Never Stand Still UNSW Engineering School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Excellence @ Civil and Environmental Engineering

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The School gratefully acknowledges the support and assistance of various funding bodies, donors and industry partners involved in our research projects including the Australian Research Council.

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CVEN RESEARCH 3

sustainability

hydrology

transport

water - coastal

water research

research facilities

construction

geospatial

geotechnical

structures

clean water4,6

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16,18,20

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contentswelcome

Welcome to this special research edition, profiling just some of the exciting projects currently taking place at the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The School – now the largest of its kind in Australasia and ranked in the world’s top twenty (QS_2014) - is a powerhouse of engineering research. Our academic staff are recognised world leaders in their fields, supported by 70 full time researchers, and supervising over 200 Higher Degree Research students.

Each year we win millions of dollars from prestigious and highly competitive Australian Government funding programs. Each year we also work with over 100 industry and government organisations on specific industry related projects.

Our successes as a team in attracting competitive monies, in publishing our works, and in our investigative research links with industry are self-evident. Less visible, however, are the many and major contributions and impacts of our research on the profession – from our work on national and international Standards to representation on national and international industry advisory bodies.

The importance we place on the movement of our research to practice cannot be overstated. It is fundamental to whom we are, and what the School is about.

I hope that the fourteen projects showcased here will indicate the sheer breadth – and depth – of our current engineering research, our engagement with the issues and needs of contemporary society, and impress upon you our capacity - and desire – to undertake even more great work.

Professor Stephen J FosterHead of School

CVEN RESEARCH 4

Associate Professor Stuart Khan#potable_water_reuse#sustainability#validation#multi-barrier#disinfection

From your toilet to your tap, recycled water could soon become a reality in Australia with the development of a national validation framework for treatment processes and technology.

A report prepared by the Australian Academy of Tech-nological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) in 2013 concluded that returning highly treated sewage directly into the drinking water supply of Australian cities and towns could have considerable economic and environ-mental benefits.

“In a water-challenged country like Australia it just makes sense,” says Associate Professor Stuart Khan from the UNSW School of Civil Environmental Engineering.

Khan was the primary author of the ATSE report – which was also supported by the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence (AWRCE) – and has been a long-time proponent of direct potable reuse (DPR). This is where treated waste water is returned directly to the drinking supply, and differs from indirect potable reuse (IPR) where water is pumped into ‘environmental buff-ers’ such as rivers and lakes for temporary storage.

“The real driver for considering DPR is sustainability,” says Khan. “Hypothetical DPR schemes for cities like Sydney and Brisbane would be much less energy-inten-sive than comparable indirect potable reuse or seawater desalination schemes. There would also be savings on construction and operational costs, as pipelines to environmental buffers aren’t needed.”

Water recycling for irrigation and a select number of other non-drinking applications has already begun, but before recycled water can start flowing from our taps, a national framework for validating treatment processes and technologies must be developed.

The Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (2006) has specified performance targets that equipment and processes must meet. These focus on measuring how well a system removes harmful pathogens and toxins, and are intended to protect the health of people and the environment. Yet the guidelines make no mention of how validation should be carried out.

At present, there is no unified national approach, says Khan. This means validation of identical technologies is being repeated numerous times across different states and territories, which slows down the commissioning of water recycling schemes, increases the overall cost of implementation, and increases the workload for regu-lators. It also means different operators could be using the same technologies but getting different validation results. cl

ean

wat

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CVEN RESEARCH 5

All of these factors can serve to discourage the uptake of water recycling systems, particularly among smaller, regional utilities or private scheme operators.

Khan is playing an important role in developing the new National Framework for Validating Water Recycling Technology. This is being spearheaded by the AWRCE and has so far involved extensive consultation between researchers, urban and regional utilities, state and territory regulators, technical experts and technology providers.

It will create consistency across Australia, which will benefit recyclers, regulators and technology providers alike, says Khan. It will also reduce the cost of validation for specific treatment technologies, as this will only need to be done once.

Khan is leading the group looking at validation protocols for a multi-barrier approach in water recycling. This type of approach doesn’t just focus on treating water once it leaves a reservoir, but addressing water quality risks at multiple stages along the supply chain.

“Validation approaches for water recycling schemes have tended to consider each process one step at a time and do not sufficiently integrate between process steps to quantify the benefits of synergies and multiple barrier reliability,” says Khan.

What this means is that multiple conservative as-sumptions are often compounded, which leads to a

requirement for additional treatment steps, resulting in a greater overall system cost.

By establishing a comprehensive validation strategy, Khan can help ensure that water recycling schemes are realised in the safest, most cost-effective way possible.

Khan is leading the group looking at validation protocols for a multi-barrier approach in water recycling. This type of approach doesn’t just focus on treating water once it leaves a reservoir, but addressing water quality risks at multiple stages along the supply chain.

CVEN RESEARCH 6

clean water

Scientia Professor David Waite#nanoparticles#rice_husks#water_filtration#silver_nanoparticle#disinfection

Nanoparticles synthesised by UNSW engineers using a by-product of rice could enable better water filtration systems for developing nations.

Each year, more than 580 million tons of rice is produced, largely by developing nations in Asia. Yet a quarter of this production mass consists of rice husks – hard, inedible shells that protect the grain, while generating a significant waste problem for growers.

There has been considerable research devoted to uncovering innovative applications for these husks so they don’t end up in landfill. One exciting possibility is water treatment, says Scientia Professor David Waite from the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

When burned, the ash from rice husks has a high concentration of silica, which is thought to be an excellent supporting material for ultra fine silver nanoparticles.

These nanoparticles have become well-known for their anti-bacterial properties and applications in water treatment, but at the size where these particles are most effective (diameters less than 20 nm), they have a tendency to aggregate, which decreases their disinfecting potential.

Waite is leading a team working at the intersection of nanotechnology, materials science and environmental engineering, developing new composite materials

CVEN RESEARCH 7

clean water

made from silver nanoparticles anchored onto the low-cost silica from rice husk ash (RHA). In addition to preventing aggregation of the silver nanoparticles, the rice husk ash support slows down the release time of dissolved silver, enhancing the long-term anti-bacterial applications of the particles.

