems. Moreover, the pile-soil-pile interaction while accommodating the soil arching effect and block behaviour (when working as a group) is not incorporated in current design practices. Many researchers investigated the behaviour of battered mini piles and systems subject to static and cyclic lateral loads without incorporating the vertical loads, creating a knowledge gap in this area. This thesis builds upon the past literature by exploring the behaviour of pile groups, more specifically, the battered mini pile systems in cohesive soil under complex loading, by using soil-structure interaction analysis. This study is carried out through physical models and advanced numerical models. This study systematically investigates the battered mini pile system’s behaviour under static complex loads and extends to investigating the system’s behaviour under cyclic complex loads.

• Analyzing the Internal Erosion in a Gap-Graded Soil Using Particle–Fluid Simulations

  PhD student

  Seyed Meysam Mousavi Eshkelani

  Supervisors

  Associate Prof Mahdi Miri Disfani, Dr. Amirhassan Mehdizadeh

  Suffusion as an internal erosion is a phenomenon particularly occurs in susceptible soils such as gap-graded soil in which fine particles are more prone to migrate. The leading factors for this modification are specific geometric, stress and hydraulic conditions. Particle scale modeling using discrete element method (DEM) enables the analysis of the fabric, particle motion and stress. When DEM is coupled with computational fluid dynamics (CFD), more criteria can also be considered. This contribution aims to provide a developed coupled DEM-CFD model to investigate the internal erosion process including initiation, continuation, progression and breach. Once the model is validated by some internal erosion tests in laboratory, it could provide a better understanding of internal erosion considering fluid-particle interactions