Current Research Interests

Onshore and offshore landslides
Large deformation behaviour of soil
Numerical and centrifuge modelling
Pipeline and riser
Laboratory test and constitutive modelling of geomaterials
Pile foundations

Research Grants

NSERC (Discovery, Collaborative Research Development, Major Resources Support)
Research & Development Corporation (RDC), Newfoundland and Labrador
Equinor (formerly Statoil)
Mitacs
InnovateNL, Newfoundland and Labrador
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
Petroleum Research Newfoundland and Labrador
C-CORE, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador

Collaborators

Kenichi Soga, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Ian Moore, Queen’s University, Canada
Didier Perret, Natural Resources Canada
Ryan Phillips, C-CORE, Canada
Ashutosh Dhar, Memorial University, Canada
Dilan Robert, RMIT University, Australia
Shawn Kenny, Carleton University, Canada
Richard Guthrie, Stantec, Canada
Arash Zakeri, BP America Inc., USA
Mike Paulin, INTECSEA, Canada
Balasingam Muhunthan, Washington State University, USA

Research Progress and Facilities

Numerical Modeling:

Advanced finite element and computational fluid dynamics approaches are used to model large-scale onshore and offshore landslides and soil-water-structure interactions.

Large-deformation finite element simulation of 2010 Saint-Jude Landslide in Quebec, Canada

Debris flow impact on suspended offshore pipeline

Laboratory Testing:

Geotechnical laboratory is well-equipped with laboratory testing facilities including the advanced dynamic cyclic simple shear, fully automated triaxial, direct shear, unconfined compression and consolidation test apparatus.

Combined Advanced Dynamic Cyclic Simple Shear Test

Physical Modeling:

Graduate students conduct physical modeling using the geotechnical centrifuge at C-CORE, located next to the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science building. The C-CORE centrifuge is the largest in Canada, and has been successfully used to handle a wide range of geotechnical problems including slope stability, pipeline–soil interaction, riser–seabed modeling, foundations and earthquake.