Over the last two years, Tata Corporation in India has begun developing water filtration systems for households that use these innovative particles. The devices, which cost about US$40, appear to be more cost-effective than similar domestic-scale units, which use ultra-violet or reverse-osmosis technologies. However, little is known about the nature of the silver nanoparticle-impregnated RHA, or how well the nanoparticles work.

Waite says the technology is ideal for supplying clean, affordable drinking water to remote communities, and for doing so following a disaster or emergency, but also says there’s considerable room for improvement.

“Production costs of these units are still too high and the efficacy of the technology has not been demonstrated robustly. As such, the market for the technology outside of India, where the original units are manufactured, is currently quite small.”

But it doesn’t have to be. Waite and his team are investigating how these particles work, to understand and optimise their properties for water treatment applications.

In a recent study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Waite and his team documented the synthesis of silver nanoparticles anchored onto black and white RHA (the type of ash is determined by the conditions in which the rice husks are burned).

They were looking specifically at the surface chemistry, preparation modes, the anti-bacterial properties against specific targets like Escherichia coli, and the mechanisms governing silver dissolution.

Waite says their results indicate “that the precise nature of the rice husk ash to which the silver nanoparticles are attached has a major impact on both the toxicity and longevity of the product as does the composition of the water being treated”.

There is still a lot of work to be done to understand the mode of disinfection, and to refine the preparation method, but the end goal of providing clean, affordable drinking water to the developing world is worth the effort.

the end goal of providing clean, affordable drinking water to the developing world is worth the effort

CVEN RESEARCH 8

Over the last decade there has been a considerable effort globally to encourage architects and engineers to design lower-carbon buildings and infrastructure, which incorporate more sustainable materials and clean energy technologies.

However, far less effort has been devoted to promoting more sustainable “on-site” construction practices that deliver these facilities, says Professor David Carmichael, leader of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Construction Innovation and Research Initiative.

The construction industry is heavily dependent on fossil fuels to power heavy machinery and to transport materials, and the industry plays a significant part in national economies. In 2010-2011, the Australian construction industry accounted for 7.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employed more than one million people. Yet there are no official industry guidelines or legislation aimed at directly reducing carbon emissions.

“At present, companies thinking about emission reductions are primarily driven by the notion that, from a marketing perspective, it’s good for business to be seen as operating sustainably,” says Professor Carmichael. “It gives them an advantage over the competition.”

Part of the problem, he says, is the way the construction industry is structured. There are only a handful of large companies; these have recognised mounting societal pressure and have taken steps to operate more sustainably. Then there are many medium-sized firms, some of which are beginning to see value in transitioning to more sustainable operations. And finally, he says, there are thousands of small-scale contractors, most of which aren’t concerned about their emissions at all.

In the US, construction (excluding the manufacture of materials) accounts for approximately 2 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Australia this figure is estimated at 0.5 percent, but the collective carbon footprint of all the small-scale operators, which aren’t required to report emissions, is unknown.

Professor David Carmichael

#construction#infrastructure

#sustainable#emissions

#carbon_footprint#cost_effective

construction

Our future cities will inevitably feature greener homes, buildings and infrastructure. But can we also make the construction industry more sustainable?

CVEN RESEARCH 9

With his group at UNSW, Professor Carmichael has been investigating ways that construction and mining operations around the world can cost-effectively reduce their direct carbon emissions. And he says improvements are certainly within reach.

“We have shown, for a number of construction processes such as quarrying, earthmoving and surface mining, that if companies manage their operations in a least unit cost manner, that this actually coincides with minimum unit emissions,” he says. “Conversely, not operating in a least unit cost manner leads to unnecessary emissions. For these operations we’ve proven this theoretically and confirmed it with field data.”

Field studies carried out by Professor Carmichael – which profile the emissions from infrastructure and building projects – reveal a number of options for contractors to reduce emissions in construction activities such as earthworks, demolition and concrete pouring.

He found that simple options, such as reducing travel distances, saw cutting rock, and stockpiling waste prior to removal, had cost-effective GHG reduction potential. Other options could include better management of vehicles to minimise idling time, use of alternative

fuels and newer equipment where possible, and better coordination with sub-contractors and suppliers to minimise deliveries and haulage.

“Contractors ideally should be doing an audit of their emissions and their waste, and then looking for ways to improve,” says Carmichael. “This requires a cultural and attitude shift within companies. It means being prepared to examine your own practices and adopt new practices, rather than becoming entrenched in old ways.”

“Contractors ideally should be doing an audit of their emissions and their waste, and then looking for ways to improve. This requires a cultural and attitude shift within companies. It means being prepared to examine your own practices and adopt new practices, rather than becoming entrenched in old ways.”

CVEN RESEARCH 10

Professor Chris Rizos and Associate Professor Samsung Lim

geospatial

When it comes to positioning technology, one could argue the indoor environment is the final frontier. Sure, GPS has revolutionised how we navigate outdoors, but signals are ineffective when it comes to guiding people through airports, shopping malls, or even university campuses.

Nevertheless, there is an increasing expectation that positioning data should work in the places where we spend the most amount of time, such as indoors or in cities, says Professor Chris Rizos.

“This is a natural evolution of information technology,” he says. “We start by using it in constrained conditions and then we go mobile, indoors, then everywhere.”

Ubiquitous positioning, as it’s known, is important for the military and for certain industries, which need to track the movement of personnel and machinery in urban, indoor or underground environments.

#navigation#GPS#ubiquitous_positioning#vision#LIDAR#autocorrelation

New technologies and applications such as GPS and LIDAR are driving a geospatial revolution. CVEN researchers are working to extend the frontiers even further.

CVEN RESEARCH 11

However, new research is focusing on consumer appli-cations and involves smartphones – the most sophis-ticated user positioning device available, says Rizos. Outdoors, GPS provides accuracy within 10 metres, but indoor positions are determined by identifying the nearest WiFi access point, which reduces accuracy to within 100 metres.

