The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering (CGSE) will pioneer new scientific approaches to geotechnical engineering design to underpin Australia’s energy and transport infrastructure, resulting in increased productivity and sustainability of the nation’s major export industries.
Current Initiatives
The provision of physical infrastructure for energy and transport is now a central theme of governments worldwide, and is of critical importance to Australia’s future prosperity. The largest private investments in new infrastructure are being made in the energy sector. The offshore liquefied natural gas industry has seen huge recent investments, most notably with the $43 billion Gorgon project initiated in September 2009 ("In capital expenditure terms, the single largest resource project in Australia’s history", ABARE, 2009) and the $12 billion Pluto project that is due to make its first shipment in early 2011.
Over the next five years, approximately $250 billion will be spent on the provision of roads, railways, offshore oil and gas production facilities, renewable energy facilities, ports, pipelines, tunnels, and mining operations. To guide these billions of dollars of public and private investment, a new body, Infrastructure Australia, has been charged with developing an Infrastructure Priority List. As indicated in the State and National report cards prepared by Engineers Australia, our current standard of infrastructure ranks poorly across most sectors with the transport sector being seriously deficient (see www.infrastructurereportcard.org.au/).
Latest News
Winthrop Professor Mark Cassidy has been awarded 1 of 17 Australian Laureate Fellows for 2013, with funding of $3,204,762 for the project: New Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics: Securing Australia's Energy Future. Read more
Dr Majid Nazem, Professor John Carter, Professor David Airey and Dr Shiaohuey Chow received the Manby Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers, London for their paper entitled "Dynamic analysis of a smooth penetrometer free-falling into uniform clay" which was published in volume 62 of Géotechnique in 2012. Dr Shiaohuey Chow is now employed as a Research Associate within the CGSE and is based at The University of Western Australia. Link to the Publication
Richard Kelly, who is on an industry sabbatical from Coffey Geotechnics with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, published an article in Engineers Australia, Volume 85, June 2013. The article describes the development of Australia’s first national facility for testing the behaviour of soft soils. Download Article
CGSE's UWA Researchers win Gas Technology Innovation Awards. Read More
CGSE's University of Wollongong team receive Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Partnership and Cholochat Rujikiatkamjorn receives awards from ISMGE and AGS. Read More
PhD Scholarship Available: We are seeking a PhD student to develop a structured model for soft soil through laboratory stress and strain path testing. Read More
Postgraduate Scholarships Available in Computational Geomechanics Read More
Download a copy of the 2012 Annual Report Available Here
Download a copy of the 2011 Annual Report Available Here
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