Research within Civil Engineering is undertaken within the Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure, commonly known as CSI-Swinburne. Infrastructure is critical to the economic wellbeing of Australia with some $30 billion invested annually. Infrastructure underpins the delivery of essential services, drives economic growth, supports social needs and is closely linked to the high quality of life enjoyed by the developed world. All individuals, corporations and governments gain the benefits of good infrastructure or suffer the losses from poorly performing infrastructure.
Today, the challenges facing the community and the engineering profession include ageing infrastructure, environmentally sustainable development and the impact of extreme events, both natural and manmade, on urban infrastructure and a projected skill shortage of engineers.
CSI partners industry to provide research solutions focused on the improvement of urban infrastructure. In particular, the Centre provides a focus for multi-disciplinary research in the field of sustainable urban infrastructure and aims to expand existing research relationships and create new research links through collaboration both nationally and internationally. CSI also facilitates outreach activities through, education, professional development and specialist consulting.
CSI has three major research programs consisting of a series of projects involving industry partners, centre staff, research fellows and graduate students. The research is carried out using analytical and experimental techniques to suit the project requirements. The three research program areas are as follows:
- Structural performance and infrastructure renewal
- Sustainable materials and emerging technologies
- Water resources modelling
Program 1: Structural performance and infrastructure renewal
1.1 Structural Performance – Serviceability and ultimate
- Floor vibration studies
- Low level blast effects on structures
- Damage threshold for domestic structures
- Modelling the effects of climate change on light framed structures
- Performance of structures to extreme events including earthquakes and blast
- Capacity of structural systems
- Progressive collapse studies of soft storey buildings
- Strategies for the development of the next generation of building standards
1.2 Infrastructure renewal
- Knowledge management systems for asset management
- Deterioration modelling of water supply, stormwater and sewer systems
- Renewal of timber bridges
- Renewal of reinforced concrete structures, concrete deterioration modelling
- Renewal of cavity brick construction (eg brick ties)
- Renewal of mining and energy infrastructure
- Modelling deterioration of pavements
Program 2: Sustainable materials and emerging technologies
2.1 Sustainable materials
- Development of recycled materials for engineering applications (eg Concrete and Plastics)
- Embodied energy studies
2.2 Emerging technologies
- Methane production from landfill
- Sensor applications in infrastructure monitoring
- Smart structures for improved aged care
- Next generation façade systems
- Innovative concrete acoustic barriers
- Road roughness and vehicle-driver interaction and behaviour
- Modelling of passive cooling of houses in hot climates using CFD
Program 3: Water resources modelling
3.1 Sustainable urban water systems
- Litter separation in urban water stormwater systems
- Database for sensitive urban water design
- Water quality management
- Sustainable water resource management
- Turbidity in water supply systems
- Recycling and reuse of wastewater
3.2 Coastal and maritime engineering
- Spectral modelling of wind-generated waves
- Dynamics of surface ocean waves
- Wave breaking and dissipation
- Air-sea boundary layer
- Wave-bottom interaction
- Extreme waves
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