Rizos working with Dr Binghao Li, is involved in a project going one step beyond the average consumer.

The SIMO Project, which involves industry partners Ramsey-Stewart Industrial Design and Vision Austral-ia, has designed an indoor positioning and navigation system specifically for people with blindness and vision impairment. Their innovative new apps for Android and Apple operating systems use audial and tactile feed-back to guide users. They also fuse information from sensors on the phones with maps, WiFi signals, and point-of-interest databases to make indoor navigation a reality.

Another project in the School’s new surveying and geo-spatial unit is using a remote sensing technology known as LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to more closely examine the surface of the Earth.

“LIDAR enables 3D mapping of a surface by transmit-ting a series of light pulses using a laser and measuring the return time of each pulse that bounces back from

the surface,” explains Associate Professor Samsung Lim. “The intensity value of the reflected light lets re-searchers distinguish between different objects.”

These laser systems can be airborne or ground-based, and are used to create highly detailed terrain models, which can be used for urban planning, monitoring coastal change, as well as power and transport infra-structure, and measuring tree-sizes in forest plantations.

But commercial lasers can repeat the pulse signal several hundred thousand times per second, which means huge scores of data are collected. An airborne survey could produce billions of 3D coordinates of points and intensity values, which ultimately need to be classified as objects.

Lim has been developing data processing algorithms to make sense of this data for specific applications, such as identifying complex objects in urban environment like bridges, vegetation, and hard to distinguish topographi-cal features including cliffs and slopes.

Using autocorrelation statistics of the data, he has developed algorithms that can classify ground points with up to 93% accuracy and non-ground points up to 99% – this represents a considerable improvement over commercially available software which has an accuracy range between 85-95%.

Ubiquitous positioning, as it’s known, is important for the military and for certain industries, which need to track the movement of personnel and machinery in urban, indoor or underground environments.

L-R: Professor Chris Rizos, Dr Binghao Li, Associate Professor Samsung Lim.

CVEN RESEARCH 12

geotechnicalProfessor Nasser Khalili and Associate Professor Adrian Russell

Any building project situated on or in the ground, wheth-er it’s a 10-kilometre tunnel or a 70-storey skyscraper, needs to consider soil mechanics..

Above all else, civil infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, dams and ports need to be safe, and they need to operate for a long time into the future. Geo-technical engineers ensure this is possible by designing foundations optimal for the soil conditions.

At UNSW, the geotechnical engineering research group is developing ways to more easily and cost-effectively measure soil strength. It is also building innovative design tools that account for the complex interactions between shallow foundations and retaining walls, and unsaturated (or damp) soils.

“Current design tools are only applicable for soils that are fully saturated or dry,” says Professor Nasser Khalili, from the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“This is alarming, provided that roughly 60 per cent of the world’s population lives in regions where the surface soils – to a depth of several metres – are unsaturated,” he says.

#soil_mechanics#unsaturated#suction#building_standards

Building safe and sustainable structures requires taking soil conditions into account. Yet current design tools are insufficient for regions with unsaturated soils – where 60% of the world’s population live. Geotechnical researchers at CVEN are aiming to close the gap.

CVEN RESEARCH 13

These partially damp soils have an internal suction that increases the contact forces between particles meaning they are generally stronger and stiffer than completely saturated or dry soils.

Associate Professor Adrian Russell uses the analogy of the sand castle. “It’s easiest to build when using moist sand,” he says. “This moisture induces suction and strength that would otherwise be absent if the sand was dry.”

Russell, Khalili, Dr Hossein Taiebat and a number of PhD students are investigating ways to better under-stand the strength and stiffness of unsaturated soils caused by this suction; how these properties can vary depending on seasonal fluctuations in soil moisture due to drought or flooding; and how this might impact on structures in the ground.

These are important questions that need urgent an-swers in order to design and build safe and cost-effec-tive structures, says Russell.

“How much extra load can the foundation or wall carry when suction will always be present?” he asks. “Not utilising this extra capacity may lead to unnecessarily conservative designs and excessively large and expen-sive infrastructure.”

The team has already begun developing practical guidelines for the safe design of shallow foundations and retaining walls in unsaturated soil, with variable strength due to moisture content changes.

Another avenue of research has been improving testing capabilities for unsaturated soils.

“To measure strength in the past, engineers had to per-form expensive and time-consuming site investigations, which involved drilling boreholes, collecting samples and slow laboratory tests,” says Russell.

“Our research has shown how the measurement of strengths can be done much more quickly and inexpen-sively while the soil is in situ using the cone penetration test (CPT).”

The team developed a world-first calibration chamber to conduct laboratory controlled CPTs, and later adapted this chamber to investigate the properties of a second type of unsaturated soil – decomposed granite.

They also designed and built a lateral earth pressure rig. Essentially, this unparalleled facility allows research-ers to build a large sample of unsaturated soil and observe what happens when a retaining wall presses against this sample.

Looking into the future, he says the development of standards for building in unsaturated soils is at least a decade away. When they’re eventually established, however, the input of UNSW engineers will surely be invaluable.

“The research we’re currently undertaking is world-first and continually breaking new ground,” says Russell.

It’s a statement backed up by the team’s track record. Since 2010, the geotechnical engineering research group has received more than $2.5 million in competi-tive grants, including five ARC Discovery Projects, two ARC Linkage Projects, and one ARC large equipment grant.

For more information on UNSW’s Geotechnical Engineering Research please contact Nasser Khalili (n.khalili@unsw.edu.au) or Adrian Russell (a.russell@unsw.edu.au)

L-R: Professor Nasser Khalili, Associate Professor Adrian Russell, Dr Hossein Taiebat.

CVEN RESEARCH 14

Getting an accurate picture of the extent and connectivity of Australia’s freshwater basins is an important challenge. UNSW engineers are developing new models to help us better understand the unknown.

Dr Lucy Marshall

hydrologywater resources

#freshwater#water_movement#water_systems#hydrological_connectivity#catchment#resource#computer_modelling

The majority of the world’s freshwater catchments – surface areas where water from rain or melting snow funnels into a single reservoir at a lower elevation – are ungauged. This means little or no observational data is available on how water travels through these systems, replenishing lakes, rivers, streams and underground aquifers.

