Contacts

• The CGR Chairman is Prof John Small

• Professor John Carter carries out research into constitutive models and has developed models for cemented soils. He is also interested in rock mechanics and numerical modelling of problems in geomechanics.
• Professor John Small is interested in pavement design, the behaviour of piled and piled raft foundations and excavation and tunnelling problems. He is also interested in numerical modelling, including finite element and finite layer methods.
• Associate Professor David Airey has research interests in experimental geotechnics including the fundamental behaviour of soils, cemented soils and weak rocks, laboratory testing of soil and rock, development of new test equipment and instrumentation, model tests of foundation elements, offshore geotechnics, and environmental geotechnics.
• Dr Itai Einav’s research has mainly been in the area of Theoretical geomechnics and Offshore Geotechnics, and includes analytical and numerical solutions to Soil-structure interaction and Soil characterisation problems. He has also a broad interest in Mechanics and Material Science.
• Emeritus Prof Harry Poulos has expertise in the areas of Pile foundations, Foundation settlements & Earthquake engineering.
• Dr Abbas El-Zein has interests in Contaminant migration in soils, Thermo-mechanical consolidation for radioactive waste disposal, Modelling of health impacts of climate change, Environmental risk perception.
• Dr Martin Liu:
• Dr Tim Hull:
• Dr Nigel Balaam:

• Helen Chow
  Helen has been developing a means of analysis for computing the behaviour of piled raft foundations where the piles are of different lengths and diameters. This allows the raft to be given more support in some areas than others, with the ultimate aim of evening out differential displacements in a raft.
• Ravindra Prathapa
  Ravindra has been examining the behaviour of pavements subjected to repeated tyre loadings using the Departments pavement loading facility. He has developed the data acquisition system for the facility and used it to record the large volume of data produced by repeated loading tests. He is also developing an upper bound solution for a loaded pavement using linear programming.
• Ryan Chen
  Ryan has just begun work on the behaviour of tunnel support systems and will be looking at the increase in support pressures on linings with time through the use of numerical analysis.
• Ezat William
  Ezat's thesis has involved an exploration of the engineering behaviour of Bringelly Shale. The shale is a problematic material as conventional engineering tests show it has high strength yet it disintegrates if placed in fresh water. A range of tests have been performed to classify the soil, and special tests have been used to explore the role of cementation and suction in controlling its behaviour.
• AKM Mohsin
  Mohsin's thesis has been exploring the breakdown of cementation in an artificially cemented carbonate sand. The extent of cementation has been assessed non-destructively using continuous measurements of the shear wave velocity. To achieve this aim development of the bender element technique was required to obtain reliable shear wave velocity measurements. The tests have shown that loss of cementation follows an exponential decay with strain as has often been assumed in numerical models.
• Manh Tran
  Manh's thesis has been exploring issues related to the installation of suction caissons in sand and sand containing layers of silt. Tests have been performed at 1-g and at elevated gravities in a geotechnical centrifuge. Tests have been performed for a range of caisson geometries, weights, installation rates, and for a range of soil profiles. Some half-caisson tests were performed to explore the soil movements during caisson installation, and the Geo-PIV technique was used to determine movements. The tests have shown that installation is possible in sandy soils, even when these contain thin silt layers, but that considerable heave of the sand can occur within the caisson.
• Bosco Poon
  Bosco's thesis has been concerned with the response of footings subjected to combined loading (inclined load and moment). A series of experiments have been compared with the predictions from the finite element method and a plasticity model. The importance of including non-associated flow in numerical finite element analyses has been demonstrated, and the plasticity model shown to be able to reproduce the results of the experiments.