Geomechanics and materials testing

Fishermans Bend’s state-of-the-art geotechnical test facilities will support research and innovation that drives affordable and sustainable solutions in onshore and offshore geomechanics, pavement and energy geotechnics, mining, heat transfer, fluid flow, and chemical processes in natural and engineered porous media and geomaterials.

  • Deep enhanced geothermal engineering
  • Direct geothermal energy: reducing the rural industries’ carbon footprint
  • Harnessing renewable energy from low-carbon geothermal pavements

To provide better understanding and reliable solutions in offshore geotechnical engineering, including seabed sediment characterisation, offshore structure-seabed interaction, and georisk mitigation towards safe and sustainable engineering in the Ocean.

Our research focus

  • Sediment characterization & behaviour
  • Offshore site investigation tool development
  • Strain rate effects in soil
  • Cyclic response in sand
  • Advanced soil constitutive modelling Offshore soil-structure interactions
  • Offshore pipeline integrity and stability analysis
  • Offshore foundation responses under complex loadings
  • Mobile jack-up installation
  • Offshore geohazard forecasting
  • Emerging AI technology
  • Analysing the micro and macro scale behaviour of granular materials using advanced imaging and soil element testing
  • Interaction of fluids with granular material (internal erosion)
  • Unconventional granular assemblies (tyre particles mixed with sand or gravel)
  • Large scale field trial and performance monitoring of tyre derived aggregate permeable pavements
  • To understand the fluid-rock interaction in deep underground reservoirs to explore the opportunities and risks associated with energy fluids recover and storage solution for energy (hydrogen) and waste (CO2)
  • Enhanced coal seam gas recovery
  • Coal mining related issues (e.g. gas drainage, bursts, firedamp explorations)
  • CO2 geo-sequestration in Saline Aquifer, coal seams and depleted oil/gas reservoirs
  • Hydrogen Geo-storage in depleted oil/gas reservoirs

Proposed Facilities

  • Geotechnical testing facility
  • Advanced instrumentation
  • Enables testing and characterization of geomaterials from soft soils to hard rocks across scales (micro to full-scale) and their interaction with geostructures through:
  • Field monitoring
  • Advanced imaging o Laboratory soil element testing
  • Near surface and electromagnetic geophysical testing
  • Physical model testing (1g)

Potential Applications

  • Developing fundamental and practical solutions in offshore geotechnical engineering – offshore sediment characterisation and behaviour; offshore renewable energy foundations; pipeline integrity and stability analysis; georisk and emerging artificial intelligence technology
  • Researching environmentally and socially acceptable, cost-effective carbon capture and storage solutions for a carbon constrained world
  • Unravelling the complex interplay of subsurface processes (during underground hydrogen and natural gas storage, unconventional gas recovery and deep mining, etc.) in geological structures, simultaneously considering wide ranging time and length scales from the rock pore to the scale of the earth’s crust
  • Searching for novel solutions across a wide range of disciplines to achieve creative opportunities from current and emerging issues in earth science and engineering
  • Analysing the micro and macro scale behaviour of granular material under complex condition, including interaction of fluids with granular material (internal erosion) and unconventional granular assemblies (tyre particles mixed with sand or gravel)
  • Advanced laboratory soil and rock characterisation, such as specialist soil element testing and high stress rock testing facilities to replicate in-situ stresses available in deep underground
  • Field testing and long-term monitoring of shallow and deep footings, embankments, energy foundations and excavations using optic fibre technology

Mahdi Disfani is an Associate Professor in Geotechnical Engineering at The University of Melbourne leading research on experimental investigation of granular geo-materials. He is particularly focused on Internal Erosion and its impact on soil behaviour and also new geo-materials made from recycled aggregates.

His work in collaboration with industry and supported by federal and state government agencies has led to impact in areas of transportation geotechnics, soil erosion and sustainable geotechnics. Mahdi is currently representing Australia on ISSMGE Technical committees TC 202 (Transportation Geotechnics) and TC 220 (Field Monitoring in Geomechanics) and is a member for Standards Australia CE-009 (Testing of Soils for Engineering Purposes) committee.” ·

Shiao Huey Chow is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, the University of Melbourne. She is an experimentalist in geotechnical engineering (laboratory soil element testing, laboratory 1g model testing, centrifuge modelling and field investigation) with research interests in offshore geotechnics.

Her expertise includes offshore geotechnical site investigation using free-fall penetrometers, anchoring solution in sand and strain rate effects in soil. Her works have received several international best paper awards, including the Telford Premium Prize in 2016 and Manby Prize in 2014 from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), UK.

Shiaohuey is also chief investigator on several research projects including three recent Australian Research Council Discovery Projects (Lead CI on two). She collaborates widely with both academic and industry partners nationally and internationally.

Professor Mark Cassidy is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology. Mark’s research interests are in offshore geotechnics and engineering, predominantly in developing models for the analysis of oil and gas platforms, mobile drilling rigs, renewable wave and wind turbines, anchors and pipelines. Mark has published over 300 refereed journal and conference papers and jointly holds three international patents with Singaporean mobile jack-up builders Keppel Offshore and Marine and with Korean shipbuilders DSME. He has supervised over twenty-five PhD students. Mark has been an active consultant within the offshore engineering industry.

Dr Guillermo Narsilio is Deputy Head (Research) of the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, a former Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, former member of the ARC College of Experts, and past Chair of the Australian Geomechanics Society (Vic).

Dr Narsilio has made important contributions to methane hydrates bearing sediments physical characterisation (this work was led by Prof Santamarina, Prof Ruppel and Asst/Prof Yun, and has high impact in methane hydrates behaviour and extraction modelling, to use methane hydrates as an alternative energy source); multi-scale hydro-thermal conduction and diffusion geo-phenomena; and theoretical and numerical investigations of the chemo-mechanical properties of electrically charged porous materials (clays, shales, etc). His group is well known around the world for work in shallow (or ground source heat pump) geothermal energy systems.

Dr Narsilio's geotechnical engineering research interests include numerical modelling, multi-scale porous material characterisation and performance and the (sustainable) energy industry. He has also pursued further research on basic and applied shallow and deep geothermal energy systems in collaboration with the Melbourne Energy Institute.

Professor Stephan Matthai is the Chair of Reservoir Engineering in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering. He is a geoscientist and engineer, researching the emergent behaviour of subsurface systems and their complex response to engineering measures. Advancing field-data based simulation methods, his research team investigates multiphase reactive fluid flow and the mechanics of heterogeneous geologic media.

Current engineering applications are the sequestration of greenhouse gases in deeply buried strata, geothermal energy extraction, enhanced oil recovery, and the prediction of contaminant transport in the subsurface.

Yinghui Tian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering. His research background is offshore Geotechnics. He is passionate about fundamental soil mechanics and his research work is set to provide reliable and economic foundation solutions for offshore engineering developments.

His current research projects include

  1. offshore mooring and anchoring system development,
  1. offshore pipeline integrity and stability study,
  1. large deformation modelling and constitutive model development,
  1. piling engineering and offshore renewable foundations, and
  1. problematic carbonate soil behaviour modelling.

Strong engagement with industry has enabled Associate Professor Tian to translate innovative research outcomes into practical solutions for engineering practice and design, including the development of two suites of computer software (UWAINT and CASPA), which are licenced to leading companies to support their offshore developments.

Dr Samintha Perera is a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering.

With a primary interest in CO2 sequestration, Dr Perera’s research aims to search for novel solutions across a wide range of disciplines by creatively exploring current and emerging issues in earth science engineering.