There is a growing need to model these ungauged basins, to understand the physical processes and en-vironmental conditions that influence water movement, and to assess the extent of interconnectivity between different water systems. Accurate models mean we’ll be better equipped to predict floods and droughts, estimate groundwater recharge rates and manage water quality concerns, which arise due to the transport of matter and pollutants.

But with no data there is a “heck of a lot of uncertain-ty”, says Dr Lucy Marshall, an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“The systems we’re working on are highly dynamic, non-linear, and have a lot of processes that we can’t quantify mathematically, so we’re forced to simplify this,” she says. “We can only capture part of what the system is doing.”

CVEN RESEARCH 15

An environmental engineer and hydrologist, Marshall completed her undergraduate degree and PhD at UNSW before moving to Montana State University, where she was working at the interface of engineering and environmental science. She has now returned to UNSW with the aim of modelling hydrological connectiv-ity in water catchments, and of quantifying and trying to reduce predictive uncertainty by building new statistical models.

In dealing with ungauged basins, a common practice has been to calibrate models for catchments that are considered similar, for which site-specific data is avail-able. These models can then be roughly applied to the uncharted system. It’s a process known as “regionali-sation” and it’s far from perfect.

Typically, regionalisation looks at the five of 10 geo-graphically closest catchments, says Marshall, and the resulting model is applied to the ungauged catchment.

“What we’re finding is that proximity, which has long been the measure to gauge similarity between catch-ments is not appropriate, and really, we should be look-ing at measurements relatively new to hydrology.”

These measurements – called hydrologic indices of similarity – include things like long-term variability in climate and runoff ratio, she says.

So far, her group has had success using these different variables to find large groups of similar catchments, but narrowing these groups down is tricky. It’s something Marshall hopes future models will help to achieve.

In a recent study with the School’s hydrology group leader Professor Ashish Sharma and PhD Dr Tyler Smith from Clarkson University in New York State, she developed a tool that was effectively able to quantify the uncertainty that exists when applying “regionalised” models, confirming a correlation between greater simi-larity and less uncertain forecasts.

Of course, to assign models to uncharted catchments, you need others where lots of data is available. In an unrelated project, Marshall and her team recently de-veloped a model to assess the hydrologic connectivity of a catchment in the Montana wilderness in the US, which she says is “one of the most-highly instrumented watersheds in the world”.

“Even though our model is relatively simple, it is in-credibly realistic and representative of the hydrological cycle,” she says. “It can do forecasting really well … is reliable, and is something we think we can extrapolate into the future.”

“It’s critically important to try to understand how water as a resource and its availability might evolve over the coming years and decades.”

“It’s critically important to try to understand how water as a resource and its availability might evolve over the coming years and decades.”

CVEN RESEARCH 16

Professor Stephen FosterEmeritus Professor Ian Gilbert

structures

A vibrant construction sector is fundamental to Australia’s economic growth. Ground-breaking research at UNSW in the field of concrete structures has kept, and will continue to keep, the Australian construction sector at the forefront internationally.

Having laid its foundations in concrete engineering over 60 years ago, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is well known for pushing the boundaries of both construction materials and structural design.

The concrete structures team at UNSW, currently led by Professor Stephen Foster (Head of School) and Emeritus Professor Ian Gilbert of the Centre for Infra-structure Engineering and Safety (CIES), has a strong history of engagement in the development of national and international design standards that give engineers the confidence to adopt innovative new materials and techniques.

“We are leaders in bridging the gap between materials sciences and the use of modern construction materials within the community,” says Stephen Foster. “We want to maintain and grow that lead”.

The vibrancy of Australia’s construction future rests with the development and application of materials that not only promote good economic outcomes but also are sustainable, high-performance, and safe under stress.

The team at UNSW have been responsible for the ma-terial modeling provisions for normal and high-strength concrete in the Australian Standard for Concrete Structures AS3600-2009. UNSW also leads the way in research on the use of steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) to increase the longevity of concrete struc-tures in urban environments. While the use of fibres to strengthen building materials isn’t new -- horse hair and straw were used in the past to strengthen mortar and mud bricks -- engineers need to understand how steel fibres respond to residual stresses before SFRC can be safety integrated into a wider range of design applica-tions. Residual stresses are those that begin and linger once cracks form in the concrete.

#concrete#steel-fibre#tensile_strength#post_cracking

Emeritus Professor Ian Gilbert

CVEN RESEARCH 17

Steel fibre reinforcement provides tensile strength after cracking, limits crack width and improves durability, but these effects are still to be quantified reliably. The team of researchers led by Professor Foster, is testing differ-ent steel fibre-concrete mixes and creating models that help engineers understand how much stress steel fibre reinforced concrete structures can take and how steel fibres control crack development.

The team is also making active contributions to a revision of the Australian Bridge Design Code, with the new chapter in the code on fibre reinforced concrete having been prepared directly from UNSW research by a sub-committee led by Professors Foster and Gilbert.

Separate research is underway on the use of geopoly-mers – waste products from other industrial processes – that can be used to replace cement in concrete.

Cement is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions: it is thought about 800 kilograms of carbon dioxide is released for every tonne of cement produced. By substituting the cement in concrete with a more sustainable material, the environmental footprint of buildings and other infrastructure can be significantly reduced. Potential geopolymers include fly ash, which is a by-product of burning coal, and granulated blast furnace slag, which is a by-product of steel production. UNSW researchers have been working through the CRC for Low Carbon Living to determine the gaps in research on geopolymer concrete and what has to be done in order to develop standards for its widespread use in the Australian construction sector.

Over the past five years, the team at the School has been strengthened by a new generation of researchers, including Associate Professor Arnaud Castel, Senior Lecturers Ehab Hamed and Hamid Vali Pour Goudarzi and others.

Associate Professor Castel is an expert on concrete durability and is currently extending his work to include both geopolymer concrete and the effects of steel corrosion on the serviceability and sustainability of concrete structures.

