master of professional engineering & bachelor of engineering … · 2018-07-02 · and...
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Master of Professional Engineering & Bachelor of
Engineering
GENG5511/GENG5512
Engineering Research Project Descriptions
Semester 2, 2018
To find a project description, search (Ctrl + F) using the Supervisors surname. The project
title and description are listed below each Academic’s name. Please ensure that the project is
applicable to your discipline.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Aman, Zach, Assoc./Prof. Co-supervisors: May, Eric, Prof; Metaxas, Peter, Dr
Flow Assurance and Natural Gas Hydrates
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Natural gas hydrates are ice-like solids that form and can often suddenly stop the flow during
oil and gas production. The cost of their prevention during design and production is high and
the removal of hydrate plugs is expensive and dangerous. Today hydrates are still a major flow
assurance concern especially as production moves to deeper water, and many of Australia’s
major new gas field developments are considering innovative approaches to this long-standing
problem. These projects aim to provide the knowledge needed for a risk-based approach to
hydrate management by establishing quantitative model to assess plugging potential, optimize
inhibitor doses, and develop methods to detect hydrate formation and location. The outcomes will help reduce chemical use by the industry, provide better methods to locate plugs and
provide safer methods for their remediation, ultimately allowing for the reliable and economic
development of marginal oil and gas fields. Students working on these projects will measure
and/or model hydrate formation, agglomeration and dissociation processes. Naturally-
occurring gas hydrates also represent a tremendous energy reserve: in 2013, first production
was reported from a naturally occurring hydrate reserve located offshore the coast of Japan.
Projects will also be available in which various properties of these natural hydrates are
quantified, such that more informed decisions regards the exploitation of natural hydrates can
be made.
An, Hongwei, Dr Co-supervisors: Dr. Mehrdad Kimiae
Hydrodynamic force on a ROV umbilical cable
Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Mining, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
The umbilical cable is an important part for a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) for transmitting
power and control signals. The hydrodynamic force coefficients of the umbilical cable is an
important design information for ROV. In this project, a series of physical model tests will be
conducted using the O-tube facility to measure the hydrodynamic force on umbilical cables.
The force coefficients and vortex shedding frequency will be examined.
This project gives students an opportunity to access to multi-awards winning research facility
(the O-tube) and to gain experience on research about hydrodynamics on bluff body.
An, Hongwei, Dr
Hydrodynamic behaviour of a circular cylinder covered with
marine growth
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Mining, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
The influence of marine Growth (MG) on hydrodynamic properties of marine bluff structures
remains as a significant uncertainty in the design of new and maintenance of existing marine
structures. The issue is relevant to many practical applications such as oil and gas industry, renewable wave, tidal and wind energy devices, aquaculture infrastructures and marine biology.
MG forms due to the accumulation of micro-organisms, plants, algae, or animals on wet
surfaces and occurs almost everywhere in the ocean.
This project aims at improving the understanding of hydrodynamic characteristics of a circular
cylinder covered with MG under steady currents and waves and providing quantitative basis
for the design of new structures and maintenance of existing structures.
This project gives students an opportunity to access to multi-awards winning research facility
(the O-tube) and to gain experience on research about hydrodynamics on offshore structures.
Arami Niya, Arash, Dr Co-supervisors: May, Eric, Prof
Alternative refrigerants
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
A new generation of refrigerants known as hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs) have much lower global
warming potential (GWP) compared to traditional refrigerants. However, due to their lower
coefficients of performance (COP), blending HFOs with others refrigerants such as
hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) is recommended for many industrial cycles. To design and simulate
these applications, industry needs property data for these mixtures to be measured at relevant
conditions of pressure, temperature and composition so that equations of state and transport
property models can be anchored to them.
Aslani, Farhad, Dr Co-supervisors: Chakrabortty, Anup, Dr
New types of self-compacting concrete (SCC)
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Self-compacting concrete (SCC) can be placed and compacted under its own weight with little
or no compaction. It is cohesive enough to be handled without segregation or bleeding.
Modifications in the mix design of SCC may significantly influence the material’s mechanical
properties. Therefore, it is vital to investigate whether all the assumed hypotheses about
conventional concrete also hold true for SCC structures. This project is particularly examining
the effect of fly ash, ground granulated blast-furnace slag and micro silica content on strength
and the durability of the concrete.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Aslani, Farhad, Dr Co-supervisors: Gunawardena, Yas, Mr (PhD Student)
Hollow and geopolymer concrete-filled GFRP tubes columns
Disciplines: Civil, Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
Deterioration of the Australian’s infrastructure has been well documented and publicized. Glass
fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) composites have emerged as a potential solution to the
problems associated with the infrastructure. An economic application of GFRP materials is in
the form of composite construction with concrete, such that GFRP could act as load-carrying
partner and protective measure for the structural members. And also the concrete industry is
responsible for a significant proportion of world greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed,
manufacture of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is carbon intensive. An increase in research
activities related to the development of low carbon concrete technologies, namely Geopolymer
Concrete (GC), has occurred in recent years in Australia. GCs result from the reaction
between fly ash and/or slag with an alkaline liquid. There is no Portland cement clinker in GC.
GC exhibits many of the characteristics of traditional concretes, despite their vastly different
chemical constituents and reactions.
As the first experimental study reported in the literature on the axial compressive behaviour
of normal and high-strength box and circular hollow and geopolymer concrete-filled GFRP
tubes columns, this study will present the results of a test program that was aimed at
investigating the influence of GC, GFRP Tubes, and critical confinement parameters on the
performance of normal and high-strength box and circular hollow and geopolymer concrete-
filled GFRP tubes columns.
Aslani, Farhad, Dr Co-supervisors: Gunawardena, Yas, Mr (PhD Student)
Hollow and concrete filled spiral welded steel tube columns
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Spiral welded tube (SWT) structures have found worldwide application in pipeline
construction, wind turbine towers, foundation piles, and columns in tall buildings. Despite this,
the understanding of SWT structures fundamental behaviour is still insufficient and efficient
analysis and design methods have not been developed owing to the lack of experimental and
numerical research on these types of structures. In this project, SWTs will be used in a new
and innovative approach for both hollow and concrete filled steel columns, and the research
will be conducted to characterise the engineering and manufacturing properties of SWTs. The
goal of this project is “to provide insight into the ultimate strength and ductility of hollow and
concrete filled SWT columns subjected to concentric axial loading, eccentric axial loading and
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
pure bending loading through a comprehensive experimental study and theoretical model for
adoption by engineers and Standards bodies”.
Aslani, Farhad, Dr Co-supervisors: Liu, Yinong, Prof
Superelastic SMA reinforced concrete beams
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The use of superelastic shape memory alloys (SMAs) as a reinforcing material in concrete
structures is gradually gaining interest among researchers. Because of SMAs’ different
mechanical properties compared to regular steel, use of SMA as reinforcement in concrete
may change responses of structures under seismic and repeating loads. The objective of this
study is to investigate the structural performance of superelastic SMA reinforced concrete
beams under repeating loads and to develop a preliminary understanding of these beams.
Aslani, Farhad, Dr Co-supervisors: Gunawardena, Yas, Mr (PhD Student)
Behaviour of reinforced concrete bridge beam joints
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
Bridge beam joints or 'half-joints', which are located away from the bridge supports , are
typically used in pre-cast concrete bridge construction. This project proposes to investigate
the behaviour of a unique reinforced concrete half-joint located on an in-service bridge,
through an experimental programme using scaled test specimens, which will be the first time
the joint detail of interest will be investigated experimentally.
Basarir, Hakan, Assoc/Prof
An experimental study: The effect of admixture/s (AMX) on
the strength properties of cemented paste backfill
Disciplines: Civil, Mining
Prerequisite skills: Experimental study.
The strength of CPB, jeopardized by the high fines content of tailings, high processing water
salinity, is crucial for overall mine stability. Moreover, the cost of CPB is one of the main items
in overall mine cost and therefore even minor efficiency improvements can have significant
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positive effects on mining costs and safety. Therefore many studies have been conducted to
improve the strength of CPB, mine economy and safety.
Most of the studies concerning with CPB focused on the recipe optimisation i.e. use of cement
alternatives or substitute materials (Ercikdi et al., 2010a, 2009) addition of ground waste glass
(Archibald et al., 1999), addition of fiber to mix (Banthia et al., 1994; Denney and Hagan, 2004; Mitchell and Stone, 1987; Yi et al., 2015). On the other hand, the effect of admixtures (AMX)
on the quality of CPB, has remained unexplored for many years. More recently, the effect of
AMX on the quality of CPB has been investigated (Ercikdi et al., 2010b; Huynh et al., 2006;
Salter and Woolley, 2017; Zheng et al., 2016). It was suggested that the use of different
admixtures may reduce cement cost, increase durability and early strength of concrete.
As evidenced by the short background, the use of admixtures seems to be a strong alternative
for the improvement of the quality cemented paste backfill (CPB), affected by high water salinity
and fine contents of tailings.
The overall objective of this project is to laboratory scale investigation of the use of admixtures
on the quality of CPB, premier components of underground support systems.
Archibald, J., Chew, J., Lausch, P., 1999. Use of ground waste glass and normal cement mixtures
for improving slurry and paste backfill support performance. J. Can. Inst. Mining, Metall. Pet.
(CIM Bull. 92, 74–80.
Banthia, N., Trottier, J., Beupre, D., 1994. Steel-Fiber-reinforced wet mix shotcrete:
Comparisons with cast concrete. J. Mater. Civ. Eng. 430–437.
Denney, J., Hagan, P., 2004. A study on the effect of changes in fibre type and dosage rate on
Fibre Reinforced Shotcrete Performance, in: Bernard, E. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Second
Interantional Conference on Engineering Developments in Shotcrete. AA Balkema, Cairns,
Queensland, Australia, pp. 103–108.
Ercikdi, B., Cihangir, F., Kesimal, A., Deveci, H., Alp, I., 2010a. Effect of natural pozzolans as
mineral admixture on the performance of cemented paste backfill of sulphide-rich tailings.
Waste Manag Res 28, 430–435.
Ercikdi, B., Cihangir, F., Kesimal, A., Deveci, H., Alp, I., 2010b. Utilization of water-reducing
admixtures in cemented paste backfill of sulphide-rich mill tailings. J Hazard Mater 179, 940–
946.
Ercikdi, B., Cihangir, F., Kesimal, A., Deveci, H., Alp, I., 2009. Utilization of industrial waste
products as pozzolanic material in cemented paste backfill of high sulphide mill tailings. J Hazard
Mater 168, 848–856.
Huynh, L., Beattie, D., Fornasiero, D., Ralston, J., 2006. Effect of polyphosphate and naphthalene sulfonate formaldehyde condensate on the rheological properties of dewatered tailings and
cemented paste backfill. Min. Eng 19, 28–36.
Jewell, R., Fourie, A., 2015. Paste and Thickened Tailings - A Guide, 3th ed. Australian Centre
for Geomechanics, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia.
Mitchell, R., Stone, D., 1987. Stability of reinforced cemented backfills. Can. Geotech. J. 24,
189–197.
Salter, R., Woolley, C., 2017. Optimising cemented paste fill at Darlot Gold Mine through the
use of BASF product MasterRoc MF 505C, in: Proceedings of the 20th International Seminar
on Paste and Thickened Tailings. pp. 180–189.
Yi, X., Ma, G., Fourie, A., 2015. Compressive behaviour of fibre reinforced cemented paste
backfill. Geotext. Geomembranes 43, 207–215.
Zheng, J., Zhu, Y., Zhao, Z., 2016. Utilization of limestone powder and water-reducing
admixture in cemented paste backfill of coarse copper mine tailings. Constr. Build. Mater. 124,
31–36.
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Basarir, Hakan, Assoc/Prof
The effects production process on the strength properties of
cemented paste backfill Disciplines: Civil, Mining
Prerequisite skills: Experimental study.
To access viable ore bodies, underground mines in Australia uncover deep mining
environments which presents special challenges such as high in-situ stresses and weak rock
masses. In addition to such challenges, in Australian underground metallic mines mine safety
and economy are jeopardised as the strength development and curing times of pastefill are
hampered by different factors. From the economical point of view, the cost of pastefill is one
of the main items in overall mine cost and therefore even minor efficiency improvements can
have significant positive effects on mining costs and safety.
Most of the studies concerning with pastefill focus on the mix optimisation (Kermani et al.,
2015; Kesimal et al., 2005; Mgumbwa and Nester, 2014). On the other hand, a possible
alternative improvement method, related with production process, has remained unexplored
for many years.
The overall objective of this project is to investigate the effect of production process i.e. mixing
method on the strength properties of CPB, premier components of underground support
systems.
REFERENCES
Kermani, M., Hassani, F., Aflaki, E., Benzaazoua, M., Nokken, M., 2015. Evaluation of the effect
of sodium silicate addition to mine backfill, GelFill - Part 2: Effects of mixing time and curing temperature. J. Rock Mech. Geotech. Eng. 7, 668–673.
Kesimal, A., Yilmaz, E., Ercikdi, B., Alp, I., Deveci, H., 2005. Effect of properties of tailings and
binder on the short-and long-term strength and stability of cemented paste backfill. Mater. Lett.
59, 3703–3709. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2005.06.042
Mgumbwa, J., Nester, T., 2014. Paste improvement at La Mancha’s Frog’s Leg underground
mine, in: Potvin, Y., Grice, T. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh International Symposium on
Mining with Backfill. Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, WA, pp. 281–294.
Bekki, Kenji, Dr Co-supervisors: Liu, Wei, Dr
Conversion of galaxy animation into sentences with neural
network
Disciplines: Software
Prerequisite skills: Knowledge about neural network
Galaxies are formed through various physical processes, such as galaxy merging, tidal
interaction, and galaxy collisions. It is an important task for astronomers to classify these
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processes using the results of computer simulations on the processes. The goal of this
project is to (i) classify animations of galaxy formation processes into several categories and
then (ii) convert the animations into sentences (e.g., “two galaxies are merging each other to
form a new galaxy”). In these classifying and converting processes, convolutional neural
networks and LSTM (long short term memory) will be used. This is a part of the long term
project “Can AI write a scientific paper?”
Bennamoun, Mohammed, Prof Co-supervisors: Boussaid, Farid, Prof
Virtual reality (VR) based training
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
In this project, you will develop a virtual reality simulator to provide a cost effective yet
authentic and immersive training experience to users for an application of your choice.
The project will provide you with an opportunity to engage with relevant stakeholders and
experience VR hardware and software technologies.
Bosveld, Joel, Dr Co-supervisors: Wen, Linqing, Prof.
Optimising filters for gravitational wave template matching. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: If you enjoy programming or mathematics that should be sufficient.
The inspiral and merging of a compact binaries (such as a binary neutron star system) can be
detected through their emission of gravitational waves, as has recently been achieved by the
LIGO and Virgo collaborations. This was done through the correlation of whitened templates
and strain data from the interferometers. In order to improve the computational cost of this
search, the SPIIR pipeline approximates the template waveforms by a sum of exponentially
damped sinusoids, whereby the correlation is given by the sum of parallel infinite impulse
response (SPIIR) filters. By optimising the parameters of the filters, we can improve the
sensitivity of the search and reduce computational cost. A closed-form solution is available
for some of the optimal filter parameters; however, for the remaining parameters a heuristic
approach is used, with further local optimisation to improve a subset of these. Projects
include extending the local optimisation to all remaining parameters, incorporating gradient
information into the local optimisation, using global optimisation techniques, considering
other possible heuristic approaches, evaluating performance of different approaches on test
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data sets and so forth.
Bourhill, Jeremy, Dr
Dark Matter Detection with Capacitive Sensors Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Familiarity with finite element modelling, but this can be learned in the
process, and a sound understanding of electrodynamics and Maxwell’s equations.
We’ve known for decades that we are surrounded by dark matter, which is five times as
abundant as the regular matter that we understand. The properties and composition of dark
matter remain unknown, presenting one of the greatest mysteries in science today. One of
the best dark matter candidates, a particle known as the axion, is expected to couple to
photons in the presence of a strong DC magnetic field, and generate a small AC electric field.
We wish to design capacitive sensors to detect this small electric field and thus detect or
exclude the presence of axionic dark matter. The design of these detectors requires
electrical engineering principles, which is where your skills will be applied. Skills that would be
beneficial for the project would be a familiarity with finite element modelling, but this can be
learned in the process, and a sound understanding of electrodynamics and Maxwell’s
equations.
Bourhill, Jeremy, Dr
Design and Construction of Electronic Cryogenic Hardware Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Familiarity with soldering and designing Printed Circuit Boards.
To improve Signal to Noise ratios of extremely weak quantum phenomena, amplification and
signal generation at cold temperatures offers great advantages. We form a node of the ARC
Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, and run many cryogenic experiments
whose sensitivities could be improved through the development of this type of hardware.
This project will focus on the design of cryogenically capable hardware elements such as
amplifiers and low phase noise oscillators, which will have applications in a raft of fundamental
and applied experiments, such as dark matter detection, quantum sensing and quantum
information processing. Skills required will be familiarity with soldering and designing Printed
Circuit Boards.
Boussaid, Farid, Professor
Camera on a chip
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
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Prerequisite skills:
The current trend in Digital Imaging Technology is towards building camera-on-a-chip imaging
systems, i.e., CMOS imagers. The fully integrated product results in significant manufacturing
cost savings, reduced system size, but also in lower power consumption. The unique concept
of CMOS imagers offers the opportunity to integrate photo-sensing array and signal processing circuitry on a single silicon chip, enabling the development of a new generation of smart mobile
imaging systems. Half the size of a small postage stamp, a CMOS imager chip can even be
swallowed (pill-camera) to transmit images from inside the body. Besides biomedical, CMOS
imagers have numerous commercial applications in cell phones, PC notebooks or any
application for which a “micro-camera” can be requested. Proposed final year projects will
involve building such a camera, and optimize its performance in terms of dynamic range,
resolution and/or power consumption.
Boussaid, Farid, Professor
Bio-inspired gas recognition for electronic noses Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills:
Sniffing-dogs are able to detect thousands of chemicals with high sensitivity and selectivity using
only biological components. These nasal powerhouses have been successfully used to search
for pipeline leaks, drugs, or explosives. In this project, you will investigate the potential
application of biologically inspired machine learning methods (e.g. deep learning, evolutionary
algorithms) for the task of gas recognition. The project will give you the opportunity to discover
and apply advanced machine learning techniques to automatically extract features and train
classifiers. Projects offer an opportunity to discover and apply neuroscience principles into
made-made engineering systems. Projects will be tailored around your interests.
