Centre for Civil Infrastructure Systems and Engineering

Civil infrastructure systems and engineering covers activities across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales aimed at sustainable and resilient infrastructure delivery and management networks. Our research contributes to the sectors of energy, transportation, water, communication, commercial and national security facilities.

Overview

Our research encompasses the behaviour of complex systems, the life-cycle characterisation and modelling of damage processes and the performance management of individual assets and large infrastructure networks. We investigate the enormous potential of digital technologies, including sensing and machine learning algorithms, telecommunication engineering and data science on smart infrastructure and its social, environmental and economic impact on society.

Our staff and research students bring together core competencies in materials, structural, geotechnical and infrastructure engineering, with expertise in statistical methods, informatics and decision theory. We have established collaborations with a variety of industry partners, enabling us to analyse real data from critical infrastructure assets and to influence the development of industry guidelines on design, inspection and maintenance.

Research areas

Modelling and physical testing of structural, ground and soil-structure interaction problems under static and dynamic conditions
Infrastructure health monitoring, sensing and data analytics
Risk, robustness and resilience of civil infrastructure systems
Asset integrity management of infrastructure networks
Innovative construction materials, structural and foundation systems
Advanced digital and AI-driven design and assessment
Energy and environmental geotechnics
Urban system growth modelling
Noise pollution and the built environment
Historical infrastructure and heritage
Spatial and light-weight structures.

Facilities

Structures and Mechanical Testing Laboratory

The facility supports multi-scale testing from material samples to structural components from 1 N to 3 MN, under static, dynamic and impact loading with high-speed capabilities, as well as under various environments (temperature and humidity).

SAGE Lab for Advanced Geotechnical Engineering

Our SAGE lab provides two core capabilities: advanced soil-element testing and geotechnical scale-model testing.

We undertake the full range of soil tests, including cyclic triaxial testing, resonant column, dynamic simple shear, hollow cylinder, and thermal-hydraulic testing. We also conduct scale-model testing, such as the dynamic response of offshore wind turbine foundations, the behaviour of pipelines, and the performance of shallow geothermal energy systems.