Dr Hamed’s work covers ultra-high-performance con-crete and functionally graded materials; the latter is about minimising the weight of structures and therefore the amount of material needed to build them, without sacrificing performance.

Dr Vali Pour Goudarzi is researching the behaviour of structures that are subjected to extreme loading scenar-ios, such as fire, blast or earthquake.

“They are the future,” Professor Foster says. “Their work will keep us at the forefront over the next 20 years.”

By substituting the cement in concrete with a more sustainable material, the environmental footprint of buildings and other infrastructure can be significantly reduced.

CVEN RESEARCH 18

structuresDr Carolin Birk and Professor Chongmin Song#structure#seismic#integrity#CAD#modelling

Predicting the damage an earthquake or other disasters might inflict on infrastructure like buildings or roads is about to get a lot faster, if Professor Chongmin Song and Dr Carolin Birk have their way.

Professor Chongmin Song and Dr Carolin Birk are lead-ing research to automate computer modelling into that will enable engineers to perform complex analysis of civil infrastructure in seconds or minutes, rather than the hours or days required by existing tools.

“We want to develop a technique which expands on the present capacity for numerical modelling in structural engineering,” Professor Song says.

The genesis of the research stretches back over a decade, though the latest work by Professor Song, Dr Birk and a team of approximately 15 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers brings together a number of previous elements from the research history to create something new.

The elements that make up this new technique include automatic generation of numerical models from digital

images or CAD data and efficient structural analysis of the models.

Underpinning this work is the scaled boundary finite element method developed as a part of the team’s research on computational structural and solid mechan-ics to address challenging engineering problems. It provides the ‘missing link’ between structural analysis and the geometrical information – the digital images or CAD data – in the automation of computer modelling.

Dr Birk is leading the earthquake-related research. “I focus a lot on time-dependent problems,” she says. “I would like to use this technique, for example, to simulate seismic waves because it’s a problem that is complex and large-scale. It’s really challenging even to create an efficient computational model of a region subject to an earthquake.”

Although software already exists to model the dangers that seismic events pose to infrastructure, it requires the services of an experienced numerical analyst and con-siderable laborious work. The scale of the model is also limited by computer power. “The tool we’re developing automates this analysis,” Dr Birk says. “It takes the man-ual burden away and boosts computational efficiency at the same time.”

CVEN RESEARCH 19

Professor Song similarly sees uses for the tool in disas-ter prevention or city planning. For example, it could be used to predict how tunnelling under a built-up area will affect the structural integrity of housing sited above it.

“If we want to plan a subway, we can have a database of the geological information for a particular site and the structure, and see what the impact of excavating under that structure would be,” Professor Song says. “If you dig underneath the building, will it tilt and by how much?

“The results will be available in ‘real time’ much like when you search for directions using Google Maps”.

The scope of the tool isn’t limited to modelling the impact on a single building or structure: it can automat-ically assess blocks of buildings or even whole regions. It is also capable of extremely detailed modelling and analysis, for example on portions of an individual structure.

Work is being funded substantially by two Australian Research Council grants worth a combined $650,000, and by support from the School.

Presently the computational models work off 2D images of the building structure or the material out of which it is made, although the researchers hope to eventually be able to work with 3D images.

“If we can take any kind of material, image it in three dimensions and then model its engineering behaviour, it will have a big impact on structural engineering analy-sis,” Professor Song says.

“Of course there’s a long way to go and a lot more research is required but this is what we’re aiming for, and we’re confident that we are heading in the right direction.”

“If we can take any kind of material, image it in three dimensions and then model its engineering behaviour, it will have a big impact on structural engineering analysis”

CVEN RESEARCH 20

Professor Mark Bradford and Professor Brian Uy

As our cities age, structural engineers at UNSW are conducting advanced research to make sure buildings and infrastructure remain safe and stay standing.

When it comes to rehabilitation, structural engineers at UNSW are less concerned with mending broken bones and torn muscles, and more concerned with strength-ening our ageing buildings and infrastructure – to keep us safe and to make the construction industry more sustainable.

In most modern construction projects there is a need to connect steel and concrete elements. In fact, composite steel-concrete beams have become the most widely used method of construction for steel framed bridges and buildings. In NSW, the Star City Casino, Sydney Olympic Stadium and the Hawkesbury River Bridge all use composite beams.

Unfortunately, many existing composite structures may not satisfy current load requirements and require retro-fitting or “rehabilitation” to extend their design life, says

Professor Brian Uy, Director of the UNSW Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety (CIES).

According to a 2009 infrastructure report card pro-duced by the American Society of Civil Engineers, approximately one in four rural bridges in the US, and one in three urban bridges, were deficient. In Australia, where the country’s last infrastructure report card was produced in 2010, and gave very poor ratings to both roads and rail, it’s likely that conditions are similar.

Replacing this infrastructure is costly and demolition means significant waste ending up in landfill. (Accord-ing to the Green Building Council of Australia, roughly 40 percent of landfill waste can be attributed to con-struction activities).

Uy says the workaround is for engineers and architects to consider the whole lifecycle of a building or infra-structure project, and to design structures that can be more easily deconstructed and re-used, or rehabilitated.

“Steps that structural designers can take to maximize the potential for re-using steel infrastructure include using bolted connections in preference to welded joints and ensuring easy access to connections,” he says.

#infrastructure#rehabilitation#retro_fitting#bolted connections#welded joints

structures

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events and natural disasters, but the level of protection is not known, says Uy.

Along with Scientia Professor Mark Bradford, he has been investigating the impact and blast load behaviour of hollow and concrete filled steel columns; and how the properties of these materials react to extraordinary strain rates.

In 2013, this research got a considerable boost when the Australian Research Council awarded CIES a Link-age Equipment and Facilities Grant to build the National Facility for Physical Blast Simulation. This facility means controlled blasts that once needed to be conducted in remote canyons, can now be safely conducted in laboratories with more sophisticated instrumentation to observe and measure the results.