Bräunl, Thomas, Professor
Electric Jetskis, Vehicle Tracking and Water Quality Sensing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Completion of ELEC4403 Digital and Embedded Sys. or
CITS2200 Data Structures with 75+; Good programming skills in C or C++ are
essential.
Two new electric jetskis will be built externally to UWA, following the REVski prototype.
Task 1 will be to equip the new jetskis with GPS loggers, develop a web-interface that shows
the jetski paths and calculates statistics on usage, current, temperature, charging data, etc.
Task 2 will be the addition of water sensors for temperature, salinity, general water quality and
generate an environmental map along the areas that both jetskis have travelled.
Goals:
GPS Tracking of electric jetskis
Information on charge status, range, charging events
Jetski-specific sensors for current, charge, temperature of core components
Web-based front end with map and evaluation graphs
Selection and installation of water quality sensors
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Transmission of GPS-based water quality data + entering on web-based map graph
Further Details:
http://revproject.com/vehicles/jetski.php
http://revproject.com/telemetry/data-logging-overview.php
Bräunl, Thomas, Professor
Autonomous Solar Boat Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Completion of ELEC4403 Digital and Embedded Sys. or
CITS2200 Data Structures with 75+; Good programming skills in C or C++ are
essential.
We have just completed the hardware for an electric solar boat, which can potentially
circumnavigate the world autonomously. It uses a solar panel with battery backup, two thruster motors, a Ardupilot controller and a 3G modem (upgradable to a satellite modem).
The tasks for this project include the establishment of data communication between the boat
and the UWA server as well as to visualize the boat's GPS position and its sensor values.
Goals:
GPS Tracking of solar boat
Setting of GPS way-points
Selection and integration of sensors for water quality
Graphically mapping of water quality from sensors
Integration of camera (possibly using Raspberry Pi Zero)
Cense, Barry, Associate Professor Co-supervisors: Gong, Peijun, Dr
Measuring blood flow in the retina using speckle
decorrelation Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Matlab
Measurements of blood flow in the human retina (back of the eye) are important for the early
detection of various diseases. A new algorithm for blood flow measurements was recently
developed based on speckle decorrelation. We would like to use it to visualize blood flow in
the human retina and to get a better understanding of retinal architecture.
Cense, Barry, Associate Professor
Measuring retinal blood vessel wall birefringence Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Matlab
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By measuring the birefringence (an optical property) of blood vessel walls in the human
retina, in vivo, we can quantify the health of the vessel wall non-invasively. This will be
beneficial for screening of patients with circulation problems. We will record and analyze data
from healthy human subjects and patients with hypertension to quantify their health.
Chow, Shiao Huey, Dr
Assessing the riverbed strength of Swan River using a free-
fall cone penetrometer
Disciplines: Civil, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills: Coastal course Would you like to participate in the Woodside FutureLab RiverLab working on an innovative
engineering solutions? This RiverLab project aims to unlock the potential of free-fall penetrometers in
assessing the riverbed strength of Swan River. Free-fall penetrometers are instrumented projectiles that
are deployed by allowing them to free fall and embed into the target sediment. The use of freefall
penetrometers in offshore geotechnical site investigation has gained increased interests, particularly in
characterising the soil strength of shallow seabed crucial for applications such as pipeline design and
submarine landslide survey. Compared to the conventional approach of using a large survey vessel and
a mechanical system for pushing a penetrometer into the seabed, free-fall penetrometers offer a
cheaper and quicker way to survey the seabed, with potentially equal accuracy if the tools are
designed and interpreted correctly.
A prototype free-fall cone penetrometer (FFP) has been developed at the Centre of Offshore
Foundation Systems, UWA. Following on from a successful Riverlab FFP project completed in 2017,
this project will further optimise the design of the FFP, upgrade the instrumentation of the FFP, assess
the performance of the new FFP, and validate the FFP interpretation method by conducting field trials
in the Swan River. The scopes of the proposed project involve:
Upgrade of the FFP to include more advanced instrumentation (Figure 1a)
Field tests by dropping the FFP into Swan River from a jetty or research vessel (Figure 1b)
Interpretation of the test results to estimate the riverbed strength
Interested students are encouraged to contact Dr Shiaohuey Chow ([email protected])
for more information. More details about the Woodside FutureLab RiverLab program can be found
here: http://www.oceans.uwa.edu.au/collaborations/woodside-futurelab/riverlab
Chow, Shiao Huey, Dr Co-supervisors: Bienen, Britta, Assoc. Prof.
Rapid penetration of spudcan footing in sand
Disciplines: Civil, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
The motivation for this study emanates from the lack of understanding in rapid penetration of
spudcan footing in sand for offshore renewable energy application. Offshore renewable
energy devices are typically located in shallow water (< 30 m) that predominates with sandy
sediments. The renewable energy devices, particularly wind farms are installed and serviced
using mobile jack-up rigs. A jack-up rig may experience dynamic leg loading during the set
down of its spudcan footing into sand. The current inability to predict the penetration
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resistance under dynamic or rapid penetration of spudcan footing in sand has introduced
substantial risk. Inaccurate prediction of sand resistance at high penetration rates may cause
premature refusal for the spudcan, or potential damage to the jack-up rack-and-pinion
systems and legs due to high moments and vertical loading introduced by spudcan-seabed
impact. Economic consequences are severe (loss in productivity, property or even life), which could amount to tens of millions of dollars. Hence this project aims to provide better
understanding of rapid penetration of spudcan footing in sand using laboratory model tests.
The laboratory model tests will involve pushing an instrumented model spudcan footing into
sand covering a range of penetration velocities. The project will quantify the change in
spudcan penetration resistance with the change in penetration velocity. This project will
require a team of two students, one looking at rapid penetration of spudcan in dry sand and
another in saturated sand. Interested students are encouraged to contact Dr Shiaohuey
Chow ([email protected]) for more information.
Chua, Hui Tong, Prof.
High flux bright light synthesis of valuable nanomaterials
Disciplines: Chemical
Prerequisite skills:
This project makes use of a first-of-its-kind high flux bright light facility to synthesise valuable
nanomaterials. For example, we aim to synthesise MoS2, WS2 nanoparticles from their
naturally occurring precursor materials. The former materials have phenomenal applications
in engine and medical applications. They are mainly used as advanced lubricants in those
applications, but are also very promising as materials for supercapacitors as well.
We will also work on synthesising graphene from graphite particles, which has great
applications in batteries, supercapacitors and membranes, as well as boron nitride nanoparticles from boron nitride.
This project will be conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Ben Gurion University
of the Negev, Israel and the Taiyuan University of Technology, China.
Chua, Hui Tong, Prof.
Geothermal energy applications
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
1. Modelling and Controlling geothermal swimming pool - this is an ongoing topic to work with
the local councils on managing geothermal swimming pools and specifically the Beatty Park
Leisure Centre and possibly Scarborough Beach Pool. The student needs to physically visit the
Pools and even other swimming pools to collect pool data - 1 student. This project will inform
the design/consulting sector in terms of the proper sizing of the heating capacity of swimming
pools, which has a huge ramification in terms of the adoption of renewable energy.
2. The Cool Earth Project - this is an exciting project in partnership with LandCorp,
Geoexchange, ABN builders, AIRAH, Carbonomics and other agencies to monitor the
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performance of two occupied properties at Craigie, with one being fitted with a ground source
heat pump and another with a conventional air source heat pump. - 1 student.
Chua, Hui Tong, Prof.
Sub-topic 1 Industrial waste heat distillation, desalination,
Sub-topic 2 bauxite residue remediation
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills:
This topic will have 2 sub-topics.
Sub-topic 1 - 4 students. Reconcentrating spent liquor using waste heat from an alumina
refinery - 4 students. Students will get to build and operate an actual pilot plant in collaboration
with South32 and making use of actual spent liquor. Students need to travel to Worsley
Alumina and Rockingham, Murdoch Uni campus for the actual test. Students will also get to
be trained to the safety standard of South32 - a fantastic project to prepare for a career. Chemical engineering students are required. Students need to have available transport access
and are able to frequently visit the Rockingham site. They should preferably be available 2
weeks before the commencement of Semester 2 to be able to complete safety induction and
partake in plant pre-commissioning operations (around 16th July). They should be be available
to take both day and night shifts during the two week trial period in early August in
collaboration with South32.
Sub-topic 2 1 student. Bauxite residue remediation - using centrifuge to dewater mining
residue, an exciting technology - 1 student. This project is to be co-supervised by Prof. Andy
Fourie of Civil Engineering. We are investigating the prospect of substituting the traditional
impoundment method as practiced by the industry. A mechanical/civil engineering student is
good for this project.
Coward, David, A/Prof Co-supervisors: Burrel, Andrew, Mr (Zadko Systems Manager)
Environmental protection of a remotely controlled CCD
camera Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: Electronic, some mechanical engineering also
The Zadko Telescope is a sophisticated research intensive robotic telescope operating
remotely and with minimal human intervention. It uses a very sensitive ccd camera to image
space debris. The project will design an external electronic temperature controlled cooler for
the camera. Must be light weight and encapsulates the camera to prevent moisture and dirt
ingress, ie no fans.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Doherty, James, Dr Co-supervisors: Watson, Phil, Prof; Guevaracastill Mariajose
Strength and fatigue assessment of well conductors
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Soil mechanics
The soil lateral stiffness (p-y response) has a strong influence on the overall strength and fatigue
response of well conductors used for offshore oil and gas developments. Current API/ISO
guidance is provided only for generic “sand” and “clay” soils and recent research by BP indicates
that they are too soft for small amplitude well conductor motions. This project will involve the
review of centrifuge tests conducted at UWA on a model conductor and the development of
guide lines to better predict fatigue life of conductors.
Doherty, James, Dr
Improved foundation models for offshore wind turbines
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills:
Offshore wind energy is now cost competitive with some traditional forms of energy, thanks
to the development of new design and construction technologies. The aim of this project is to
develop improved foundation models for large diameter mono pile foundations for offshore
wind turbines by combining m-theta springs with tradition p-y soils springs.
Doherty, James, Dr
Image analysis of triaxial testing
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Matlab or Python, or willingness to learn
The project will use advanced image analysis and cloud computing technologies to replace
manual, timeconsuming and subjective geotechnical engineering practices with a rapid,
automated, and more rational approach. A new geomaterials testing system based on the
existing triaxial apparatus will be developed that employs 3D image capture hardware and
advanced image analysis techniques. The data measured over the entire sample surface will feed
into an automated, intelligent parameter selection procedure combining finite element analysis
with numerical optimisation techniques. Application of the proposal’s findings will allow more
accurate and efficient engineering design of transport and energy infrastructure that supports
modern economies.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Doyle, Barry, Dr
Vascular engineering in heath and disease 1
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
From the most basic engineering point of view, the cardiovascular system is a pump connected
to a series of elastic pipes. However, this system is prone to sub-optimal performance and even
failure; otherwise known as cardiovascular disease (CVD). CVD is the world’s biggest killer
and currently takes 1 Australian life every 12 minutes! It kills far more people than cancer and
with the shifting trend in the world’s population (people are living a lot longer nowadays), is
becoming a huge burden on health care systems.
At the Vascular Engineering Laboratory (VascLab) we perform both computational and
experimental research into CVD with an overall aim of creating new and innovative ways to
save lives and reduce the impact of this disease. We work very closely with scientists and
surgeons across UWA, Perth, nationally and internationally, to ensure our research is clinically-
relevant.
All projects will run within the Vascular Engineering Laboratory (VascLab) at the Harry Perkins
Institute of Medical Research - the premier medical institute in WA – and are in collaboration
with our partners in the local hospitals and research institutes. We now have access to the
most powerful supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere – Magnus – at the Pawsey
Supercomputing Centre, so for projects requiring significant computational resources, you will
be running simulations on this world-class machine.
It is expected that each project will form a publication in a journal upon completion.
For more info on VascLab, visit:
http://vasclab.mech.uwa.edu.au
https://www.perkins.org.au/our-research/divisions/clinical-science/vascular-engineering/
We have two projects on offer in this round:
Flow dynamics in vascular access catheters:
In medicine, a vascular access catheters are flexible tubes placed into an artery or vein to
administer medication or fluids or even other devices. The most common example is a
peripheral venous catheter used to draw blood. This is the most commonly used vascular
access technique in medicine and in the USA alone more than 25 million patients receive a
peripheral venous line each year. The technique suffers from many complications, ranging from
bruising of the arm due to poor insertion, to catheter occlusion. Despite being a common
procedure, 25-50% fail and there is little data on the flow dynamics which undoubtedly
contributes to flow related problems, such as occlusion and dislodgement. We have recently
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
published (Russell et al., Sci Rep 2018;8:3441) the first data on how the fluid mechanics within
these devices and have shown why we believe so many of these devices may fail. We now need
to test our methods on more geometric configurations and also extends to other types of
catheters such as central venous catheters and peripherally inserted central catheters. This
project will be a parametric study using CFD where several variables will be modified and the
fluid dynamics computed. Through this project we hope to create enough evidence to change
clinical practice and is in conjunction with the Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching And
Research (AVATAR) Group (http://www.avatargroup.org.au/) at UWA, Queensland University
of Technology and Griffith University.
Airway modelling in the lungs of healthy and diseased children:
Medical imaging technologies such as Computed Tomography (CT) scans are critical tools for
the diagnosis and management of lung disease. Not only can these scans provide insights into
the disease and throughout image analysis techniques, can help predict clinical outcomes. But
these scans can be used to reconstruct the airways of the lungs into 3D for sophisticated
computational biomechanics modelling.
In this project you will use CT scans to create 3D reconstructions and then use computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the movement of air down through the trachea and into the
major bronchi. Once the computational framework is built, you will analyse a series of healthy
and diseased lungs from children with cystic fibrosis, ranging from mild to severe. The data
from this project will be used to develop a larger scale effort aimed at building fast and efficient
methods to compute airflow and lung performance in cystic fibrosis.
This project is in collaboration with Dr Tim Rosenow at Telethon Kids Institute.
Doyle, Barry, Dr
Co-supervisors: Green, Daniel, Prof
Vascular engineering in heath and disease 2
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Software
Prerequisite skills: This project requires extensive programming knowledge including
labview. This is a software development project. You must have suitable background skills.
From the most basic engineering point of view, the cardiovascular system is a pump connected
to a series of elastic pipes. However, this system is prone to sub-optimal performance and even
failure; otherwise known as cardiovascular disease (CVD). CVD is the world’s biggest killer
and currently takes 1 Australian life every 12 minutes! It kills far more people than cancer and
with the shifting trend in the world’s population (people are living a lot longer nowadays), is
becoming a huge burden on health care systems.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
At the Vascular Engineering Laboratory (VascLab) we perform both computational and
experimental research into CVD with an overall aim of creating new and innovative ways to
save lives and reduce the impact of this disease. We work very closely with scientists and
surgeons across UWA, Perth, nationally and internationally, to ensure our research is clinically-
relevant.
All projects will run within the Vascular Engineering Laboratory (VascLab) at the Harry Perkins
Institute of Medical Research - the premier medical institute in WA – and are in collaboration
with our partners in the local hospitals and research institutes. We now have access to the
most powerful supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere – Magnus – at the Pawsey
Supercomputing Centre, so for projects requiring significant computational resources, you will
be running simulations on this world-class machine.
It is expected that each project will form a publication in a journal upon completion.
For more info on VascLab, visit:
http://vasclab.mech.uwa.edu.au
https://www.perkins.org.au/our-research/divisions/clinical-science/vascular-engineering/
We have one project on offer in this round:
Real-time image processing software for arterial assessment:
The response of an artery to changes in flow provides direct insight into the functional
performance of the vessel. A healthy artery will increase diameter in response to increase in
flow. This is a relatively simple technique to perform and uses ultrasound to simultaneously
measure the diameter change and the flow within a superficial artery (e.g. the carotid artery in
the neck or the brachial artery in the arm). However data from such as test is extremely useful.
Not only does it inform about the general condition of the artery in question, and provide a
way to measure response under different conditions (such as exercise, gravity, heat, stress,
etc). The functional performance of a specific artery can also provide insight into the general
vascular health of the subject as cardiovascular disease is a systemic problem; poor vascular
health in one artery often reflects poor vascular health throughout.
In order to measure these parameters in real-time, approximately 15 years ago our
collaborators in the Cardiovascular Research Group in the Faculty of Science (led by Prof.
Danny Green), together with medical physicists at the Royal Perth Hospital, developed a
labview-based software package that analyses .avi files derived from arterial duplex ultrasound.
This software has become a very widely adopted tool, used in both research groups and clinics.
We now seek to upgrade various aspects of the software and increase its reach and impact.
This project requires extensive programming knowledge including labview.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Some of the specific aspects are as follows:
1. Create a free vision library that interfaces with an existing labview-based software package
that assesses blood flow from duplex ultrasound avi’s. Must work with latest codecs.
2. Develop vision analysis tools for edge detection, wall tracking and waveform analysis that
interfaces with labview.
3. Consolidate existing software packages that analyse arterial images (intima medial thickness
of artery walls, diameter change of arteries, velocity and blood flow analysis).
This is a software development project. You must have suitable background skills.
Draper, Scott, Assoc. Prof.
Effect of the environment on open water swimming and
rowing Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Fluid Mechanics, Coastal and Offshore Engineering
This project will consider (in collaboration with the Western Australian Institute of Sport) the
effect of the environment on two different aquatic sports: (i) open-water swimming and (ii)
rowing. (If both students would like to work on the same sport, that is also possible).
Open water swimming: Whilst much is known about swimming in still water conditions, very
little research has considered the effect of surface waves on swimming performance. This
project will undertake human experiments in a newly commission 54 m long wave flume located
at UWA's Shenton Park campus. Swimmers will be monitored whilst swimming into and with waves of period and amplitude typical of open water swimming conditions. Theoretical models
will be developed to interpret the experimental results.
Rowing: This project will aim to systematically measure key properties of a lake/river prior to
a rowing event, and use these measurements to better interpret variations in race speed.
Interpretation will include correlating physical parameters such as density and viscosity with
race speed, and developing simplified theoretical models to estimate the effect of these physical
parameters on race speed.
Draper, Scott, Assoc. Prof. Co-supervisors: Hansen, Jeff, Dr
Detecting and Predicting wave over-topping onto the
Kwinana Freeway, Como Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Software
Prerequisite skills: Detection: Image analysis, machine learning; Prediction:
Coastal and Offshore Engineering
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Wave over-topping from the Swan River onto the Kwinana Freeway at Como can result in
dangerous driving conditions. This project will be undertaken in collaboration with Main Roads
WA to detect and predict when waves over-top onto the Kwinana Freeway at Como. One
student will use video data, together with water level and wind records, to automatically detect
(using machine learning approaches) when over-topping is occurring. The second student will use a combination of coastal engineering models to predict what combination of wind and
water level conditions are most likely to result in over-topping.
