Development of an innovative condition assessment for ground, surface transportation and buried infrastructure using advanced numerical modelling

Frequent condition assessment of road structure and buried infrastructure reduces the risk of collapse and failure and prevents catastrophic consequences. Conventional approaches to assess condition of roads and buried assets have several drawbacks ranging from only working in limited situations, difficulty coping with the complex environment underground, and high costs. With a large number of buried assets existing in our cities and rural areas, development of a rigorous, powerful yet cost effective technique for condition assessment of our buried and surface transportation infrastructure is of significant and strategic importance.

This research is motivated by the limitations and drawbacks that exist in the traditional assessment techniques and aims at developing a novel approach to overcome the abovementioned shortcomings. The research is based on a combination of physical tests and numerical modelling to extract rich, yet hidden, structural and geotechnical information existing in buried utility infrastructure. The proposed method will make use of a finite element (FE) model of the system to capture the changes in the constitutive properties of the materials. This approach can complement the existing assessment techniques by providing additional information on the geotechnical and structural integrity of the system. This PhD research is associated with the GUIDE, an EPSRC funded project (EP/P010415/1).

The suitable candidate should have an interest in pursuing interdisciplinary research, and will be expected to have very good understanding of finite element modelling of solid and geotechnical problems, be familiar with Matlab and be competent in computer programming. The successful candidate will work closely with a group of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who work on this project. Having strong teamwork skills as well as independent judgement and are essential for this position.
Informal enquires can be sent to Dr Asaad Faramarzi ([Email Address Removed]) and in the first instance should contain a covering letter and a CV.