Installation of the facility, which will support the research activities of 10 Australian universities, is currently under-way at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineer-ing’s Heavy Structures Lab at Randwick.

Uy and his team have developed an innovative method for connecting steel and concrete elements using blind bolts. He presented the findings in December 2013 at the International Conference on Structural Health Moni-toring of Intelligent Infrastructure in Hong Kong.

“The paper has illustrated that the service and strength behaviour of these blind bolt-connection systems is sim-ilar or significantly improved to that of welded headed shear studs,” he says.

“These systems – which will see increased utilization in next-generation infrastructure – can facilitate improved structural health monitoring, as both the service and strength behaviour can be characterised.”

The CIES – which has an extensive portfolio of research topics – is also working on keeping structures safe from unexpected shocks, such as fires and explosions, earth-quakes, and other extreme weather events.

Building and infrastructure design codes in Australia – and around the world – attempt to provide protection for structures against the effects of certain unforeseen

structures

Steps that structural designers can take to maximize the potential for re-using steel infrastructure include using bolted connections in preference to welded joints and ensuring easy access to connections

L-R: Scientia Professor Mark Bradford and CIES Director, Professor Brian Uy at the School’s Heavy Structures Laboratory, UNSW King St Campus.

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Associate Professor Tommy Wiedmann

sustainability

#raw_materials#global_trade#resource_consumption#carbon_footprint#greenhouse#modelling

New models and accounting methods developed at UNSW are improving awareness about natural resource consumption globally, and the carbon footprint of Australia’s built environment.

Modern economies rely on natural resources such as fossil fuels and construction materials to fuel develop-ment and remain prosperous. Yet current indicators about resource consumption used by intergovernmental organisations, such as the OECD and the European Un-ion, are misleading, particularly for developed nations, says Associate Professor Tommy Wiedmann from the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

These indicators suggest resource-use in wealthy nations, which tend to import a lot of goods, has increased at a slower rate than economic growth – a trend known as relative decoupling. This is considered a major goal along the path to achieving more sustainable development.

But these accounting methods don’t assign to wealthy countries’ large amounts of indirectly used resources – that is, raw materials required for the overseas process-ing, manufacture and shipping of goods.

To illustrate this point, Wiedmann uses the example of an automobile manufactured in Japan using iron ore from Australia, which is then sold to the United States. Right now, the US Government keeps a tally of all imported cars, but they wouldn’t have any figures on the overseas resources required for its production. In a sense, because these resources don’t leave their coun-try of origin, they’re not adequately captured by current accounting practices.

Wiedmann, the leader of the School’s new Sustainable Engineering Initiative, has been working to change this. He was the lead author on a 2013 study published in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported the “true material footprint” of 186 countries over a near-two decade period (from 1990 – 2008).

What was novel about this study was the use of a so-phisticated modeling tool and more comprehensive ac-counting methods, in which all indirectly-used resources

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are assigned to the end-consumer (or importing nation). Using their newly-devel-oped tool set, Wiedmann’s team – which included researchers from the CSIRO, the University of Sydney, and the University of California, Santa Barbara – mapped the flow of raw materials across the world economy with unprecedented accuracy. They showed that decoupling trends for most developed nations had been exaggerated and, in some cases, were non-existent.

“By relying on current indicators, govern-ments are not able to see the true extent of their resource consumption,” says Wied-mann. “This has implications for climate policy and the ongoing debate between developed and developing-nations about who should shoulder the burden of paying for greenhouse gas emissions.”

“If we can better understand how these links between economic growth and resource consumption work, we can design fairer policies to help both sides reach agreeable targets.”

The UNSW researcher has also turned his sights on quantifying indirect greenhouse gas emissions associated with the Australian built environment.

“Residential and commercial buildings are responsible for 40 per cent of energy use in Australia,” says Wiedmann. “This is not sole-ly because of the direct energy required to heat and cool buildings, but because of the indirect energy required to produce materi-als such as concrete, steel and glass.”

The Integrated Carbon Metrics (or ICM) Project, which will involve four industry and three research partners, including the CSIRO, will develop modeling tools to work out the indirect emissions associated with building projects, and will ultimately lead to a comprehensive lifecycle accounting frame-work for assessing low-carbon buildings. The project began in 2014.

“If we can better understand how these links between economic growth and resource consumption work, we can design fairer policies to help both sides reach agreeable targets.”

sustainability

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Smooth and efficient transport is a goal for governments everywhere but it is not easily achieved in practice.

Part of the challenge is that transport decisions tend to be highly politicised. Such political pressure can lead to decisions that lack the ‘big picture’ focus required to ensure transport networks meet the needs of the wider community.

The Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI) is working with the NSW government to change that.

“Historically, transport has been an art whereas it needs to be far more of a science,” rCITI Director and Evans & Peck Professor of Transport Innovation, Travis Waller says.

transport(Professor Travis Waller

rCITI Director)#planning

#traffic#modelling

Replacing politics with evidence-based planning and mathematical models is likely to ease transport pain.

“Without numbers in the transport debate, govern-ments tend to do whatever they think might be the most popular. And if the history of transport has shown us anything, when we’re not considering the big picture, the outcomes are poor.”

A “quantitative, numbers guy”, Professor Waller and his team at rCITI are working on several projects designed to showcase the power of injecting numbers into the transport debate.

One project with Transport for NSW is to develop en-gineering and mathematical models that can be used to predict the way people will use different routes and modes of transport in the state.

“These are world-first models to capture how people make route choices across the entire Sydney region,” Professor Waller says.

Other models are being developed with the Transport Management Centre (TMC) to underpin decisions about

The Research Centre for Integrated

Transport Innovation

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how lanes are assigned to north- and southbound traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The TMC provides 24x7 monitoring and management of the NSW road network.

“The TMC wants to better predict when traffic levels are reaching a point where it would be good to change the lane assignments,” Professor Waller says. “We’re creating models to predict minute-to-minute travel times in this and other transport corridors.”

Professor Waller is a keen advocate of the use of evi-dence-based planning and quantifiable mathematical models to defeat myopic views that might otherwise influence transport policy.