Durham, Richard, Prof
Industry topic (usually based on your vacation work)
Disciplines: Mining
Prerequisite skills:
During your vacation work, you should ask your employer if they have any topic(s) suitable for
your thesis. Ask them at the beginning, and then again towards the end. You need to write up
the topic on <1 page, and send it to me. There might be a little negotiation whilst I ensure the
topic is suitable (basically not too small, not too big, and involves some research type analysis),
but once we've agreed on the scope and objectives it's all fine.
Durham, Richard, Prof Co-supervisors: French, Tim, Dr
VR Applications in Mining Engineering
Disciplines: Software
A previous thesis by a student loaded a mine design into a VR environment, and showed how
that would be useful to engineers. More work is required to use “off the shelf” packages (and
the latest cordless headset, or Hololens) to take a design into VR, and apply textures, queries
etc.
Durham, Richard, Prof
Improving the Nicholas UG Mining method tool
Disciplines: Mining Prerequisite skills: MINE5502
Probably only 1 student.
The Nicholas spreadsheet for helping select an UG stoping method has many flaws, making it
of very limited real use. This project seeks to replace it with more modern approaches, more
modern methods, and fuzzy logic
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Durham, Richard, Prof
Improving Taylor’s Rule
Disciplines: Mining Prerequisite skills:
Probably only 1 student.
The decision for selecting the production rate of a new deposit is sometimes guided by Taylor’s
rule. However, this is based on data that is decades old, so this project seeks to replace it with
more modern data, and more criteria
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: Meek, Alexandra, Ms
Rebuilding the Egyptian pyramids
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Materials
Prerequisite skills: Chemical knowledge a benefit but not required.
Many conspiracy theories exist regarding the origins of the Egyptian pyramids, one of which is
that they were constructed in situ using rammed earth stabilised with sodium carbonate.
Students will aim to find some potential mixes that could have been used to build the pyramids.
It will involve both individual research and trialling potential mixes in the lab. Specimens are
manufactured using a jackhammer - students will need to be comfortable with physical work.
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: A/Prof Ali Karrech; Ahmed Tanvir
The development of ultra high performance concrete for
high rise buildings
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials,
Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Software
Prerequisite skills: do not mind to get their hand dirty
This project aims to develop ultra high performance concrete for the construction of high rise
buildings in Australia. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) which is characterised by high
strength and, when reinforced with steel fibres, high ductility, has the potential to revolutionise
the construction industry. The application of UHPC is currently mainly limited to landmark
projects due to the high cost of manufacture, which often involve specialist materials such as
specially graded sands and the need for complex mixing and curing regimes. Moreover, mix
designs are commonly proprietary information or incompletely reported.
As a result of the complexity of material requirements and the restricted nature of complete
mix design details it can be difficult to reproduce reported results. This project aims to address
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
these issues by investigating the potential for producing UHPC using widely available fine and
coarse aggregates.
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: A/Prof Ali Karrech
Numerical Modelling of Concrete Filled Tubular Columns
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials,
Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Software
Prerequisite skills:
In Australian modern construction, concrete filled steel tubular columns are becoming a
popular method of construction particularly for high rise buildings. Limited experimental tests
showed that concrete filling may delay or fully prevent local buckling of the external steel tubes.
The main factor affect the response is the diameter-to-thickness ratio of the steel tubes and
the strength of concrete. The full range of D/t ratios was not tested. Wide variations among
the international design codes such as AS3600 to predict the strength of such columns. This
project will focus on the use of the Finite Element method an an effective approach to provide
design models for such composite columns and to provide valuable information on their
response. The results will be recommended as a future amendment for AS3600, the Australian
Concrete Design Code.
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: A/Prof Ali Karrech; Fraser Tonner
Development of Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete [GFRC]
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical, Mining, Oil &
Gas
Prerequisite skills: do not mind getting their hand dirty
Glass fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC) which is characterised by high strength and durability
when reinforced with steel fibres, has the potential to revolutionise the construction industry.
The application of GFRC is currently limited to replace traditional steel bars with Fibre
Reinforced Bars. Producing Concrete this way has its own limitations because the FRP bars
have potential problems like fracture of the resin and debonding from the concrete matrix
surrounding the bar. The present innovative GFRC is produces in such away that the glass
fibres are used without the week resin. An investigation of the axial and compression, tensile
and bending strength of the GFRC will be compared with normal concrete. It is expected that this concrete will have a significant impact on the construction industry.
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: A/Prof Ali Karrech; Minhao Dong
Durability Geopolymer concrete
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mining
Prerequisite skills: do not mind getting their hand dirty
Geopolymer concrete is a new concrete which does not have any cement but made of recycled
material such as slag and fly ash. It is more environmentally friendly than traditional cement concrete and more durable. The durability of such new concrete needs to be investigated and
this is among the aims of this project.
Geopolymer has emerged as a ‘green’ binder with high potential for manufacturing sustainable
concretes. This innovative material can use industrial wastes, such as fly ash and metallurgical
slags, as raw materials. Because the formation is usually completed at room temperature or
slightly elevated temperature (40-80°C), and because it does not need the high temperature
calcination and milling processes required in Portland cement clinker manufacturing, the
emissions reduction compared to Portland cement can be up to 80%, greatly depending on the
geopolymer mixture formula and materials supply [1, 2]. In the past decade, geopolymer
concretes produced on laboratory scales have been widely reported to display similar
engineering properties to OPC concretes, in many cases with superior mechanical properties
when subjected to high temperature and highly corrosive media. However, using geopolymer
to fabricate concretes is still rare in the real-world compared to normal Portland cement
concretes. The slow commercialization of geopolymer relates to many technical issues,
practical costs and durability considerations.
Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Co-supervisors: Ms. Alexandra Meek
Mechanical properties of geopolymer-stabilised rammed
earth
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials,
Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Software
Prerequisite skills: highly motivated
his project will study the mechanical properties of newly developed geopolymer-stabilised
rammed earth. Students will determine properties such as compressive, tensile and bond
strengths in various environments. Mixes will largely be composed of industrial waste products
and there will also be the opportunity to investigate materials used to construct Egyptian
pyramids.
Specimens are manufactured using a jackhammer - students should be comfortable with
physical work.
Contact: [email protected] with any queries.
Faiello, Cosimo, Associate Professor
Sustainability applied to project management & engineering
practice
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Mechanical,
Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum
This topic will introduce students to the field of project management and engineering practice
with a focus on achieving sustainable results based on a “triple bottom line” (TBL) approach:
That is, achieving project objectives, while taking into account the societal and environmental implications of a project. A sustainable approach to project management and engineering
practice is recognised globally by many organizations, as being vital to achieving their strategic
objectives. By researching this topic students will learn how to apply theoretical concepts and
frameworks to ‘real world projects’ in order to achieve sustainable outcomes using a TBL
strategy.
Fourie, Andy, Prof Co-supervisors: Dr David Reid
A reassessment of the Mt Polley tailings dam failure in
Canada
Disciplines: Civil, Mining
Prerequisite skills: ENSC 3009
The Mt Polley tailings dam in Canada failed in 2014. A failure investigation published in 2015
suggested that the mechanism of slope instability was undrained shearing of a layer of clay
below the embankment. Two dimensional stability analyses carried out during the investigation
gave a reasonable indication of the mechanism of failure based on laboratory test data and the
embankment geometry. However, a three dimensional analysis - which conceptually should
give the most accurate result - did not agree well with the failure that occurred. This study will
involve constructing a three dimensional stability model of the Mt Polley tailings dam failure area and assessing various factors that could improve the alignment of the three dimensional
result and the actual failure.
Fourie, Andy, Prof Co-supervisors: Dr David Reid
Critical assessment of brittleness in stability analyses of sand Disciplines: Civil, Mining
Prerequisite skills: ENSC3009
Assessing the stability of slopes in highly brittle materials is difficult owing to the limitations of
limit equilibrium stability software. In particular, a loose, saturated sand may rapidly lose
strength when sheared, whereas “standard” models used in stability software do not allow for
such rapidly changing material properties. To improve on this process, a number of methods
to account for strength loss have been developed. However, they are relatively new and have
not been thoroughly tested. This project requires carrying out back-analyses of a number of
historic failures of embankments constructed of brittle materials to assess the performance of
available methods.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Fourie, Andy, Prof Co-supervisors: Dr David Reid
Rapid determination of consolidation properties of super-
soft sediments
Disciplines: Civil, Mining
Prerequisite skills: ENSC3009
Consolidation of very soft clays and tailings can be a very slow process, up to decades even.
Obtaining relevant consolidation properties in the laboratory is therefore also usually a slow
process. Recently at UWA we have developed a desktop centrifuge for accelerated
consolidation testing. Tests that previously took three weeks can now be completed within 48
hours. This project will carry out comparative tests on a range of mine tailings using the desktop
centrifuge as well as conventional techniques, plus develop a suitable technique for analyzing
the centrifuge data using recently purchased software
Fridjonsson, Einar, Dr. Co-supervisors: Johns, Michael, Prof.
Industrial and Oilfield Water Management
Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental
Prerequisite skills:
Projects are available across a range of industrial and oilfield water management topics:
(i) Natural gas and oil extraction results in the production of substantial quantities of (mainly
formation) water which needs to be discharged back into the sea. We are currently developing
NMR-based technologies to both monitor ppm oil contamination of this discharge water such
that it is compliant with environmental legislation, as well as multi-phase flow metering methods
for oil/gas/water production flow quantification.
(ii) Desalination and waste water treatment are areas of growing global importance (47% of
Perth’s water now comes from desalination!). Membranes are important for the separation of
contaminants from liquids across a range of industrial processes. A critical issue with membrane
separation is fouling, projects are available on membrane fouling, forward osmosis and the
development of an NMR-based clamp-on monitoring technology.
(iii) Project are available on Nanofluids which have the potential to substantially reduce both
the OPEX and CAPEX and water usage of heat exchange processes for LNG production
facilities.
(iv) Magnesium hydroxide recovery from the concentrated discharge water from desalination
plants is a potentially valuable by-product. This project will consider the viability of using local
lime sources to effect the Mg(OH)2 precipitation and look to opimise and evaluate the overall
process.
Fridjonsson, Einar, Dr. Co-supervisors: Metaxas, Peter, Dr.; Johns, Michael, Prof.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Development of medical bench-top detection technologies
Disciplines: Chemical
Prerequisite skills: NB: this project DOES NOT require biomedical experience
The intended outcome of this project is to pave routes towards the development of
sophisticated technologies for rapid and economical diagnosis and monitoring of diseases (e.g.
cancer). Benefitting from links with medical scientists, the project will focus on testing and
development of bench-top NMR techniques and novel magnetic sensor devices for detecting
disease bio-markers via magnetic “tags” (functionalised nanoparticles).
Fridjonsson, Einar, Dr. Co-supervisors: Johns, Michael, Prof.
Renewable Energy (Li Battery technology – economic life
cycle analysis) Disciplines: Chemical
Prerequisite skills:
With immense interest in the development of the full range of the Li battery production chain
in Australia (from raw material to batteries). This project will focus on analysing the value chain
in Lithium battery technology (from mine to battery to recycling) and evaluating opportunities
for process PFD improvements to full life-cycle economic analysis.
Ghadouani, Anas, Prof Co-supervisors: Coggins, Liah, Dr
Improving performance of wastewater treatment assets
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Hydraulics/modelling preferable
Selected topics from industry based on-going investigations into improving performance of
wastewater treatment assets, including greenhouse gas mitigation. This may include computer
modelling or data collection and analysis.
Ghadouani, Anas, Prof Co-supervisors: Coggins, Liah, Dr
Investigating urban water quality
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Longitudinal study on heavy metal contamination in urban water sources and networks.
Students will be trained in advanced analytical skills (including laboratory), and will use the
world-class facilities at UWA.
Gong, Peijun, Dr
OBEL: Methods for non-invasive optical imaging of blood
vessels
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Software
Prerequisite skills: Materials, mechanical systems or mechatronics, OR signal
processing and computer programming OR both
In OBEL, we have been working on the development of non-invasive optical imaging of blood
vessels in humans – which is important in skin scarring and healing, diabetes, and in retinal
diseases. This project will involve the design and manufacturing of an imaging phantom to mimic
the blood flow in biological tissue, capturing images, and improving data analysis techniques to segment the blood vessels. As a step toward clinical applications, the effectiveness of the data
analysis techniques on human clinical data will also be investigated.
Students are expected to have knowledge or interest in materials, electronics or computer
programming. Come and talk to us about this project.
Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr
Deformation measurement using AI techniques
Disciplines: Civil, EE, Mechanical, and Software
Prerequisite skills: good programming skills in Matlab
Deformation measurement with high accuracy using images is a challenging task in many
engineering and other fields. The problem get more interesting when discontinuities such as
crack and crevices exist in the specimen which are undergoing deformation. Many techniques
are proposed to solve this problem which are complicated and having optimization issues. In
addition, most of the techniques are computationally very expensive to be used in real-time
scenarios.
In this research project, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques will be investigated to replace
the existing techniques for deformation measurement. Also another aspect for investigation
can be extension of existing techniques to 3D and issues related to it.
Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr Co-supervisors: French, Tim, Dr
Tabletop model for vehicle protocol simulation
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Disciplines: Civil, EE, Mechanical, Mechatronic, and Software
Prerequisite skills: strong programming skills is essential
The aim of this project is to utilize and improve a recently developed table top traffic testbed
for investigations of autonomous vehicle networks. The model consists of bluetooth
controlled vehicles, raspberry pi microcomputers, a data projector and a machine vision
camera.
This is a part of complex large scale project, where the first phase focused on building a basic
control loop that can detect the location of different vehicles, and based on this pass driving
instructions onto those vehicles. In this project, students will be modelling observability and
implementing traffic routing algorithms.
Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr Co-supervisors: Datta, Amitava, Prof
Detection of health related issues using social media
Disciplines: EE, Mechatronic, and Software
Prerequisite skills: strong programming skills is essential
Social media is very popular to monitor different aspects of life. It will be interesting to
analyse how health related issues can be monitored using social media data. The users of
social medial are regularly updating their status which can help to determine health issues
related to users or arising health issues.
This project will require students to use artificial intelligence and data mining techniques to
analyse data and retrieve appropriate information from the data.
Hodkiewicz, Melinda, Prof Co-supervisors: Ben Travaglione (adjunct Defence Science
Technology)
Design and Build MEMS Test Units
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: ELEC4403 or GENG5508 with >70%. Coding (experience with python,
or a willingness to learn), Scientific computing (eg Matlab, Mathematica, SciPy, R), electronics ,
CAD, microcontroller/arduino experience, general workshop skills.
The Internet-of-Things has arrived. Our world is becoming filled with vast numbers of small
sensors, capable of collecting and processing data in real time, and streaming data to the
cloud. The sensors are becoming smaller and cheaper. The wifi-enabled microcontrollers
attached to these sensors are becoming faster and more powerful. In order to explore this
new and rapidly changing landscape, the System Health Lab has developed an IoT device
called the "Blue Box". This device uses a small COTS MEMs accelerometer and a cheap wifi-
enabled microcontroller to stream data to the cloud. The student(s) undertaking this project
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
will design and build a series of test apparatus to compare the Blue Box performance to a
number of (more expensive) commercial/scientific alternatives or build MEMS for some
specific applications (one we are considering is for embedding in tailings dams for instance).
Interested students must have a strong background in the open-source software used in
programming modern single-board microcontrollers. A familiarity with electronics will also be helpful. There will also be a requirement to manipulate the collected data and build
appropriate models of the underlying physics.
Hodkiewicz, Melinda, Prof Co-supervisors: Ben Travaglione (adjunct Defence Science
Technology)
Edge Processing
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: ELEC4403 or GENG5508 with >70%. Coding (experience with python,
or a willingness to learn), Scientific computing (eg Matlab, Mathematica, SciPy, R), electronics ,
CAD, microcontroller/arduino experience, general workshop skills.
The Internet-of-Things has arrived. Our world is becoming filled with vast numbers of small
sensors, capable of collecting and processing data in real time, and streaming data to the
cloud. The sensors are becoming smaller, cheaper and more capable. As more and more
sensors are deployed, vast amounts of data will be generated. This project will deal with
“edge processing” of the collected data. Pre-processing of the data can be done on the
sensing device to ensure only relevant and necessary information is transmitted to the cloud
for further processing. The impacts of different edge processing methodologies on factors
such as sensor battery life, reliability and quality will be explored. As part of the project the
student will gain practical experience in PCB design as well as setting up a LoRa Wireless
Network. Potential sensors of interest include but are not limited to: accelerometers, air
quality, pH, weather (temperature, humidity, pressure).
Hong, Jin, Dr Co-supervisors: Mian, Ajmal, A/Professor
Generating Malware Variants using Machine Learning
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: programming (python, java), machine learning, data analysis (collection,
analysis, visualisation etc), simulations (in python, java etc).
Malware detection is becoming more effective thanks to the advancing techniques used to
identify variants. One approach is to use Locality Sensitive Hash (LSH), which allows
generation of similar hash values when two files are similar. This can be used to measure the
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
hash values of known malware binary and measure the distance to potential variants for
detection. In the same way, we can generate malware variants that would be undetected if
the detection threshold is known. To generate such malware, we can apply machine learning
techniques to generate them. The goal of this
project is to (1) malware generation using machine learning to bypass variant detection using LSH, (2) efficient malware variant generation methods, and (3) field study to test detectability
of the developed scheme.
Recommended reading: The Trend Locality Sensitive Hash (TLSH)
https://github.com/trendmicro/tlsh
Hong, Jin, Dr
Intelligent Security for IoT
Disciplines: EE, Mechanical, Mechatronic, and Software
Prerequisite skills: Embedded programming skills (raspberry-pi), data analysis (collection,
analysis, visualisation etc.), simulations (in python, java etc.).
IoT networks change their components frequently, such as replacement of IoT devices,
protocols, mobility, software updates etc. Given uncertainties of changes in the IoT
networks, existing security solutions (e.g., patching vulnerabilities, isolation, moving target
defense etc) may not give the optimal solution. The goal of this project is to investigate: 1)
profiling IoT networks and their changing capabilities; 2) evaluating the effectiveness of
existing security solutions for securing IoT networks; 3) developing intelligent security
mechanism for adaptively selecting optimal solution for the IoT networks; 4) evaluation of the
intelligent security mechanism developed.
