Past History of Research

Most of the research areas as discussed in Section 1 and illustrated in Appendix 1 have been conducted since mid 1990’s. Since than, 15-20 research students have graduated in those areas. The outstanding facilities for geotechnical testing and track simulation are shown in Appendix 2. The large-scale testing rigs are unique to University of Wollongong, and all of them have been designed and built in-house through the efforts of dedicated academic staff, excellent research students and skillful technical staff. Fundamental research launched in 1980’s in various aspects of foundation engineering and landslides has now been elevated to cutting-edge applications in the field, including the use of GIS and remote sensing. The high rate of ARC-Linkage grants in these geotechnical fields during the past few years alone have contributed to over 2 million dollars, and a few more ARC-Linkage and other Commonwealth grants are currently pending through the efforts of Phil Flentje, Robin Chowdhury, Buddhima Indraratna, Hadi Khabbaz and Alex Remennikov.