“People tend to express their opinions about transport myopically,” he says. “They only consider their own situation.”

Because of this, transport policy can fall victim to the tragedy of the commons, an economic theory where self-interest overrides the common good, leaving every-one worse off.

“In my opinion, the only way to address this is to use mathematics and engineering to show people and governments what they’re really doing,” he says. “’If we all act myopically, this is what you’re going to get but if we acted systematically and planned for the system as a whole this is what it could be’.”

Professor Waller sees planning and operational benefits in making transport decision-making an engineering -- rather than political -- problem.

“The models can be used to help inform decision-mak-ing in terms of what projects get through, what projects will really help the system and which ones might not,” he says.

“On the operational side the models can be used to help traffic move more smoothly and ease congestion. For example, providing information about travel times can help inform people’s choice of either what route to take or when to depart, which can have a real-time impact.”

rCITI’s work is not solely focused on engaging industry in the domestic market. The Centre continues to forge and maintain strong international connections, including with US Federal Highways and increasingly into China.

“My very strong belief is that our research is only engineering research if it makes an impact in the real world,” Professor Waller says. “If we’re not interacting with industry, government or society, then in my opinion we’re not performing engineering research.”

“...the only way to address this is to use mathematics and engineering to show people and governments what they’re really doing...”

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transport“We’re getting information about how people drive and how they interact with different moving entities as well as other infrastructure. This information is extremely useful when you’re trying to develop algorithms for autonomous driving.”

GoGet’s co-founders Nic Lowe and Bruce Jeffreys “are excited by technology and new ideas,” Dixit says.

In addition to powering research on self-driving cars, Dixit also sees an opportunity to use the data collected by the sensors to explore the feasibility of real-time charging schemes for car insurance. The theory is that safe drivers — as determined from data captured by the vehicle — would be rewarded by paying less for their insurance.

“What we really want to move towards is real-time insur-ance, where the driver’s rates depend on how they drive at that moment,” Dixit explains.

“Over the past years, the responsibility of safety and efficiency of the transport system has fallen on govern-ments, but there are huge private industries which can actually play a role in improvements. I’m trying to find ways to foster those improvements.”

Dr Vinayak Dixit#self-driving

#sensors#safety

there are huge private industries which can actually play a role in improvements

Transport researchers at the School have taken the first step towards creating a self-driving car by fitting sensors and other technology to a vehicle owned by car sharing service GoGet.

The car, which is based at UNSW’s Kensington campus in Sydney, has four radar sensors, a video camera and a small on-board computer.

It was publicly launched at GeoNext technology confer-ence held at Australian Technology Park in Sydney on Feb 26.

The project is an industry partnership between the UNSW Research Centre for Integrated Transport Inno-vation (rCITI) and GoGet. rCITI, which focuses on inte-grated transport research and development, secured a grant from the School to buy the technology systems fitted to the vehicle.

“We’ve put sensors all around the vehicle and mounted a video camera to detect pedestrians, bicycles, other cars and roadside infrastructure,” rCITI’s deputy direc-tor Vinayak Dixit explains.

L-R: Dr Vinayak Dixit, Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi (behind car), Dr Lauren Gardner and Dr David Rey.

The future is upon us - powering research on self-driving cars –and reducing driver insurance.

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waterIn a country with more than 10,000 sandy beaches, and where more than 80 per cent of the population lives within 100 km of the ocean, coastal erosion poses a considerable threat to Australian property and infrastructure.

“It’s a first order challenge to our society and the natural environment in Australia, as it is internationally,” says Associate Professor Ian Turner from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Water Research Labo-ratory (WRL).

Climate change is escalating the threat to new levels, but contrary to some popular views, it’s not necessar-ily sea level rise that’s the biggest concern over the short-term.

“For the coming decades, relatively subtle changes in the number of storms that may occur per year, as well as changes in the size and direction of waves, could have a much larger impact on causing coastal erosion than sea level rise during the same period,” says Turner.

Currently it’s unknown how beaches will respond to more variable wave climates and storm frequency. “Will they adapt and be fine?” asks Turner. “Or is there some

Associate Professors Ian Turner and Ron Cox#climate_change#erosion#ecosystems#beaches#breakwaters#coastal_residences

tipping point where we start to see dramatic coastal erosion?” If the latter materialises, he says the economic value of existing built assets in coastal communities that are at risk is probably immeasurable.

A report published in 2011 by the former Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency estimated that more than $226 billion of industrial, commercial and residential property, as well as roads, railways and other infrastructure, would face risks of inundation and erosion hazards if sea levels rose 1.1 metres. It’s a level that climate scientists have plotted as a high-end sce-nario by 2100, but haven’t ruled out.

And no less significant than the costs to the built envi-ronment, says Turner, are the much harder to quantify cultural and economic value of beaches, estuaries, marine parks and coastal ecosystems, which are all impacted by erosion.

Turner is a member of a team of coastal engineers at Water Research Laboratory interested in the role climate change is playing in the reshaping of Australian beach-es and coastlines around the world.

coastal engineering and climate change

Managing and measuring the risks of climate change. Storms - as much as sea level rise - may seriously impact our shores, with coastal erosion posing a considerable threat to Australian property and infrastructure.

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Along with UNSW colleague Dr Kristen Splinter and their European colleague Associate Professor Mark Davidson from Plymouth University, he has developed a more reli-able modelling tool – called ShoreFor – that can predict the rapid rate at which sand is carried off beaches during storms. Importantly, this tool can also predict the rate at which sand is restored, more slowly, by smaller waves between storms – a lesser known process known as “beach recovery”.

Making the models work requires estimates of future wave climates – which account for clusters of storms and larger, more directionally-diverse waves – and actual observations from beaches.

UNSW is part of an international network that uses cameras to monitor beaches around the world. WRL is collecting valuable data from a number of sites in NSW and Queensland including Narrabeen-Collaroy Beach in northern Sydney to extend a monitoring program at the site that has been running for 40 years.

Recently, a partnership with the UNSW School of Avia-tion has allowed aerial surveys of the beach immediate-ly before and after storm events, augmenting data from quad bike surveys, as well as camera and rooftop laser scans. All of this information has been used to test the modelling tool.