Recommended reading: Proactive defense mechanisms for the software-defined Internet of
Things with non-patchable vulnerabilities, Ge et al, Future Generation Computer Systems,
Elsevier vol 78, part 2 2018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2017.07.008
Hong, Jin, Dr
Security Control in Software Developments
Disciplines: EE, Mechanical, and Software
Prerequisite skills: software engineering principles
Quality of software is well discussed, but not so much for security. Although security
requirements are formulated, there is no formal way of validating the satisfiability of security
features back to the requirements. The goal of this project is to investigate: 1) the
satisfiability of security requirements using quantifiable metrics; 2) defining minimum security
threshold required by the software for achieving defined security requirements; 3)
implementing and incorporating the software security control into agile approaches for
validations. Recommended reading: Practical
Security Stories and Security Tasks for Agile Development Environments, SafeCode,
www.safecode.org/publication/SAFECode_Agile_Dev_Security0712.pdf
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Hong, Jin, Dr Co-supervisors: Li, Jianxin, Dr
Tagging Bad Rumours: Towards Context-aware
identification of False Information in Social Media
Disciplines: EE, Mechanical, and Software
Prerequisite skills: Machine learning, programming (web, mobile), data analysis (collection,
analysis, visualisation etc), simulations (in python, java etc).
Information travels at the speed of light (literally), but it is difficult to check the authenticity
of the information at the same rate. Rumours, hoax news and the sort can have significant
effects on the society: changing the public views and actions, such as voting in elections. Even
if the public discovers the truth, often it is too late to recover the damage done. This project
would provide a solution to identifying and notifying users the authenticity of the viewing
information at an early stage. The goal of the project is to
(1) develop bad rumour identification method using machine learning, (2) incorporate
contextual information in the identification method, (3) evaluate the method using publicly
available social media dataset, and (4) field test for validations. Recommended reading: The
Web of False Information: Rumors, Fake News, Hoaxes, Clickbait, and Various Other
Shenanigans, Zannettou et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03461.pdf
Hu, Yuxia, Prof Co-supervisors: Fred Verheyde (Douglas Partners)
Characterisation of Perth Sand Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Soil Mechanics
There are three types of local sand: Bassendean Sand, Tamala Sand and Spearwood Sand. With
different fine contents, the sand may show different cohesions. Under field and lab compactions,
sand may be crushed to contain more fines, which may change their characteristics. The project
is to study different characteristics of Perth Sands by lab tests.
Hu, Yuxia, Prof Co-supervisors: Colin Leek (Talis Consultants)
Recycling materials in road pavement and stabilised
pavement
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Geomechanics
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Recycling water materials is important to reduce landfill, which may cause environmental
problems. Bitumen stabilisation can improve the road performance. This project will look at
different way to reduce landfill and improve road performance
Huang, David, Professor
Mining plan based wireless network design for open-pit
mines
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mining
Mine site wireless communications with seamless coverage and Quality of Service guarantees
are a key element to improving operational efficiency and employee safety of contemporary
open pit mines. The topography of a typical pit consists of benches and slopes with mineral-
rich reflective surfaces, and its size and form can change quickly during the lifetime of the mine.
This makes the radio propagation conditions of open pit mining very different from typical
commercial wireless communication systems.
Mining is a carefully planned activity. Mine planning determines the extent of the terrain profile
that will be modified and provides estimates of materials to be moved and equipment to be
deployed. From mine planning, it is possible to determine the communication requirements,
e.g. the amount of data traffic (including when and where) required to be transmitted, and the
radio propagation conditions.
Geographic Information System (GIS) has been extensively used in the mining industry for
development and production. Using the GIS and the mining plan, a quasi-deterministic
communication traffic dimensioning can be determined. It is then possible to identify a proper
combination of wireless technologies that are appropriate for the mining site. In this project,
we will investigate how to select the optimal locations of key communication nodes (e.g. access
points and base stations) and the optimal parameters associated with them, through the
simulation and modeling of the radio propagation environment and data traffic, with the aid of
GIS.
This approach includes:
• 3D radio propagation modeling for typical open pit mine structure such as benches and slopes.
• Radio coverage analysis for different antennas over typical mining pits.
• Data traffic modeling for typical devices employed in an open pit mine.
• Developing analytical models for the deployment of various wireless networks.
• Modeling and analysis of capital and operating expense of various wireless networks
Huang, David, Professor
Resource Optimization in Broadband Wireless
Communications
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
For future broadband wireless communications, we need not only to build a link with the
capability of providing high data rate but also to divide the link wisely to accommodate the
various requirements of different applications from different users. From this perspective, how
to utilize a link is as important as how to build a link. In this project, you are going to investigate and propose ways to effectively and efficiently allocate resources to different users and different
applications using the principle of “opportunistic communications”. The principle of
opportunistic communications is actually simple: it always allocates the resources to the users
or applications that can best utilize them. This is somehow similar to the fact that the school
normally awards students with best performance.
Huang, Yimiao, Dr
Explosion Safety Assessment of Urban Underground Utility
Tunnel Disciplines: Civil
In order to fulfill the requirements of new-type urbanization and city modernization, the
development of urban underground utility tunnels is required. Since pipes with hazardous
materials such as natural gas and heating power are installed in the utility tunnel together with
other pipes, high confinement and congestion conditions may be formed and significant
consequences will occur if gas cloud from a leak pipe is ignited. This project aims at proposing
risk analysis and evaluation methods which consider multiple explosion risk factors based on
the specific characteristics of underground utility tunnels. Meanwhile, numerical modelling
methods will be applied to model the complicated environments of underground utility tunnels
and estimate explosion effects.
Ju, Li, Prof Co-supervisor: Winterflood, John, Dr.
Advanced Low Frequency Rotational Accelerometer
Disciplines: Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Basic CAD, basic Knowledge of vibration and isolation
The project is to build and test a very low frequency rotational accelerometer for tilt sensing
and control of the isolation system for gravitational wave detectors. The system compose of
a mechanical bar balanced on a very fine special designed 3D flexure and an optical "walk-off"
readout system. The student will be working with our PhD student to assemble and test the
stand alone system, as well as integrate the system into the system to the high performance
multistage vibration isolator.
Ju, Li, Prof Co-supervisor: Winterflood, John, Dr.
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Advanced Isolation System
Disciplines: Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Basic understanding of resonances, concept of vibration isolation.
This project is to test novel methods to improve the vibration isolation system for
gravitational wave detectors. These projects relate to one of the key technologies: the use of
Euler springs combined with the LaCoste isolator configuration to create very low frequency
vertical vibration isolation stages.
Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Co-supervisors: Mohamed Elchalakani
Numerical modeling of rubberised concrete filled tubes
under various loading conditions Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Finite Element Modelling
Concrete filled steel tubes (CFST) are increasingly used in engineering construction as support
members or barriers. In CFST, concrete provides resistance to buckling of the steel tube and
increases its strength and ductility. In addition, the steel tube provides confinement to the
concrete and increases its strength. As a consequence of composite effects, CFST can absorb
large amounts of energy.
In this project, concrete will be replaced with rubberised concrete to form rubberised concrete
filled steel tubes (RuCFST). As there are increasing amounts of waste rubber being generated
in Australia and elsewhere, there is an urgent need to recycle such materials. When compared
to standard concrete, rubberised concrete has increased ductility and energy absorption but
decreased strength.
There has been an extensive research work at the Structures Laboratory of the UWA on the
performance of RuCFST under various loading conditions. However, the generated
experimental data has not been used to conduct numerical models that can explain the
important mechanical and structural phenomena that have been observed experimentally.
Thus, the purpose of this research is to construct experimentally validated finite element
models that can explain the behaviour of RuCFST under eccentric axial loading and bending
moments.
research done into the mixture of rubberised concrete to attempt to increase the strength
however no major progress has been made [3].
Steel tubes may be filled with rubberised concrete to form rubberised concrete filled steel
tubes (RuCFST). A circular RuCFST cross section is shown in Figure 1.
The confinement of the rubberised concrete increases its strength in the same
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Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Co-supervisors: Mohamed Elchalakani
Instability of mechanically lined pipelines under large
deformation
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Finite Element Modelling
Mechanically lined pipe consists of a load bearing carbon steel outer pipe with a thin corrosion
resistant alloy (CRA) liner and is a proven and economical solution for oil and gas pipelines.
The bond between the two pipes is purely mechanical and under large bending loads plastic
deformation of the liner results in non-reversible liner wrinkling. This wrinkling impedes flow
and significantly reduces the performance of the pipeline. The purpose of this project is to use
non-linear finite element techniques to describe the wrinkling of lined pipe under combined
loading (bending and axial) and examines the effect of cyclic loading on the behavior of the
composite. This model is then used to propose a new failure criterion that can be used for the
design of mechanically lined pipelines.
Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Co-supervisors: Ryan Azadi
Increasing permeability of rocks by light acids and
surfactants
Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Mining Prerequisite skills:
In-Situ leaching is a solution mining technique that consists of injecting reactive fluids in the ore
bodies to extract valuable materials. One of the major issues with in-situ leaching is the low
permeability in certain natural materials. Creating fractures in the ore body can stimulate the
process. However, the existing methods that are used to make fractures are based on high in-
situ pressure (e.g. hydraulic fracturing) but they are difficult to control (i.e. difficult to keep
open). The purpose of this project is to conduct laboratory tests on the effect of chemical
stimulation of natural geo-materials on permeability.
Keating, Adrian, Professor
Sugar cube sized energy harvesting and wireless sensors for
the internet of
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Much of the work leverages electrical engineering, design
skills, instrumentation and data collection and analysis. Mechanical design is also
required – this is an interdisciplinary project
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This project has significant industrial interest. Students will investigate novel energy harvesting
technologies, extracting energy from unused heat, motion or electromagnetic radiation. We
have a desire to create extremely small wireless sensors than can be used almost anywhere,
but which require extremely low power technology to work with the energy being harvested.
All students working on this project will focus on a sub-system of the overall system as there is a high degree of interconnection.
Keating, Adrian, Professor Co-supervisors: Parish, Giacinta, Professor
Writing on a grain of sand to make sensors made from thin
air
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: Modeling and experimental design skills, instrumentation and
data collection and analysis, mechanical and electrical design
This project investigates how to engineer nanometer sized pores in a silicon to alter it’s
mechanical, electrical, thermal and optical properties. We can now write features using an
inhouse built laser-writer with 3 micron linewidths. This project aims to improve the ability to
laser write into this material for a range of applications, from sensors, to cloaking devices. This
project offers opportunities for electrical, mechanical and/or material students to learn more
about this technology and it's applications. Studies include measurements of reflected light
during laser writing, the effect of heating and gas flow on the samples and improvements
(electrical and mechanical) to the laser writing system (which uses G-code).
Kimiaei, Mehrdad, Assistant Professor Co-supervisors: Elchalakani, Mohamed, Assistant Professor
Repair of corroded tubular members in offshore facilities
using composite material
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: This project is suitable for final year, preferably MPE,
civil/mechanical engineering students who are interested in combination of
experimental and numerical works .
Steel members in offshore facilities are susceptible to corrosion and for aged facilities this
process could eventually lead to non-compliant members or joints against existing codes. A
possible solution for this problem is strengthening the non-compliant components by wrapping
Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP) around the external surface of the corroded members or
joints. In this project, corrosion of the steel tubular members will be induced either naturally
by immersing the tubular specimens in the Swan river or by using accelerated corrosion cell
electrically simulated in the lab. Following the induced corrosion, such members will be tested
in the structural laboratory under different types of loading including axial, bending and
combined loading. The experimental results for intact, corroded and strengthened members
(in air or in the river) will be compared.
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The main reasons for selecting FRP for this project are (i) long successful history of application
for strengthening and rehabilitation of onshore steel/concrete structures; (ii) successful
application for subsea leakage prevention; (iii) recent successful application for subsea corroded
pipes. The superior mechanical, fatigue, high strength to density ratio and in-service properties of FRP composites make them excellent candidates for strengthening and retrofitting of steel
pipelines and infrastructure.
To date only a limited amount of research have been undertaken which are related to
rehabilitation of damaged offshore facilities using FRP composite sections. Main aim of this study
is to provide a better understanding of structural behaviour of composite sections in offshore
facilities. The collected experimental results will be used for further numerical studies. This
project is part of the RiverLab project financially supported by Woodside Pty Ltd.
Lehane, Barry, Prof
The performance of shallow foundations on Perth's dune
sands
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Geotechnical Engineering (Only 1 student -please discuss with
BL)
The project will first examine the effects of shape, grading and mineralogy on the shear
strength parameters of Perth's sands using direct shear testing. The project will subsequently
employ these results in interpretation of a series of shallow foundations tests to be
performed in a geotechnical centrifuge.
(1 student only - as has one other student continuing from sem 1 2018)
Lehane, Barry, Prof
CPT-based pile design for driven piles in sand
Disciplines: Civil
Prerequisite skills: Geotechnical Engineering
The project is divided into two components (i) re-testing of driven piles at Shenton Park to
supplement an existing study into the influence of pile age on shaft friction and (ii) use of an
existing large international database of pile load test data to derive a new method for
prediction of medium-term shaft friction for driven piles in sand.
Lehane, Barry, Prof
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Co-supervisors: Fourie, Andy, Prof
Liquefaction resistance of silty tailings and partially saturated
sands Disciplines: Civil, Mining
The project will involve use of an existing shake table facility to examine the liquefaction
resistance of sands and silty sands with various relative densities and layering profiles. Results
will be compared with trends measured in a smaller scale separate series of cyclic simple
shear tests performed using conventional equipment.
Lei, Wen, Professor
Semiconductor Nanosensors
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Materials
Semiconductor nanostructures are semiconductor materials of nanoscale dimensions, including
zero-, one-, and two-dimensional nanostructures. They have many unique properties such as
large surface area-to-volume ratio, very high aspect ratio, and strong quantum confinement
including both carrier and photon. This leads to many unique and desirable electronic and
optical properties for semiconductor nanostructures and thus various novel devices with
superior performance over existing devices to revolutionise our technological world. These
nanodevices include transistors, light emitters, solar cells, and sensors that are used in our daily
life such as mobile phones, large-area displays, solar panels, and telecommunication systems. Apart from their super performance, these nanodevices present other advantages such as
smaller size, lower cost, and higher energy efficiency, compared to traditional semiconductor
devices with larger dimensions.
In this project, we will focus on the development of one- and/or two-dimensional
semiconductor nanosensors with numerous potential applications ranging from light sensing,
to environment sensing, and to telecommunication. This project can be divided into two main
modules in which students choose both or either modules or any aspects of each module
depending on interests of the students and duration of the program:
(1) Synthesis of high quality semiconductor nanostructures using CVD and/or MBE material
growth tools, and understand, through various structural, electrical, and optical
characterisation techniques, how to (i) improve the material quality, (ii) control the
composition and material, and (iii) to engineer the bandstructure of nanostructures;
(2) Fabrication and characterisation of semiconductor nanosensors which involve (i) the design
of the sensor structures, (ii) the use of state-of-the-art device fabrication facilities to make
nanosensor devices, and (iii) characterising the performance and properties of the nanosensors
to understand the underlying physics of the devices.
Through this project, the students will develop practical expertise and experience needed by
semiconductor and other industries, including:
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
(1) Material synthesis/growth using CVD and/or MBE material growth facilities;
(2) Design and modeling of semiconductor devices;
(3) Material processing and device fabrication technologies within a cleanroom environment;
(4) Nanoscale material and device characterisation;
Required background:
Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Material Science, Physics, and Chemistry.
Leong, Yee-Kwong, Professor
Upgrading the quality of Iron ore in slurries
Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The project looks at a range of surface chemistry means of separating iron oxide from
impurities. Surface chemistry tools such as adsorbed additives will be evaluated. The purity of
iron ore will be quantified using a density method.
Leong, Yee-Kwong, Professor
Rheology of iron ore tailings: effects of water chemistry
Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The quality of borewater varies from location to location in terms of dissolved ions. The aim
of this study is to evaluate the effect of borewater from different sources on the rheology of
iron ore tailings.
Leong, Yee-Kwong, Professor
Population balance modelling of fragmentation of polymer
bridged
Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental
Prerequisite skills:
Temporal experimental particle size distribution data for the fragmentation process in
Taylor-Couette flow are already available. Mathematica program for simulating the population
balance model is also available. The student tasks i) input PSD data at zero time ii) modify and
change the parameters of the program to compute PSD data that closely matches the
expermental PSD data.The program will only take continuous PSD data. The students will need
to convert the discrete PSD data to continuous form.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Li, Jianxin, Dr
Emotion learning: location-aware social media sentiment
analysis
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: Significant programming skills; Python is required.
Tracking sentiment helps you understand what the individual behind a social media post is
feeling. Knowing the emotion behind a post can provide important context for how you
proceed and respond. For example, Martin sets up his Twitter mentions on Hootsuite to
scan for Tweets containing positive terms such as ‘thank you,’ ‘love,’ and ‘amazing.’ He also
makes sure to search for sentiment-indicating emojis, such as the thumbs up or smiley face.
Hootsuite Insights provides an overview of sentiment with an easy-to-read meter. This allows
you to quickly see how your brand is doing from a sentiment point of view, and monitor for any changes. Reference https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-sentiment-analysis-tools/ .
Li, Jianxin, Dr
Social media driven finance data analytics
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: Python programming skills, OR have strong finance modeling
background.
Nowadays, the use of social media has reached unprecedented levels. Among all social media,
with its popular micro-blogging service, Twitter enables users to share short messages in real
time about events or express their own opinions.
We have developed the preliminary methods to derive people’s opinions and stock data
information. Now we are looking for FYP students to further investigate the prediction
models using Machine Learning techniques or AI techniques or Finance Models.
Liu, Jishan, Professor
CO2 Sequestration in Unconventional Reservoirs
Disciplines: Chemical, Oil & Gas, Petroleum Prerequisite skills: familiar with COMSOL; basic knowledge of reservoir
engineering
The objective of this project is to understand various mechanisms for carbon dioxide (CO2)
sequestration in depleted unconventional reservoirs. These mechanisms may include (1) gas
adsorption/desorption under in-situ pressure and temperature conditions; (2) CO2-coal
(shale) interactions; (3) CO2 phase behaviors; and (4) injection pressures. COMSOL as a
commercial tool will be used to conduct the research. The research results will have significant
implications for the effective sequestration of CO2 in depleted unconventional reservoirs.
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Liu, Jishan, Professor
Extraction of Unconventional Gases
Disciplines: Chemical, Oil & Gas, Petroleum
Prerequisite skills: familiar with COMSOL; basic knowledge of reservoir
engineering
The objective of this project is to understand various mechanisms for the extraction of
unconventional gases (coal seam gas and shale gas). These mechanisms may include (1)
evolution of shale or coal porosity; (2) evolution of shale or coal permeability; (3) effects of
coal and shale deformation; (4) effects of hydraulic fractures. COMSOL as a commercial tool
will be used to conduct the research. The research results will have significant implications for
the effective extraction of unconventional gases.
Liu, Wei, Professor
Co-supervisors: Hodkiewicz, Melinda, Prof; French, Tim, Dr
Cognitive Computing of Maintenance Records
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Requires >75% in any of CITS2200, CITS3001, CITS3002 or
CITS4404
There is a huge interest from major manufacturing and resource companies in being able to
automate the processing of manually completed maintainer work orders. These work orders
capture information about the state of the equipment and work done by the maintainer. This
information is vital in assessing the reliability of the equipment.
We have been working with a major resource company for a number of years on this
exciting area. This project is for CSSE students or computing literate EE’s with the right
experience (see below) who are doing MPE. We are looking for someone interested in
ontology development, text mining, and other cognitive computing methods and their
application to an important industry problem.
Male, Sally, Associate Professor
Development and trial of virtual work integrated learning
modules
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Mechanical,
Mining
Prerequisite skills: An interest in engineering practice, good communication skills
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Students of accredited engineering programs in Australia must engage with engineering
practice. This project will contribute to an overarching project on virtual work integrated
learning (WIL) for engineering students. In the overarching project, learning modules are being
developed to expose students to practice without real work placements. Previous final year
students have investigated learning outcomes and learning activities for virtual WIL in engineering. Current and new final year students will develop and test virtual WIL modules,
building on the work of the previous students. Students will collaborate with the Virtual WIL
Project Team which includes researchers from UWA, CingleVue International, Curtin
University, The University of Queensland, Murdoch University, Engineers Australia, and the
Australian Council of Engineering Deans. Students will select modules on which to focus.
Topics taught in the modules include tendering, roles of engineers, engineering communication,
and safety in design, among others. Some of these projects use virtual reality or immersive
environments.
Male, Sally, Associate Professor Co-supervisors: Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr
Development and trial of virtual work integrated learning
environments
Disciplines: Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Mechanical, Mining,
Software
Prerequisite skills: An interest in engineering practice, good communication skills
Students of accredited engineering programs in Australia must engage with engineering
practice. This project will contribute to an overarching project on virtual work integrated
learning (WIL) for engineering students. In the overarching project, learning modules are being developed to expose students to practice without real work placements. Previous final year
students have investigated learning outcomes and learning activities for virtual WIL in
engineering. New final year students are will develop and test virtual WIL modules, building on
the work of the previous students. Students will collaborate with the Virtual WIL Project
Team which includes researchers from UWA, CingleVue International, Curtin University, The
University of Queensland, Murdoch University, Engineers Australia, and the Australian Council
of Engineering Deans. Students will select modules on which to focus. Topics taught in the
modules include tendering, roles of engineers, engineering communication, and safety in design,
among others. These projects involve developing virtual reality or immersive environments.
Martyniuk, Mariusz, Associate Professor Co-supervisors: Lei, Wen, Professor; Umana-Membreno, Gilberto,
Associate Professor
Investigation of mechanical properties of mercury cadmium
selenide thin films via nanoindentation
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: physics/engineering/materials science
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This is a hands-on project involving a series of experimental instrumented nanoindentation runs
on thin film samples. Data analysis and scientific reporting is a significant part of the project.
The outcome of the project is to report the mechanical properties (Young’s modulus, hardness,
etc) of novel thin films of mercury cadmium selenide grown by molecular beam epitaxy at the
Western Australian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility. The student should have a physics/engineering/materials science background, and potentially with specific prior
knowledge/experience in instrumented nanoindentation.
May, Eric, Prof Co-supervisors: Graham, Brendan, Dr; Rowland, Darren, Dr
Avoiding Cryogenic Solids Formation in LNG Production
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Unplanned shutdowns of LNG plants caused by hydrocarbon solids blocking cryogenic heat
exchangers are a major, ongoing problem for the industry. Current methods of avoiding them
are costly and energy intensive. This project aims to produce the required new data and
develop new predictive models relevant to natural gas processing and LNG production to help
avoid unexpected shutdowns, improve plant efficiency, and increase safety.
May, Eric, Prof Co-supervisors: Metaxas, Peter, Dr; Arjmandi, Mosayyeb, Dr
Container-free hydrates: hydrate formation in acoustically
levitated water droplets Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Gas hydrates are ice-like compounds consisting of water and gas molecules that can form
within, and block, oil and gas flow lines. In this project, students will use Australia’s first high-
pressure acoustic levitation facility to study hydrate formation in water droplets that are
suspended (via acoustic levitation) within a high pressure gas phase. This approach offers the
unique possibility to study hydrate formation in container-less conditions. By removing the
influence of the solid surface of a containment vessel (whose presence favours surface-
dependent heterogeneous nucleation), the acoustic levitator enables an exciting opportunity
to probe the fundamental processes governing hydrate formation in gas-water systems. This
information will represent a critical contribution to a wider effort aimed at developing more
economical, risk-based approaches to hydrate management and prevention which have
significant potential benefits for the oil and gas industry.
May, Eric, Professor Co-supervisors: Al Ghafri, Saif, Dr
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Improved Viscosity Modelling for Natural Gas Mixtures
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills: Data analysis and literature survey
Production and optimization of natural gas process is designed using predictions of the
mixture’s thermodynamic and transport properties over wide range of pressure, temperature
and composition conditions. However, the extent to which engineering margins are used in
such designs is mainly influenced by the accuracy of the property predictions (such as viscosity)
used in the process simulation. The accuracy of the models used for predicting the fluid
properties are in turn dependent on the extent and uncertainty of experimental data used to
develop and validate the model. This project aims to explore and improve the prediction of
viscosity models for natural gas mixtures. In particular, the focus will be on optimizing the
prediction of friction theory (FT) approach against comprehensive viscosity data from the
literature.
May, Eric, Professor Co-supervisors: Al Ghafri, Saif, Dr; Perez, Fernando, Mr
Experimental Analysis and Simulation of LNG Boil-off-Gas
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Natural Gas (NG) is transform into Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to be transported in an
economic way, during which Boil-Off gas (BOG) can occur. This an important phenomenon
that affects the gas industry, specifically during the storage and transportation of LNG.
Furthermore, it can lead into the formation of stratified layers where a sudden mixing of existing stratified layers within a liquid phase occurs (Rollover). Limited data is available in
literature and models fail to accurately predict this incident. The development of reliable and
detail measurements will provide significant benefits in both transportation and storage of this
energy source.
This research mimicked the conditions of an LNG vessel by building and designing a laboratory
BOG apparatus that will allow the study of the effect of heat flux, volume, Boil-Off gas rate and
composition on the BOG. The apparatus is already built and installed where variety of LNG
mixtures will be studied during transient and steady state conditions at a temperature of -162
°C and around 1 atm. These measurements will help to design an accurate model to predict
this phenomenon and it will be compared to other models available in literature.
McCormick, Paul, E Professor
Performance and Modelling of Solar Energy Applications
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Electrical understanding, computing skills
Potential applications include solar EV modeling, hybrid storage systems and battery performance and
modelling
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McDonald, Chris, Dr
Visualisation of C's Dynamic Memory Allocation and Data
Structures
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Strengths in C or C++ programming and a desire to improve
them
As computer hardware becomes both faster and capacious, we can investigate previously too-
expensive techniques to support novice programmers. One such technique involves capturing the
entire execution trace of a running program - its control flow and memory accesses - so that its
execution may be reviewed. The program is not re-executed; instead its prior execution may be
replayed, sped up, slowed down, and inspected. This provides great opportunity for novice
programmers - they can watch the execution of a correct program, or determine which prior action
resulted in a much later bug. It provides the opportunity to debug programs without fully knowing
what to look for! This project will identify, implement, and evalute visualisations of C's dynamic
memory allocation and data structures. This project will draw on and extend the work of Dr
Matthew Heinsen Egan who has developed a trace-based debugging environment for novice C
programmers, using Clang and LLVM.
McDonald, Chris, Dr
Modelling Connected Autonomous Vehicles and
Infrastructure
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Strengths in C or C++ programming and a desire to improve
them Within 5 years years, the average consumer will be able to purchase an autonomous vehicle and drive
it on our public roads, resulting in a dramatic change to traffic patterns and travel times. Beyond the
benefits of autonomous vehicles are connected vehicles - vehicles that communicate their state,
intention, and traffic conditions to other vehicles and to road-side infrastructure. The potential
benefits of vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, particularly, are significant, including controlling
vehicles through intersections - no more traffic lights - and using current and predicted road and
congestion conditions to adjust the speed of vehicles.
Connected vehicle simulation needs to accurately simulate both the driving and route planning of
vehicles, and the wireless communication in a very crowded environment. This project will draw on
and extend the work of Jordan Hedges to develop secured communication between connected
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autonomous vehicles and infrastructure.
McDonald, Chris, Dr
Operating System visualisation using DTrace and SystemTap
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Strengths in C or C++ programming and a desire to improve
them
Computing textbooks employ many static 'before-and-after' figures, hoping to convey the interactions
between programs and operating systems, and the transitions of internal operating system structures.
Historically, Computer Science educators have hoped to breathe life into these textbook figures with
purpose-developed visualisation tools but, unfortunately, these have often required specific and
unsustainable programming, compiling, and execution practices. Moreover, many of these tools have a
constrained scope, or only support prebuilt demonstrations. These well-intentioned approaches often
increase students' cognitive load, leaving them confused as to what is to be learned. The DTrace
framework (under Apple's macOS) and SystemTap (under Linux) both enable a process's execution
and its interactions with the operating system kernel to be traced and annotated at a fine grain. They
both provide well recognized benefits for systems administration, but also a great opportunity for
Computer Science Education. This project will review and extend the project of Jurek Malarecki, to
develop visualisations to trace the execution of programs, provided by an educator, being developed
and debugged by students, or even standard system and application programs.
McFerran, John, Dr Co-supervisors: Ivanov, Eugene, Prof
Frequency comb stabilization for an optical lattice clock
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Some knowledge of electronic systems
Optical-atomic-lattice clocks are the most stable and, arguably, accurate clocks produced by
humankind so far. Their accuracy is equivalent to a few seconds disagreement over the age
of the universe. The UWA lattice clock is in a preliminary stage of operation and aims to be
part of an international network of atomic clocks. It relies on a frequency comb (a specific
type of mode-locked laser) for carrying out frequency measurements, as well as stabilizing
laser frequencies. This project will involve producing a microwave frequency link between a
cryogenic sapphire oscillator and the frequency comb. This will confer improved spectral
purity on laser signals and will help improve the performance of the lattice clock.
Spectroscopy on the clock transition in ytterbium may also be incorporated into the project.
It is part of the ARC’s Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQuS) 2018-
2024.
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Further details at: www.physics.uwa.edu.au/research/frequency-quantum-metrology
Metaxas, Peter, Dr
Magnetic nano-oscillators for biological sensing
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
This project is aimed at the experimental development and testing of novel magnetic
nanoparticle detectors for downstream application in biological sensing and medical
diagnostics. The student will focus on a unique frequency-based particle detection method
using nano-scale electronic devices known as spin torque oscillators. If of interest, the project
can have a simulation focus in which case the student would use graphics processing units
(GPUs) to run highly efficient micromagnetic device simulations which will complement and
support the ongoing experimental research program.
Mian, Ajmal, Assoc Professor
Co-supervisors: Gilani, Syed, Dr, Hassan, Ghulam, Dr
Automatic age and gender classification from facial images
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: Computer vision, Matlab or Python, Tensorflow or Caffe
Automatic age estimation has many applications in marketing and planning of resources at
public places. Recently, deep learning has achieved higher accuracy than human observers at
estimating the age of a person from a single image. In this project, the student will use deep
neural network models to develop an end to end system that performs face detection and
age estimation classification. Existing pre-trained networks will be fine-tuned to achieve higher accuracy on video streamed from a local webcam.
Pre-trained CNN models and dataset are available at
https://data.vision.ee.ethz.ch/cvl/rrothe/imdb-wiki/ .
Mian, Ajmal, Assoc Professor
Co-supervisors: Gilani, Syed, Dr, Hassan, Ghulam, Dr
Automatic pedestrian detection in videos
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: Computer vision, Matlab or Python, Tensorflow or Caffe
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Automatic pedestrian detection is an important component of autonomous cars and is also
useful for city planning. In this project the student will use deep learning to develop an
automatic pedestrian detection algorithm. The algorithm should exploit spatio-temporal
features from moving camera and moving pedestrian to increase the accuracy of the system.
The output of the system should be the locations of all pedestrians visible in image as well as their scales. The results should be displayed as bounding boxes around the pedestrians. The
project will use existing benchmark datasets for fine-tuning CNN models and data collection
is not a part of this project. Benchmark datasets can be found at
http://www.vision.caltech.edu/Image_Datasets/CaltechPedestrians/
Miller, Karol, Winthrop Prof
Biomechanics: Stress and strain in abdominal aortic
aneurysm
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
This is a finite element simulation project using Abaqus and our one code BioPARR
http://bioparr.mech.uwa.edu.au/ .
This project is in collaboration with Harvard’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
https://www.martinos.org/, Fraunhofer MEVIS institute in Germany
http://www.mevis.fraunhofer.de/ and Katolieke Universitat Leuven
The best students will have an opportunity to travel to collaborating labs.
Miller, Karol, Winthrop Prof
Computer Simulation of breast deformation for surgical
navigation in breast cancer
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
Computer Simulation of breast deformation for surgical navigation in breast cancer (with
Surgical Planning Laboratory http://spl.harvard.edu, Harvard and PERK Lab
http://perk.cs.queensu.ca/ at Queens University, Canada), max. 4 students.
Projects in collaboration with Harvard Medical School. The projects are best suited for
mechanical or civil engineering students and perhaps computer science students.
The best students will have an opportunity to travel to Harvard.
Miller, Karol, Winthrop Prof
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Computer simulation of brain deformations for epilepsy
treatment and tumour resection
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
Computer simulation of brain deformations for epilepsy treatment (with Computational
Radiology Laboratory http://crl.med.harvard.edu/, Harvard) and tumour resection (with
Surgical Planning Laboratory http://spl.harvard.edu, Harvard), max. 4 students
Projects in collaboration with Harvard Medical School. The projects are best suited for
mechanical or civil engineering students and perhaps computer science students.
The best students will have an opportunity to travel to Harvard.
Milne, George, Professor Co-supervisors: Manning, Laurens, A/Prof (Medicine)
Davies, Tim, Prof (Medicine)
Development of a Simulation Model for Malaria
Transmission
Disciplines: Software
Prerequisite skills: Good C++ skills
Malaria continues to be a major health burden in tropical countries, with approx. one million
deaths due to malaria occurring each year. There is a major campaign working towards eliminating this significant insect-transmitted disease, with major funding coming from the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Australian Government and other organisations. There is
a need to determine the most effective control and eradication strategies, such as increasing
use of bed nets or optimal use of new drug treatments. Simulation modelling technology
which captures the dynamics of infectious disease spread is being increasingly used to
determine the effectiveness of interventions which can reduce infection and disease spread.
The World Health Organisation and the Australian Department of Health now determine
vaccination policy based on modelling studies.
Modelling is necessary as it is usually infeasible and costly to introduce a new vaccine without
first determining its benefit to a country, for example. But someone needs to develop these
models and make them available to health authorities! This work has been going on in the
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering over the past 15 years, with a
focus on influenza and dengue viruses. The approach we take is to build “virtual worlds” of
communities, capturing the movement of people (and mosquitoes) between households,
schools and workplaces; it is this movement which allows diseases to spread. So we simulate
disease spread via movement and transmission algorithms which are implemented in
software.
The project will develop a novel spatially-explicit malaria simulation model. It will build on a
dengue/Zika model previously developed at UWA and implemented in C++. This model
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captures people and mosquito movement over the landscape, and infection transmission by
mosquitoes biting humans. Our project will work through the key phases of software
development, including: requirement specification; version control; and testing against malaria
infection data from PNG. It is planned to use Atlassian tools such as Jira and Confluence
throughout the project.
Prerequisites: good C++ skills
Outcomes: skills development in teamwork; training in disease modelling; contribution to a
public good project
Milne, Ian, Dr Co-supervisors: Whelan, James, Dr (Woodside)
Predicting Mooring Line Failure of FPSOs Using Machine
Learning
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Hydrodynamics, Metocean, Matlab
Detecting a mooring line failure on Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facilities
used in the oil and gas industry is a significant challenge faced by operators. FPSO mooring
systems typically have between 6 and 20 mooring lines. Single line mooring failures are frequent and can be costly if not detected in a timely manner and remediated. Existing systems for
monitoring mooring integrity are expensive, difficult to install, or require significant ongoing
maintenance of the instrumentation packages.
To address these challenges, a mooring integrity monitoring system based on analyzing the
statistics of the FPSO mooring turret trajectory using machine learning is proposed. The
approach analyses the statistics of the FPSO turret trajectory during a 1-hour time period of
stationary metocean conditions with expected turret trajectory statistics. Machine learning is
then used to assess whether the mooring system is intact or has experienced a single line
failure.
This research project will investigate the performance of the machine learning approach by (i)
utilising measured turret trajectory data for an FPSO located offshore Western Australia and
comparing the predictions against numeric analysis and (ii) assessing its robustness to
uncertainty in FPSO loading conditions and metocean inputs. The project will be undertaken
using numeric mooring analysis software Arianne and MatLab machine learning modules. The
project builds on research undertaken in 2017-18.
These projects are technically challenging and previous experience with floating systems and
oil and gas operations is highly desirable.
Nener, Brett, Professor Co-supervisors: Parish, Giacinta, Professor
Advanced Sensing Technologies: Transistor-based biosensors
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic
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Prerequisite skills:
Students will work together on the one or more of following integrated project components
(and will also work alongside students working in the adjacent projects on “transistor-based
chemical sensors for contaminant monitoring”).
1. Physical, chemical, materials and biological characterisation of functionalisation methods, particularly surface and cell studies
2. Electrical, chemical, biochemical and physical characterisation and optimisation of
functionalised ion sensors
3. Mechanical, electrical and chemical characterisation and optimisation of packaging techniques
4. Design and integration of complementary sensors (pH, temperature, drift compensation) to
maximise reliability.