If these models can be applied more confidently, says Turner, they can better inform the assessment and design of coastal defences, such as breakwaters and seawalls or beach nourishment and the enhancement of natural sand buffers.

Turner’s work on coastal erosion and beach recovery is closely related to other important projects in coastal engineering adaptation for climate change being un-dertaken by the School’s Associate Professors Ron Cox (convenor of the Australian Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Settlements and Infrastructure ACCARNSI) and Bill Peirson (Director Water Research Laboratory).

With three years of funding provided by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage under the Climate Adap-tation Research Hub and support from the US Army Corps of Engineers, Cox leads research to optimise beach nourishment and adaptation of seawalls whilst Peirson is investigating the impacts of climate change on estuaries.

This multidisciplinary network of researchers is inves-tigating ways to manage the risks posed by climate change, in order to help governments and communities develop suitable adaptation strategies.

UNSW is part of an international network that uses cameras to monitor beaches around the world.

Associate Professor Ian Turner, Dr Kristen Splinter, Associate Professor Ron Cox.

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for hydroelectric storage in NSW be assessed as a matter of priority.”

What’s most critical about Peirson’s research and recommendation is the timing. Major flooding events in eastern Australia in recent years have prompted calls for better flood mitigation infrastructure, and if anticipated upgrades to dams take place, Peirson believes there’s an opportunity to incorporate pumped storage.

“The construction of pumped storage would enable the active use of this flood mitigation infrastructure, which is incredibly expensive, and could otherwise sit idle for years between major flood events,” he says.

It’s one of many projects underway at the School’s WRL, and a perfect example of the expert advice and engineering support this laboratory has provided to industry and government for more than half a century. Other important research projects are investigating ways to protect structures and coasts from scouring; to better understand groundwater movement and con-nectivity with surface waters; and to develop climate change adaptation strategies for coastal settlements and infrastructure. And in 2013, two projects in particu-lar were recognized for their ingenuity and benefit to the environment.

The first was a near decade-long restoration of a Hunter Valley wetland, which earned a team of WRL engineers a National Trust Heritage Award for environmental conservation.

If the New South Wales Government wants to get serious about using renewable energy to meet the state’s future power demands, it should seriously consider pumped storage, says Associate Professor Bill Peirson, Director of the UNSW Water Research Laboratory (WRL). In these systems, water is pumped to the higher of two connected reservoirs using renewable energy and re-leased during peak demand times, when those renew-ables are offline. As the water flows downward it drives a turbine and rapidly generates hydroelectricity. This hydro “battery” technology is well-understood and could help overcome one of the major limitations of renewable energy: intermittent generation.

Peirson and his team at the WRL have authored a pre-liminary report outlining the feasibility of pump storage and have identified locations across NSW where such installations make sense.

“Though well-understood and extensively developed in foreign energy markets, pumped storage is largely under-used in NSW and the Australian Energy Market,” says Peirson. “We are recommending that the potential

water research

Water Research Laboratory (Director Bill Peirson)#renewable_energy#pumped_storage#connected_reservoirs#flood_mitigation

Major flooding events in eastern Australia in recent years have prompted calls for better flood mitigation infrastructure, and if anticipated upgrades to dams take place, Director Bill Peirson believes there’s an opportunity to incorporate pumped storage.

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A decade ago the 600 hectare site was completely dry and “looked like a farm paddock”, recalls lead engineer Dr William Glamore. This was the legacy of “short-sight-ed” drainage infrastructure installed after heavy flooding in the 1950s, which allowed floodwater to escape but prevented tidal flows from re-entering.

To replace the antiquated floodgates, Glamore’s team de-veloped an automated system called SmartGate, which controls, at various points, the volume of salt water re-entering the wetland. So far they have managed to restore natural hydrology to more than two-thirds of the site and have encouraged the return of migratory water birds – an important indicator of ecological health.

The second project is focused on protecting native fish from “barotrauma” – a type of expansion injury due to extreme and rapid pressure changes caused by swim-ming through hydropower turbines.

“The pressure change these fish experience is like going from 10 metres below the water to the height of Mount Everest in about half a second,” says Mr Brett Miller Prinicpal Project Engineer at WRL.

Miller invented a pair of custom hydraulic chambers that can simulate these pressure changes. They are cur-rently being used by the NSW Department of Primary Industries Fisheries to measure the decompression limit fish can safely endure, and will hopefully guide the design of more environmentally- and fish-friendly water infrastructure.

‘Our Water Research Laboratory has continued to provide engineering expert advice and strategic solutions to industry and government for over half a century.’

L-R: Associate Professor Bill Peirson, Brett Miller and Dr William Glamore of the Water Research Laboratory.

His invention was a finalist for a 2013 Engineers Austral-ia Excellence Award in two categories: innovations and inventions, and research and development.

Our investment in major research infrastructure and equipment enables our staff and students to work at the cutting edge of local, national and international research.

The Randwick Heavy Structures Laboratory at UNSW King St campus, and the Materials Research Laboratory and Geotechnical Engineering Labo-ratories in the School’s Vallentine Annex support the research of the Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety (CIES).

The Water Quality Laboratories (WQL) within the School include specialist laboratories for chemical and microbial analysis, pilot hall facilities for large scale bio-reactor studies, radiation laboratory for isotope studies and olfactory laboratory for odour characterisation.

The Connected Waters Initiative has extensive com-puting, technical equipment and laboratory facilities for connected waters studies, available through the Faculties of Science and Engineering and the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre.

Practical project-based and theoretical hydraulics research is undertaken using the unique large-scale fa-cilities of the Water Research Laboratory at Manly Vale.

The Travel Choice Simulation Laboratory (TRACSLab) is a driving simulation laboratory for rCITI, and a world-first facility to observe collective travel choice in a realistic lab environment. Unique due to the focus on travel choice, networked interaction and strong teaming, TRACSLab findings will support a new genera-tion of transport analysis techniques.

research

facilities

water@UNSWwater research centre

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