5. Adapt device design, packaging, measurement protocols for reliable, reference electrode
free, operation.
6. Modelling of individual devices, packaged devices and the device-functionalisation layer-
solution interface.
Orszaghova, Jana, Dr Co-supervisors: Wolgamot, Hugh, Dr; Rijnsdorp, Dirk, Dr; Ragni,
Raffaele, Dr; Chow, Shiao Huey, Dr
Studying moorings for wave energy devices using scaled field
trials
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills: Passed GENG5501 Coastal and Offshore Engineering unit to
be considered for the projects. Due to the nature of the project, successful
students will be encouraged to complete a UWA snorkelling course so that they
can participate fully in field tests.
Are you interested in renewable energy technology – specifically ocean wave energy? Would you like
to participate in the Woodside FutureLab-funded RiverLab working on innovative engineering
solutions? This RiverLab project will pull together a multi-disciplinary team to investigate the
suitability of suction caissons for mooring wave energy devices. This project is particularly relevant to
meeting Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), with UWA located on the west coast of
Australia, which has one of the highest wave power levels in the world.
The development of offshore renewable energy, particularly wave energy, has taken off slowly due to
technical and economic challenges. One critical challenge is to produce a reliable and cost effective
foundation to moor floating energy devices to the seabed. A solution could be a suction caisson
anchor. The performance of suction caissons relies on successful installation to the required
embedment depth. Once installed, it is imperative to be able to predict the capacity of the suction
caisson when subject to environmental (i.e. wave ) loading.
This project will build upon a recently completed Riverlab project on wave energy. The Swan River will
be utilised as a model wave basin, where field tests of the complete system (anchor + mooring + floating
buoy) will be performed. The geotechnical aspects of the project will focus on design, installation and
in-service performance of the model suction caisson. A critical element will be a development of an
improved load cell for monitoring the foundation loads during operation of the system. The
hydrodynamic aspects of the project will focus on design of a scaled floating resonator optimised for
the Swan River wave climate. Study of the locally generated wind waves will be an essential part of the
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project. More details about the Woodside FutureLab RiverLab program can be found here:
http://www.oceans.uwa.edu.au/collaborations/woodside-futurelab/riverlab
Project 1: Design and response of the resonant floating oscillator and its mooring system
(supervised by Jana Orszaghova, Hugh Wolgamot)
The student will design a resonant system comprised of a floating buoy and a taut-mooring with a
suitable restoring force. The system will be optimised to match expected wave conditions in the
River. He/she will then be involved in the deployment and field monitoring of the system. The
gathered motion and load data will be analysed and compared to theoretical predictions.
Project 2: Measuring and predicting wave climate in Swan River (supervised by Hugh
Wolgamot, Dirk Rijnsdorp, Jana Orszaghova)
The student will measure the local wave conditions in the Swan River using a sophisticated acoustic
surface tracking device (Nortek Signature), and analyse the data to define the wave climate, and to
better understand both operational and extreme conditions that the device can encounter. Modelling
tools and empirical formulations will subsequently be developed and validated based on the collected
data in order to be able to predict future wave conditions that the floating oscillator might encounter.
Project 3: Installation and performance of suction caisson under environmental loading
(supervised by Raffaele Ragni)
The student will design the model suction caisson to produce the most optimum foundation size and
the required installation system. He/she will then be involved in the
field installation and monitoring of the in-service performance of the model suction caisson under
environmental loading.
Project 4: Measuring the mooring line load (supervised by Shiaohuey Chow)
The student will design and develop a self-contained measurement unit (combining a load cell and
inertial measurement unit) that is able to measure the mooring line load and trajectory in the field
tests. He/she will conduct bench-marking tests on the prototype measurement unit in the laboratory
and the Swan River.
Parish, Giacinta, Professor Co-supervisors: Nener, Brett, Professor
Advanced Sensing Technologies: Transistor-based chemical
sensors for contaminant monitoring
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials,
Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills:
Reliable, economically accessible technology for in situ monitoring of contaminants in water
has the power to transform health, industry, and society the world around. Applications of
such monitoring range from process control monitoring and optimisation for industry, to water
supply quality and wastewater monitoring, to environmental monitoring for resource
extraction, and beyond.
The microelectronics-based technology under investigation in this project will enable in situ, real-time contaminant monitoring that is accurate, reliable and low-cost. Semiconductor-based
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technology offers high performance and can also be mass produced at low-cost with flexible
functionalisation allowing for a variety of analytes. Furthermore, it offers the ability to integrate
multiple sensors into one chip, along with wireless communication technology for maximum
benefit of the in situ monitoring capability.
Students will work together on the one or more of following integrated project components (and will also work alongside students working in the adjacent projects on “transistor-based
biosensors”).
1. Physical, chemical, materials characterisation of functionalisation methods, particularly
surface studies
2. Electrical, chemical and physical characterisation and optimisation of functionalised ion
sensors
3. Mechanical, electrical and chemical characterisation and optimisation of packaging techniques
4. Design and integration of complementary sensors (pH, temperature, drift compensation) to
maximise reliability.
5. Adapt device design, packaging, measurement protocols for reliable, reference electrode
free, operation.
The ability to monitor biological and chemical signals with an electronic device is a
tremendously innovative approach for cell research and process control in pharmaceutical and
microbiological production, and chemical sensing applications. A bio-friendly, chemically inert
and stable III-Nitride-transistor-based bio/chem-sensor will be developed to detect responses
to various specific compounds/chemicals, particularly through cell receptors. The successful
development of this electronic biosensor technology has the potential to improve health and
disease treament through major improvemements in throughput, precision, quality, speed and
simplicity of, for example, drug and disease testing methods.
Ravanbakhsh, Mehdi, A/Professor and Mapizy CEO Co-supervisors: Mian, Ajmal, A/Professor
Ramzi, Pouria, Mapizy CTO
Automatic solar panel extraction in aerial images
Disciplines: Civil, Oil & Gas, and Software
Prerequisite skills: Python Programming, image processing, computer vision
Solar power generation has emerged as one of the most rapidly growing renewable source of
electricity. There has been a significant increase in the number of installed solar panels in
recent years. However, little information on geographical distribution and density of solar
panels is available. Up-to-date maps of solar panels is a key information for effective energy
policy making and financial assessment of solar distributed generation.
The current approach for solar panels detection is manual which is time-consuming and
costly. Furthermore, manual approach cannot keep up with the demand for frequent updating
of solar panels map.
This project aims to develop an automated approach for the extraction of solar panel in
aerial images. It includes two steps: first, solar panels presence are determined through deep
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learning technology followed by their delineation through computer vision methods and
techniques
Ravanbakhsh, Mehdi, A/Professor and Mapizy CEO Co-supervisors: Mian, Ajmal, A/Professor
Ramzi, Pouria, Mapizy CTO
Automatic swimming pools extraction in aerial images
Disciplines: Civil, Enviromental, Oil & Gas, and Software
Prerequisite skills: Python Programming, image processing, computer vision
An accurate and up-to-date map of swimming pools is needed by authorities for the
estimation of energy expenditure to maintain the pools, water volume for fire-fighting and the
potential spread of mosquito’s related diseases.
The current approach for swimming pools detection is manual which is time-consuming and
costly. Furthermore, manual approach cannot keep up with the demand for frequent updating
of swimming pools map.
This project aims to develop an automated approach for the extraction of swimming pools in
aerial images. It includes two steps: first, swimming pools presence are determined through
deep learning technology followed by their delineation through computer vision methods and
techniques.
Reynolds, Mark, A/Prof Co-supervisors: Vulpe, Cristina, Dr
Development of new software tools for mapping deep-water
environment changes
Disciplines: Oil & Gas and Software
Prerequisite skills: Data science, programming
The purpose of the project is to develop software capable of reading and interpreting large
databases of centrifuge experiments outputs.
A series of centrifuge tests has been carried out in order to characterize the changing
properties of the deep-water environment during the operating lifetime of oil&gas
infrastructure. The centrifuge tests results database tracks the changes in the soil and water
conditions under and around the deep-water infrastructure.
The new software is expected to be capable of:
- Reading large databases of centrifuge outputs concurrently
- Interpret the change in environment during the lifetime of deep-water infrastructure
operations
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- Present in 3D graphical form changes in deep-water environment during deep-water
infrastructure operations
Excellent programming skills are required, as well as a desire to work on a multi-disciplinary
topic (i.e., geotechnical engineering and data science). Some use of AI or Machine Learning
techniques is expected to fill in for some missing data and extrapolate. Prior knowledge of fundamental soil mechanics and consolidation theory are not compulsory.
Reynolds, Mark, A/Prof Co-supervisors: Huynh, Du, Dr
Bat Call Identification via Machine Learning
Disciplines: EE and Software
Prerequisite skills: Programming (familiarity with Python would be ideal)
Bats are useful indicator species in ecological surveys. Typically, a device will record
ultrasonic echolocation calls in the field and the subsequent data will be analysed to identify
the bat species present. This is a laborious process that is amenable to machine learning. One
such proprietary system has been used successfully to classify several years of calls in the
South Coast region of WA.
However some bat species, especially of the genus nyctophilus, are not amenable to the zero
crossing techniques commonly used. McKenzie and Bullen (2003, 2009, 2012) have shown
that the sharpness quotient, Q, of the fundamental harmonic and the characteristic frequency
of the bat call cluster rather distinctly between different species of bats including nyctophilus.
The aim of this project is to examine whether similar techniques might be used for machine
learning of call identification for the bats of the South Coast region.
You would be provided with full spectrum recordings covering several years in WAC/WAV
files plus zero crossing analysis data and probable bat identification.
There would be a requirement to complete a Bush Heritage Australia research project form,
which details IP and the like.
Schediwy, Sascha, Dr
Synchronisation of the Square Kilometre Array Radio
Telescope
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Required: experience with analogue electronics and PCB design
Beneficial: experience with optical fibre systems, digital electronics
The aim of this project is to contribute to the development of the frequency synchronisation
system for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope.
The SKA will be the largest and most complex astronomical instrument to date, with
individual antennas spread over continental scales. One of the most complex technical
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challenges will be the coherent combination of astronomical signals collected by the hundreds
of remote antennas. To achieve this, astronomical observations must be synchronised using
timing signals of exquisite accuracy and precision. The SKA will utilise the same optical fibre
network to transport the astronomical data to the SKA’s central computer and to distribute
high-quality timing signals to each antenna.
The student will work as part of the Astrophotonics Group at the International Centre for
Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) to help design, build, and test an optical fibre-based
frequency distribution system tailored to meet the scientific needs and logistical challenges of
the SKA. This system will be developed in our UWA laboratory and tested on Perth’s
AARNet fibre networks, with the aim to deploy the finished product on the MeerKAT
telescope in South Africa, and at the Murchison Radio Observatory in outback Australia.
This research will be conducted in collaboration with the international SKA Signal and Data
Transport Consortium, the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, and SKA
South Africa. For more information, see: www.icrar.org/people/sschediwy/. If you have
further questions about the project or doubts about meeting the prerequisites listed below,
please contact Dr Sascha Schediwy before selecting this project.
Schediwy, Sascha, Dr
Free-Space Laser Links for Space Applications
Disciplines:, Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: Required: experience working with electronic systems
Beneficial: experience working with optical systems
The aim of this project is to further the development of ultra-precise laser timing links to
support the next generation of pioneering space missions and cutting-edge timing technology.
The pioneering mission for laser timing links is the European Space Agency’s Atomic Clock
Ensemble in Space (ACES) project. This $100M global mega-science project will compare the
time-scales of atomic clocks in the microgravity environment of the International Space
Station, against state-of-the-art atomic clocks on Earth, with the University of Western
Australia having been selected as the only ACES ground station in the Southern Hemisphere.
However, as first-generation laser timing links are simply re-purposed existing satellite laser
ranging facilities, which all use pulsed-laser systems, clock-comparison measurements can only
be made over small fractions of the total satellite transit time.
The student will work as part of the Astrophotonics Group at the International Centre for
Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and will use a new custom-built, continuous-wave laser
system with a technique to actively suppress atmospheric path-length fluctuations and test
this over a multi-kilometre laser link test facility at UWA. The work will include constructing
an adaptive optics system and incorporating this into the existing laser link. The final system
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will then be deployed at the Mount Stromlo Satellite Laser Ranging Observatory for long-
range atmospheric trials.
This work will be conducted in collaboration with the Australian National University and the
Technical University of Munich. For more information, see: www.icrar.org/people/sschediwy/.
If you have further questions about the project or doubts about meeting the prerequisites
listed below, please contact Dr Sascha Schediwy before selecting this project.
Schediwy, Sascha, Dr
Building the First Long-Baseline Optical Astronomical
Interferometer
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Required: physics undergraduate degree or equivalent
Beneficial: optical systems, high-speed data acquisition
The aim of this project is to take the first steps to develop a revolutionary new type of
optical telescope. What if you had a telescope with the baseline length of radio
interferometers, like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), but with the resolving power of
optical wavelengths?
This project will explore the feasibility of optical very-long baseline interferometry, by
building on the University of California’s Infrared Spatial Interferometer at Berkeley, and
combining this with recent developments in stabilised optical frequency transfer over 100s of
kilometres of optical fibre. This work could open the door for a telescope with spatial
resolution 100s of times greater than the current best, revolutionising high-surface brightness
astronomy including the detection of Earth-like extra-solar planets, the structure of active
galactic nuclei, the formation mechanism of stars and planetary systems, and more.
The student will work as part of the Astrophotonics Group at the International Centre for
Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) with a multidisciplinary team to build a three-element
interferometric optical telescope, with a baseline length of up to several kilometres.
This research will be conducted in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley.
For more information, see: www.icrar.org/people/sschediwy/. If you have further questions
about the project or doubts about meeting the prerequisites listed below, please contact Dr
Sascha Schediwy before selecting this project.
Sercombe, Tim, Prof
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Electropolishing of 3D printed parts
Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
3D Printing is most ideally suited to parts with a high degree of geometric complexity. This
provides challenges when considering methods of improving surface finish. For metals, the
surface finish is similar to that of a casting and it is one area where it falls behind conventional
manufacturing technologies. This work continues on from previous students and will further
explore the electro polishing of 3D printed metal parts. It will look at optimization of the
process and the effect of the polishing on complex geometries.
Sercombe, Tim, Prof Co-supervisors: Ingliss, Tim, Prof
Recycling of plastic containers from pathology testing
Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The testing of pathology specimens creates a huge waste stream of single-use plastic containers.
Currently, these are not recycled in any way and mostly end up in land fill. The aim of this
project is to find an engineering use for this waste stream.
Silva, Dilusha, Professor Co-supervisors: Putrino, Gino, Associate Professor; Faraone,
Lorenzo, Professor
Advanced Sensing Technologies: Sensing in liquids
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical,
Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Researchers within AST are the leaders in Australia for micro machines (MEMS). One of their
recent inventions is an ultrasensitive MEMS based chemical and biological sensor. The
technology operates on a tiny cantilever that produces a tiny movement in response to a
chemical or biological agent it comes in contact with. At present, the key application of this
technology is in gas sensing, and has already demonstrated sensitivities better than parts-per-
million. However there are immense applications of this technology, if it could be used in a liquid environment. The broad objective of this project is to deploy and demonstrate this
technology in various liquid environments.
Silva, Dilusha, Professor Co-supervisors: Putrino, Gino, Associate Professor; Faraone,
Lorenzo, Professor
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Advanced Sensing Technologies: Absorption spectroscopy fo
r organics in solution
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Absorption spectroscopy can determine chemical components of a material by measurement
of which wavelengths of light are absorbed due to interaction with a sample. Applications of
this technology range from determining hydrocarbon contamination in water to detecting
cancer in skin.
This project will evaluate the ability of infrared (IR) spectroscopy to measure the chemical
composition of aqueous solutions. Trials with solutions containing a matrix of varying and
interfering IR-absorbing components will be performed for applications in environmental and
agricultural monitoring.
Techniques to improve the component prediction accuracy using techniques such as principle
component analysis will be investigated.
Silva, Dilusha, Professor Co-supervisors: Putrino, Gino, Associate Professor; Faraone,
Lorenzo, Professor
Advanced Sensing Technologies: Nanotechnology Spectrom
eters
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical,
Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Infrared spectroscopy is finding increasing application in many industries including,
pharmaceuticals, agriculture, viticulture, remote sensing, and defence. IR spectroscopy has
successfully been demonstrated to detect a range of substances, including water, nitrogen and
carbon in soil, protein in wheat, and pollution in the atmosphere. Deployments of spectroscopy
range from lab-based instruments for high-precision applications, to semi-miniaturised
instruments for portable applications, to multi- and hyper-spectral imaging instruments for
airborne remote-sensing applications. In the airborne arena, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
based deployments are looking increasingly attractive. The main limiting factors to more
pervasive deployment of infrared spectroscopy are presently, the capital and maintenance costs
of the spectroscopy equipment; size and portability; sensitivity to vibration and shocks; and
calibration maintenance. Particularly for application in Agriculture and the minerals industry,
the need for low cost, small and rugged spectroscopy instruments is immense.
Researchers within AST are the leaders in Australia for micro machines (MEMS). One of their
recent developments is a suite of nanometer-scale thin-film spectrometer technologies, which
stands to address all the requirements to turn infrared spectroscopy into an everyday tool. Just
imagine a spectrometer in your mobile phone that can tell you if your fruit is ripe enough or
your milk is turning sour. The overall aim of this project will be to assess and develop thin-film
spectrometer technologies for various applications. While these projects are highly challenging they can be immensely rewarding.
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Silva, Dilusha, Professor Co-supervisors: Putrino, Gino, Associate Professor; Faraone,
Lorenzo, Professor
Advanced Sensing Technologies: Multispectral Camera
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Infrared spectroscopy is finding increasing application in many industries including,
pharmaceuticals, agriculture, viticulture, remote sensing, and defence. IR spectroscopy has
successfully been demonstrated to detect a range of substances, including water, nitrogen and
carbon in soil, protein in wheat, and pollution in the atmosphere. Deployments of spectroscopy
range from lab-based instruments for high-precision applications, to semi-miniaturised
instruments for portable applications, to multi- and hyper-spectral imaging instruments for
airborne remote-sensing applications. In the airborne arena, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based deployments are looking increasingly attractive. The main limiting factors to more
pervasive deployment of infrared spectroscopy are presently, the capital and maintenance costs
of the spectroscopy equipment; size and portability; sensitivity to vibration and shocks; and
calibration maintenance. Particularly for application in Agriculture and the minerals industry,
the need for low cost, small and rugged spectroscopy instruments is immense.
This project will focus on developing a low-cost spectral imaging camera for agricultural
applications. The project will involve assembling the camera module to a Raspberry Pi single-
board-computer, incorporating the spectral selectivity elements, and deveoping the software
to acquire and process spectral images.
Smith, David, Prof Co-supervisors: Gardiner, Bruce, Prof (Murdoch)
Development of a suitable computational model of fluid flow
from the eye
Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, and Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: This project requires a willingness and the skills to develop a detailed
knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the eye. Only then can appropriate hypotheses
be developed, and a suitable modeling approach be chosen. Computational modeling will
involve the solution of ordinary and/or partial differential equations, solved using either excel,
matlab or finite elements, depending on the model type.
Excessive pressure in the eye is the main risk factor for glaucoma, a leading cause of visual
impairment. In this project, we will attempt to develop a suitable computational model of
fluid flow from the eye, with a particular emphasis on explaining the ‘outflow resistance’ of
the eye.
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Sreeram, Victor , Prof Co-supervisors: Zulfiqar, Umair, Dr
Lower Order Controller Design for Flexible Space Structure
with Unknown Mathematical Model
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: Good mathematical background especially linear algebra
The mathematical model of the plant is required to compute a controller for the specific
control problem. If the mathematical model is not known a priori, system identification
techniques are employed to estimate the model. A large-scale model is generally constructed
to ensure the fidelity of the model. Since this model is an input to a controller design
procedure, it results in a very high controller which is not suitable for implementation.
Therefore, controller reduction techniques are used to obtain a controller of practically
acceptable dimensions. In this project, low order controller design is sought for a flexible
space structure whose mathematical model is not known a priori.
Sreeram, Victor , Prof Co-supervisors: Zulfiqar, Umair, Dr
Fast Circuit Simulation via Model Reduction
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Good mathematical background especially linear algebra
The circuit simulation of large-scale integrated circuits is a challenge because the
computational resources are limited despite significant advancement in the past few decades.
Model order reduction techniques are used to reduce the memory demand which aims to
yield a lower order model which accurately estimates the original system. However, the
essential properties of circuits like stability, passivity, and contractivity must be preserved in
the reduced model to avoid the non-physical behavior. In this project, fast and accurate
simulation of large-scale integrated circuits will be accomplished using model reduction
algorithms.
Sreeram, Victor , Prof Co-supervisors: Kharrazi, Ali, Mr
Optimal Sizing of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) in
Microgrid
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Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: Power System Analysis, Power Electronics, Microgrid and Optimization
technique knowledge
A Microgrid is a small scale power system that consists of distributed generation sources; linked in an intelligent communication and control system to supply power to distributed
loads. It can operate autonomously to be part of the main grid or switch to be islanded
depending on its type and operation scenarios. With such complicated operation
requirements, microgrids’ control in general is designed to optimize their operation by
maximising their efficiency and reliability.
Operation control in microgrids including constraint dispatch/unit-commitment, ancillary
services (spinning reserve, load following and reactive support) planning, can be formulated as
a mixed linear integer problem, and can be solved using linear/non-linear solvers.
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) can be a key player in optimising the operation of
microgrids due to its ability to perform multi-operational functions e.g. demand management,
power quality control, backup power and energy trading.
Due their high installation cost, finding their right size is an essential part of the planning and
design of microgrids’ development. Integrating BESS within the unit-commitment problem in
microgrids requires complicated decision making algorithms and can formulate another
optimization problem. The objective of this problem is reducing operation cost at minimum
BESS size.
This project investigate the art of using optimization techniques in operating microgrids, and
using BESS to reduce their operation cost. It will also cover the BESS sizing options and
highlight the role of intelligence in reducing their size and maximising their utilisation.
Stanwix, Paul, Dr Co-supervisors: May, Eric, Prof
Microwave Cavities for Phase Behaviour Sensing Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Accurate knowledge of the phase behavior of fluid mixtures is crucial for the design and
operation of gas processing and transport systems. This project aims to develop innovative
fluid sensing technology using high-precision microwave cavities, which will be capable of
accurately investigating the behavior of fluid mixtures near their phase boundaries. This
technology will be used to generate reference-quality data, necessary for development and
validation of equations-of-state, and to understand the underlying mechanisms involved in phase
transitions. Students working on this project will contribute to the design and modelling of
microwave cavities, measurement of fluid mixture phase boundaries and phase fractions, and
development of automated measurement and data analysis systems.
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Stanwix, Paul, Dr Co-supervisors: May, Eric, Prof; Al Ghafri, Saif, Dr
Measuring sound speed in low Global Warming Potential
refrigerants
Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
The growing need for low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants has motivated the
study of numerous 4th-generation refrigerants for which there is a dearth of thermophysical
data. This project will involve measuring the speed of sound in low GWP refrigerants using a
recently constructed ultra-sonic pulse-echo experiment, developing analysis tools, and deriving
further properties such as density and specific heat capacity.
Stanwix, Paul, Dr
Developing New Approaches to Skin Diagnostics
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Whilst clinical scanners have revolutionised patient outcomes with high-resolution imaging,
there are many conditions for which it is either too expensive or doesn't provide the required
sensitivity. Skin disorders, for example, are often confined to a small region extending only a
few millimetres below the surface, for which a whole-body scan would be excessive and
inconvenient for the patient.
This project will look at applying compact single-sided Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
and simple Dielectric Measurements to the profiling of skin and assessing its viability as a
diagnostic and monitoring tool. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the
project and how you can be involved.
Stanwix, Paul, Dr
Signal enhancement for low-field NMR sensing
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Oil & Gas
Prerequisite skills:
Low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LFNMR) is an attractive technique for the development
of sensors to monitor environmental and chemical engineering processes as it is cheap,
compact, and portable. It suffers, however, from the small signal associated with operating at
low magnetic field. This project will implement strategies to improve the signal to noise of
LFNMR through signal enhancement techniques and control systems to reduce sensitivity to
environmental variations. The intended application will the development of a signal
enhancement module for multi-phase flow metering. Students will be involved in developing
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hardware, performing experiments and optimising analysis of the results. Please contact me if
you would like to learn more about the project and how you can be involved.
Stanwix, Paul, Dr
Diamond sensors for investigating chemical processes
Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials,
Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
This project will explore the application of diamond based sensors to the study of processes
that occur at the micro-scale, for example hydrate formation or gas adsorption in in porous
media. Our understanding of and ability to model these processes would be greatly improved
by the ability to perform direct measurements of pressure and temperature inside the pores,
which requires sensors with resolution below 100 nm. Diamond is a promising platform for
development of such a sensor as it is sensitive to a wide range of parameters, even at the nano-scale, and can withstand harsh environments. Students on this project may be involved in the
development of laser-based experiments to probe diamond material, software development,
and data analysis. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the project and how
you can be involved.
Sunderland, Andrew, Dr Co-supervisors: Ju, Li, A/Prof
Airborne Gravity Gradiometer suspension
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Experience making, modelling or designing mechanical systems
Airborne Gravity Gradiometers flying 100m above the ground are used for mineral and
hydrocarbon exploration. These gradiometers are affected by aircraft motion and engine noise.
We are looking for Physics and Engineering students to help develop a new suspension system
and acoustic shield for the Falcon airborne gravity gradiometer which will reduce the noise.
This project will involve a lot of experimental work with shakers, novel materials and field
testing.
Tavner, Angus, Dr Co-supervisors:
UWA Motorsport Projects
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software
Prerequisite skills:
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The UWA Motorsport team have commenced work on the design of an electric race car for
2018. These projects are intended to support this design and construction, and to develop
technology for the team's use. Students applying for these projects are expected to be (or
become) active and engaged members of the UWAM team. A detailed list of project topics
will be provided to interested applicants.
Tavner, Angus, Dr Co-supervisors:
Fire Testing
Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills:
There are various methods available to repair steel infrastructure using composite materials,
however the repairs need additional protection in the event of a fire. Recent student projects
have developed a test rig for fire testing materials to AS1530, and it can also be used for
hydrocarbon pool-fire testing. These projects will involve refining the apparatus and testing
various materials in different conditions.
Tavner, Angus, Dr
Testing of adhesive bonds Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills:
Repairing infrastructure using adhesive joints is cheaper and safer than welding, but the quality
and durability of the adhesive bond is more difficult to predict. These projects will carry on
work by recent students looking at different adhesives, surface preparation and priming,
tolerance of surface contamination, and durability.
Togneri, Roberto, Professor
Defending against the Imposters: Spoofing and
Countermeasures
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: MATLAB or Python Programming, Signal Processing
Voice authentication is an important tool in the cyber security arsenal when dealing with
authenticating access to personal data using biometric voice. Speaker verification technology
has matured but so have the spoofing methods which rely on sophisticated speech synthesis methods or simple replay attacks (as they do in the movies). In this project you will work with
one of the PhD research students on the design of a simple spoofing attack and investigation
of the countermeasures based on detection of anomalies in the speech spectrum
representation or recording system transfer function. Want to know more: ASVspoof2017
Challenge , Literature Survey
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Togneri, Roberto, Professor
Who are you listening to? Audio Source Separation
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: MATLAB programming, signal processing
Remember the last party you went to and how noisy it was with so many people speaking? And
yet you were able to understand what the person next to you was saying. Welcome to the
world of source separation! Your microphonic ears receive a mixture of speech signals and yet
by clever use of the statistical distribution of the speech and spatial separation using both ears
(binaural hearing) you can eliminate the interference and get the clear speech. Sounds easy?
Working with one of our PhD research students or on your own find out by researching what
blind source separation is all about and explore with your own simulations. Want to know
more: SiSEC2016 Challenge , BSS Lecture Notes
Togneri, Roberto, Professor
No Noise please: Speech Enhancement
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: MATLAB Programming, Signal Processing
You have a single recording of speech which has been degraded by background noises both
distorting the speech and making it hard to understand. Criminal forensic investigators face this
problem every day. In this project you will investigate the approaches based on manipulating
the spectrum to remove the noise and interference, from spectral subtraction to Wiener
filtering. Of course if you are up to the challenge you can consider more sophisticated machine
learning approaches. This is a fun but challenging project where you get to play out sounds and
hear for yourself whether you have succeeded or not. Want to know more: Speech
Enhancement Bible , Easy Research Paper , Patented Technique , Importance of Phase
Togneri, Roberto, Professor
Did you just say that? Spoken Keyword Spotting
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic
Prerequisite skills: MATLAB or Python Programming, Signal Processing
Speech recognition has become an important means to interact with smart devices like your TV and phone. But in data analytics and cyber security it is necessary to listen to many hours
of recordings and detect and classify key words (“explode”, “bomb”, etc.) or command
sequences (“over and out”, “roger that”, etc.) of interest. In this quite challenging project you
will investigate advanced statistical estimation and detection methods applied to audio signals
and spectra based on the idea of query-by-example (which does not require a messy speech
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recognition engine). Want to know more: Gaussian Posteriorgrams , Dynamic Time Warping
.
Wan, Zhijian, Dr Co-supervisors: Mr Zhezi (Zeno) Zhang and Professor Dongke Zhang
Spent tyre pyrolysis liquid: speciation, desulphurization,
distillation, recovery of valuable chemicals and synthetic
fuels
Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Mechanical
The disposal of biomass and industrial wastes, such as forestry by-products, agriculture residue,
municipal wastes, spent tyre, represents a major environmental issue throughout the world.
Pyrolysis is a simple, robust, and scalable approach for simultaneous production of gas, liquid
and char. The raw pyrolysis liquid needs to be upgraded, due to presence of impurities, such
as water, particulates and sulphur, before further process and utilisation. This project will investigate the sulphur-containing species in the spent tyre pyrolysis oil and screen the methods
for the sulphur removal.
Sub-project 1: Oxidation desulphurisation
The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the sulphur removal efficiency using oxidation
desulphurisation method. The effect of oxidation agents, temperature and time on the sulphur
removal efficiency will be studied. The changes in the species and amount of the sulphur-bearing
compounds before and after the removal will be identified using advanced analytical techniques
including GC, GC-MS, ICP-AES.
Sub-project 2: Adsorption desulphurisation
The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the sulphur removal efficiency using
adsorption desulphurisation method. Adsorbents including activated carbon, biochar, alumina,
silica, molecular sieves will be tested. The effect of adsorbent loading ratio and operation time
on the sulphur removal efficiency will be studied. The changes in the species and amount of the
sulphur-bearing compounds before and after the removal will be identified using advanced
analytical techniques including GC, GC-MS, ICP-AES.
Sub-project 3: Extraction desulphurisation
The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the sulphur removal efficiency using extraction
desulphurisation method. Solvents depending on their polarity will have different affinity to
sulphur containing species. The effect of different solvents, such as ionic liquids, dimethyl
formamide (DMF), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) on the sulphur removal efficiency will be
studied. The changes in the
species and amount of the sulphur-bearing compounds before and after the removal will be
identified using advanced analytical techniques including GC, GC-MS, ICP-AES.
Sub-project 4: fuel upgrading
The objective of this sub-project is to upgrade the spent tyre pyrolysis retort liquid suitable to
be used as fuel. The presence of organic acids and N-containing species (amines) incurs great
instability to the pyrolysis retort liquid, hindering its use as a fuel. The transformation of the
organic acids into esters and amines into surfactants will greatly mitigate/eliminate their impacts
on the oil stability. The formed surfactants can also serve as oil stabiliser. Methanol will be used
for organic acids conversion to esters. Halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons will be used for
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amines conversion to surfactants. The stability of the oil before and after the treatment will be
studied by accelerated ageing and the changes in the acids and amines before and after the
treatment will be identified using GC and GC-MS.
While, Lyndon, Dr
Engineering Optimisation through Machine Learning and
Intelligent Search Techniques
Disciplines: All disciplines
Prerequisite skills: programming ability in Python, Java, C, or similar language
Many engineering problems involve optimising complex scenarios that are not amenable to
simple analysis. Examples are common in logistics and scheduling, in design, and in operational
settings. In this project you will apply modern computational methods to analyse an engineering
problem of your choice with the aim of developing human-competitive solutions.
Confidence in constructing computer programs involving advanced algorithms and data
structures is a requirement, either from scratch or using libraries and tools available on the
web.
Wittek, Adam, Prof.
Towards Realistic and Robust Surgical Simulations: Meshless
Algorithms of Computational Biomechanics for Predicting
Organ (Brain) Deformations Due To Needle Insertion
Disciplines: Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic
Prerequisite skills: Excellent knowledge of numerical methods and solid
mechanics, some knowledge of and experience in computer programming,
willingness to engage in challenging tasks and move beyond the boundaries of
own discipline
Surgical tool placement/insertion in the body organs (such as e.g. needle insertion when
conducting biopsy) is a challenging task that requires to account for changes in the surgical
target position caused by organ deformation due to interactions between a surgical tool and
the tissue. One may attempt to track a surgical target (e.g. tumour) and tool using medical
imaging. However, intraoperative 3D imaging (magnetic resonance imaging MRI, computed
tomography, ultrasound US) for surgical tracking is limited using the equipment in standard
operating theatres. Predicting the intraoperative organ/tissue deformations using the methods
of computational biomechanics can augment the currently used imaging techniques for surgical
tracking. Possible applications include computer integrated surgery (CIS) systems and control
systems for surgical robots — integration of computing and robotics has been recognised as
one of the key elements of “the wave of third industrial revolution” (a term used in the article
in “The Economist” from October 4th, 2014). This project focuses on evaluation of meshless
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algorithms of computational biomechanics (that use computational grids in a form of a “cloud”
of points) for predicting deformations within the brain undergoing surgery (needle insertion)
and forces acting on surgical tools (needle) against the previously conducted (in cooperation
between UWA Intelligent Systems for Medicine Laboratory ISML and Surgical Assist
Technology Group from AIST in Tsukuba, Japan) experiments using swine brain specimens. It may involve conducting and analysis of computational biomechanics simulations using meshless
and finite element methods of computational biomechanics, analysis of previously conducted
experiments using swine brain specimens (this will include image analysis/processing), and
conducting experiments using the mechanical brain phantom (made from silicone gel). The
project will be conducted as a part of collaboration between the Intelligent Systems for
Medicine Laboratory at the University of Western Australia and Robotics Design Laboratory
at the University of Queensland.
Wittek, Adam, Prof.
Beyond Finite Elements in Surgical Simulation: Verification
of Meshless Algorithms of Computational Biomechanics Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Excellent knowledge of Numerical Methods and Solid
Mechanics, willingness to engage in challenging tasks, some knowledge of and
experience in computer programming
It has been recognised that computational biomechanics models and surgical simulation my
assist surgical training, surgical planning and surgical navigation through prediction of organ
deformations during surgery and forces acting on surgical tools.
Computational biomechanics and surgical simulation have been dominated by finite element
analysis that utilises computational grids in a form of interconnected mesh or finite elements.
There are two key challenges/obstacles preventing real world (clinical) application of the
models relying on such grids:
1) Construction of finite element meshes to accurately represent an organ of a given patient
tends to be time consuming and typically requires involvement of an experienced analysts. This
is incompatible with clinical workflow (hospitals are unlikely to hire PhDs in computational
mechanics to build computational biomechanics models and conduct the simulations);
2) Accuracy of the finite element solution tends to deteriorate when finite element meshes
undergo distortion due to large local deformations and “fragmentation”/cracks induced by
surgical procedures (including insertion of surgical tools).
Meshless algorithms that utilise computational grids in a form of a “cloud” of points have been
proposed to overcome these challenges. The purpose of this project is to verify a suite of
meshless algorithms of computational biomechanics created at the Intelligent Systems for
Medicine Laboratory at the University of Western Australia. The project may involve
development of meshless algorithms of computational biomechanics.
Xiao, Gongkui, Dr. Co-supervisors: Arami Niya, Arash, Dr.; Graham, Brendan, Dr.
Advanced Gas Separations
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Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Software
Prerequisite skills:
Application of adsorption based gas separation processes in natural gas purification and carbon
capture can be a good alternative for the current conventional energy intensive thermal
separation processes. By development of new adsorbents and optimization of the process, non-thermal separations such as the adsorptive gas separation can offer enormous energy savings
and environmental benefits. The capture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen from natural gases are
two areas that could potentially present such savings and benefits. Carbon dioxide capture,
whether from natural gas streams or from flue gases, is an important and increasing area of
research with significant implications for our economy and environment. N2 capture from
natural gas is increasingly important in the development of LNG projects where this component
is energetically parasitic. These projects will look at the use of novel materials and processes
for improved carbon dioxide and nitrogen separation efficiency that use solid adsorbents,
including carbons, zeolites and metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Students working on these
projects will help in synthesis, development and testing the separation performance of new
adsorbents, and /or use the results of such experiments to develop advanced separation
processes via physical adsorption process experiments or numerical models. Projects will also
be available in which various literature reported adsorbents for carbon dioxide and nitrogen
capture are critically analysed and screened by our numerical models, such that promising
materials and processes could be advanced to industrial scale applications.
Zhang, Dongke, Professor Co-supervisors: Mr Zhezi (Zeno) Zhang; Mr Jorge E. Preciado
Hernandez
Preparation of activation carbon from solid residue of spent
tyre pyrolysis Disciplines: Chemical, , Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The disposal of biomass and industrial wastes, such as forestry by-products, agriculture residue,
municipal wastes, spent tyre, represents a major environmental issue throughout the world.
Pyrolysis is a simple, robust, and scalable approach for simultaneous production of gas, liquid
and solid residue. Pyrolysis solid residue has a high potential to be upgraded into various high
value carbon materials (activated carbon, carbon black, metallurgical reductant, soil conditioner
etc.), this project will focus on the upgrading of the spent tyre pyrolytic solid residue for
activated carbon production.
Sub-project 1: activation using CO2/N2 mixture as the activation agent
The objective of this sub-project is to produce activated carbon form the solid residue of spent
tyre pyrolysis using CO2/N2 mixture. Activation experiments will be conducted in a fixed-bed
reactor. The effect of activation temperature, particle size, activation time and molar ratio of
steam to N2 on the product yield, physical and chemical properties of the activated carbon
products will be investigated. The physical and chemical properties will include: BET surface
area, pore volume and pore size distribution, particle size distribution, reactivity, mineral form
and content and surface functional groups.
Sub-project 2: activation using steam/N2 mixture as the activation agent
The objective of this sub-project is to produce activated carbon form the solid residue of spent
tyre pyrolysis using steam/N2 mixture. Activation experiments will be conducted in a fixed-
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bed reactor. The effect of activation temperature, particle size, activation time and molar ratio
of steam to N2 on the product yield, physical and chemical properties of the activated carbon
products will be investigated. The physical and chemical properties will include: BET surface
area, pore volume and pore size distribution, particle size distribution, reactivity, mineral form
and content and surface functional groups. Sub-project 3: activation using CO2/steam/N2 mixture as the activation agent
The objective of this sub-project is to produce activated carbon form the solid residue of spent
tyre pyrolysis using CO2/steam/N2 mixture. Activation experiments will be conducted in a
fixed-bed reactor. The effect of activation temperature, particle size, activation time and molar
ratio of CO2 to steam on the product yield, physical and chemical properties of the activated
carbon products will be
investigated. The physical and chemical properties will include: BET surface area, pore volume
and pore size distribution, particle size distribution, reactivity, mineral form and content and
surface functional groups.
Sub-project 4: activation using alternating CO2/steam/N2 mixture as the
activation agent
The objective of this sub-project is to produce activated carbon form the solid residue of spent
tyre pyrolysis using alternating CO2/steam/N2 mixture. Activation experiments will be
conducted in a fixed-bed reactor. The alternating CO2/steam/N2 mixture activation
experiments will start with CO2/N2 activation for a period of time, followed by steam/N2
activation for a period time and the combinations of the two activation agents thereafter. The
effect of activation temperature, particle size, and activation time on the product yield, physical
and chemical properties of the activated carbon products will be investigated. The physical and
chemical properties will include: BET surface area, pore volume and pore size distribution,
particle size distribution, reactivity, mineral form and content and surface functional groups.
Zhang, Dongke, Professor Co-supervisors: Dr Mingming Zhu and Mr Zhezi (Zeno) Zhang
NH3 as a clean transport fuel Disciplines: Chemical, , Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
In a carbon-constrained world, there are two strategies for de-carbonisation of transport: (1)
electrification and (2) carbon-free alternative fuels. In the concept of “hydrogen economy”,
hydrogen is considered as the ultimate carbon-free fuel and energy carrier for both transport
and electric power applications. However, the fact that pure hydrogen does not exist naturally
and has a low volumetric energy density, even in the liquid form under cryogenic conditions,
means that hydrogen is faced with immense technical, economical and infrastructure challenges
before it can play a major role in powering transportation. It appears that hydrogen would
require a suitable carrier. With its high content of hydrogen per unit of mass or volume,
ammonia (NH3) is an excellent H2 carrier for easy storage, transport and distribution of
hydrogen. In fact, NH3 itself is a carbon-free liquid fuel that can be used in internal combustion
(IC) engines. As a fuel for combustion in IC engines, it suffers from high ignition energy, narrow
flammability limits, low flame temperature, low burning rate, and potentially high NOx
emissions. It has been found that a small amount of H2 addition can promote combustion of
NH3. The required H2 can be obtained directly by partially dissociating NH3 in-situ to produce
an NH3/H2 mixture before injection into the engine cylinders. This project is designed to study
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the effect of H2 on the basic ignition and combustion characteristics and NOx formation and
destruction of NH3.
Sub-project 1: Effect of H2 on flame speed of NH3
The objective of this sub-topic is to study the effect of H2 on the flame speed of NH3. The
experiments will be conducted using a Bunsen burner with a Schlieren system. The effect of equivalence ratio, initial H2 concentrations in the mixtures, and initial temperature on the flame
speed will be studied.
Sub-project 2: Effect of H2 on flammability and minimum ignition energy of NH3
The objective of this sub-topic is to study the effect of H2 on the flammability and minimum
ignition energy of NH3. The experiments will be conducted using the Hartmann bomb system.
The effect of equivalence ratio, initial H2 concentrations in the mixtures, and initial temperature
on the flame speed will be studied.
Sub-project 3: Effect of H2 on NOx formation and destruction
This sub-project is aimed to study the effect of H2 on NOx formation and destruction in NH3
combustion. The experiments will be conducted using a flat flame burner. The concentration
of NOx of premixed NH3/air and NH3/H2/N2/air flames will be quantified using a NOx
analyser. The effect of equivalence ratios, initial H2 concentration in the mixtures, and initial
temperature will be studied.
Sub-project 4: Kinetic modelling of ignition and combustion and NOx formation of
NH3/H2/NOx/N2/O2 mixtures
This sub-project is designed to investigate the ignition and combustion characteristics of NH3
and effect of H2 and NOx as combustion promoters using kinetic modelling to understand
chemistry and reaction mechanisms. The student is expected to (1) conduct a detailed
literature review on the combustion characteristics of NH3, NOx formation and reaction
mechanisms of NH3/H2/N2/NOx; (2) study the effect of H2 and NOx on the laminar flame
speed, ignition delay times, flame temperature and NOx emission as a function of initial
temperature, equivalence ratio, H2 or NOx ratio in the fuel mixtures through kinetic modelling
using commercial software Chemkin Pro. The data will be validated against the experimental
results.
Zhang, Dongke, Professor Co-supervisors: Dr Mingming Zhu and Mr Chiemeka Onyeka Okoye
Manufacturing of carbon black by partial combustion of
heavy fraction of spent tyre pyrolysis liquid Disciplines: Chemical, , Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
The disposal of biomass and industrial wastes, such as forestry by-products, agriculture residue,
municipal wastes, spent tyre, represents a major environmental issue throughout the world.
Pyrolysis is a simple, robust, and scalable approach for simultaneous production of gas, liquid
and char. After desulphurisation and extraction of high value chemicals, the remaining heavy
residue of the pyrolysis liquid still contains a high amount of PAHs, a great source material for
carbon black production. This project will focus on the manufacturing of carbon black by partial
oxidation of the heavy liquid residue.
Sub-project 1: effect of temperature on the yield of carbon black
The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of temperature on the
yield and properties of carbon black produced. The experiments will be conducted using a
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laboratory scale burner simulating industrial carbon back manufacturing process. The burner
will burn pyrolysis gas with air to provide high temperature flame. The heavy pyrolysis liquid
fraction will be injected into the burner and pass through the high temperature flame to make
carbon black. The carbon black will be produced at various flame temperatures and then
characterised for its physical and chemical properties. In this sub-project, the yield of carbon black will be evaluated and the carbon black will be characterised for proximate and ultimate
analysis and BET surface areas.
Sub-project 2: effect of temperature on the properties of carbon black
The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of temperature on the
yield and properties of carbon black produced. The experiments will be conducted using a
laboratory scale burner simulating industrial carbon back manufacturing process. The burner
will burn pyrolysis gas with air to provide high temperature flame. The heavy pyrolysis liquid
fraction will be injected into the burner and pass through the high temperature to make carbon
black. The carbon black will be produced at various flame temperatures and then characterised
for its physical and chemical properties. In this sub-project, the carbon black will be
characterised for its pH value, loss on heating and particle size distribution.
Sub-project 3: effect of residence time on the yield of carbon black
The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of temperature on the
yield and properties of carbon black produced. The experiments will be conducted using a
laboratory scale burner simulating industrial carbon back manufacturing process. The burner
will burn pyrolysis gas with air to provide high temperature flame. The heavy pyrolysis liquid
fraction will be injected into the flue gases with the high temperature to make carbon black.
The carbon black will be produced with various residence times by varying the gas velocity and
then characterised for its physical and chemical properties. In this sub-project, the yield of
carbon black will be evaluated and the carbon black will be characterised for its proximate and
ultimate analysis and BET surface areas.
Sub-project 4: effect of residence time on the properties of carbon black
The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of temperature on the
yield and properties of carbon black produced. The experiments will be conducted using a
laboratory scale burner simulating industrial carbon back manufacturing process. The burner
will burn natural gas with air to provide high temperature flue gas. The heavy pyrolysis liquid
fraction will be injected to locations in the high temperature to make carbon black. The carbon
black will be produced with various residence times by varying the gas velocity and then
characterised for its physical and chemical properties. In this sub-project, the carbon black will
be characterised for its pH value, loss on heating and particle size distribution.
Zhao, Chunnong, Prof.
Control and Data acquisition System (CDS) for 80-meter
suspended optical cavities
Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software
Prerequisite skills: Previous experience in Linux system and signal processing would be
helpful.
The ARC centre of excellence for gravitational wave discovery (OzGrav), UWA node is in
the process of upgrading its distributed control and data acquisition system for Gingin high
optical power facility . The project involves the setup and integration of software and
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hardware necessary to measure and control vibration isolators. The system can be set up and
integrated at UWA campus.
Zhou, Tongming, Professor Co-supervisors:
Vortex shedding from multiple cylinders at low and high
Reynolds numbers
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Fluid mechanics/Hydraulics
Vortex shedding is a phenomenon which occurs when a flow passes a bluff body. The shedding
process can induce time dependent drag and lift forces on the structure. When cylindrical
structures are arranged in a group, such as the risers in offshore oil and gas industry,
skyscrapers and offshore wind farms, vortex shedding characteristics may be influenced by the
separation between these structures.
In this project, experiments in a wind tunnel will be conducted to investigate the dependence
of vortex shedding frequency on cylinder gap ratio and on the number of cylinders. Hot-wire
techniques will be used to detect the vortex shedding frequency and flow visualization using
smoke wire technique to be used to visualize the vortex flow structures. These results will
then be compared with those reported in the literature. One student will focus on Reynolds
number of 1000 and the other will focus on Re=180.
Zhou, Tongming, Professor Co-supervisors:
Suppression of vortex shedding and vortex-induced vibration
of a cylindrical pipe
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Fluid mechanics/Hydraulics
Vortex shedding is a phenomenon occurs when a flow passes a bluff body. The shedding
process can induce vibration of the structure, which, at resonance, can result in excessive
motion and possible structural failure. In this project, vortex shedding and vortex-induced
vibration will be controlled using passive methods by attaching elements prepared with a 3D
printer and/or by inserting a pipe filled with water inside the larger one to simulate multiphase
flow inside an oil riser. The experiments will be conducted in a wind tunnel and/or water flume
using Particle image velocimetry after the control is used and the results can then be compared
with that of a bare pipe.
Zhou, Tongming, Professor Co-supervisors:
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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
Suppression of vortex shedding and vortex-induced vibration
of a cylindrical pipe using soft marine growth
Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills: Fluid mechanics/Hydraulics
Vortex shedding is a phenomenon which occurs when a flow passes a bluff body. The shedding
process can induce vibration (which is normally termed as vortex-induced vibration, or VIV),
which, at resonance, can result in excessive motion and possible structural failure. Marine
growth, such as mussels, will develop on offshore pipelines and risers over some time of
operation in the sea. The growth may change the hydrodynamic and VIV characteristics of the
marine structures. In the present project, hard marine growth, which can be simulated using
artificial materials, will be attached to the circular cylinders and tested both in the wind tunnel
and water flume for VIV and force characteristics. Particle image velocimetry will be used to
examine the wake features after the control is used and the results can then be compared with
that of a bare pipe.
Zhao, Wenhua, Dr Co-supervisors: Draper, Scott, Dr
Hydrodynamics of a new offshore concept - subsea shuttle
Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mining, Oil & Gas, Software
Prerequisite skills: good knowledge on hydrodynamics or good skill in field testing
A new concept has been developed, which is used to deliver chemical products from sea
surface to sea bed. The concept will significantly save the cost of conveying chemical products
to the subsea structures, compared to conventional methods.
This project involves both numerical simulations and field testing in the Swan river. This project
require knowledge in fluid mechanics, offshore hydrodynamics. This project may also involve
communications with colleagues from industry, as we will receive a lot of input from them as
well.
Zhu, Mingming, Dr Co-supervisors: Mr Yusron Sugiarto and Professor Dongke Zhang
Two-Phase anaerobic digestion
Disciplines: Chemical, , Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
Two-phase anaerobic digestion (TPAD) is expected to produce hydrogen-enriched biogas,
which has higher quality and more ideal combustion properties than biogas produced from
conventional single-phase anaerobic digestion. Biochar addition in single phase anaerobic
digestion has been proven to enhance the methane production by 32%. However, the effect of
biochar addition on TPAD has never been explored. This project will investigate the effect of
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biochar addition on TPAD under different operational conditions. This project will also
investigate biogas cleaning using biochar.
Sub-project 1: The effect of biochar on the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) removal from
biogas using bench scale and pilot scale biogas cleaning unit
The aim of the sub-project is to use biochar to remove H2S in biogas. The experiments will be conducted using both bench scale column reactor and pilot scale biogas cleaning unit. The gas
composition will be measured using gas chromatography and the efficiency of H2S removal will
be calculated. The effect of type of biochar, particle size and addition ratio of biochar and gas
retention time on H2S removal efficiency will be determined. The profile of biochar before and
after experimentation will be examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Sub-project 2: The effect of biochar on ammonia (NH3) removal from biogas using
bench scale and pilot scale biogas cleaning unit
The aim of the sub-project is to use biochar to remove NH3 in biogas. The experiments will
be conducted using both bench scale column reactor and pilot scale biogas cleaning unit. The
gas composition will be measured using gas chromatography and the efficiency of NH3 removal
will be calculated. The effect of type of biochar, particle size and addition ratio of biochar and
gas retention time on NH3 removal efficiency will be determined. The profile of biochar before
and after experimentation will be examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Sub-project 3: Commission and operation of a laboratory reactor to produce
hydrogen and methane from food waste
The aim of the sub-project is to commission and evaluate the performance of a laboratory scale
semi-continuous reactors simulating TPAD process. The system consists of a hydrogen-
producing reactor
and a methane-producing reactor. The system will be commissioned to realise biogas
production (H2 production in the first reactor and CH4 production in the second reactor).
The gas volume and compositions will be measured daily using volumetric gas gauge and GC,
respectively. Volatile fatty acid (VFA) and pH changing will also be monitored periodically.
Sub- project 4: Commission and operation of TPAD process demonstration unit
(PDU) to produce hydrogen and methane from food waste
The aim of this sub-project is to commission the TPAD PDU in the Centre for Energy. The
PDU consists of a hydrogen-producing reactor (volume: 150 l) and a methane-producing
reactor (500 l). The TPAD PDU will be commissioned to realise continuous biogas production
(H2 production in the first reactor and CH4 production in the second reactor). The gas volume
and compositions will be measured daily using volumetric gas gauge and GC, respectively.
Volatile fatty acid (VFA) and pH changing will also be monitored periodically.
Zhu, Mingming, Dr Co-supervisors: Mr Zhezi (Zeno) Zhang and Professor Dongke Zhang
Homogenous combustion catalysts in diesel engines
Disciplines: Chemical, , Materials, Mechanical
Prerequisite skills:
This project is designed to systematically investigate the effect of a homogenous combustion
catalyst, known as Fuel Performance Catalyst (FPC) manufactured by Fuel Technology Ltd Pty.,
on the fuel efficiency and emissions of a diesel engine fuelled with diesel and biodiesel fuels.
The catalyst will be dosed into diesel or biodiesel and play a catalytic role during combustion
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process in diesel engines to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. The experiments will
be conducted using the fully instrumented diesel engine system available at the Centre for
Energy. The effect of FPC dosing ratio and engine operation conditions on the fuel efficiency
improvement and emission reductions will be quantified.
Sub-project 1: Effect of FPC on fuel efficiency of a diesel engine fuelled with diesel fuels
The objective of this sub-topic is to study the effect of FPC on the fuel efficiency of a diesel
engine. Caltex diesel, BP diesel and BP ultimate diesel will be tested. The effect of FPC dosing
ratio, engine load and speed on the fuel efficiency will be studied.
Sub-project 2: Effect of FPC on Particulate Matter (PM) emission of a diesel engine
fuelled with diesel fuels
In this sub-topic, the effect of FPC on PM will be investigated. Caltex diesel, BP diesel and BP
ultimate diesel will be tested. PM emission will be measured by monitoring the smoke opacity
of the exhaust with a Bosch RTM 430 infrared opacimeter. The effect of FPC dosing ratio,
engine load and speed on the smoke will be studied.
Sub-project 3: Effect of FPC on exhaust gas emissions of a diesel engine fuelled
with diesel fuels
This sub-project is aimed to study the effect of FPC on exhaust gas emission including unburned
hydrocarbons, CO, CO2 and NOx. Caltex diesel, BP diesel and BP ultimate diesel will be
tested. The gas emissions will be measured using a NOx analyser. The effect of FPC dosing
ratio, engine load and speed on the gas emission will be studied.
Sub-project 4: Effect of FPC on fuel efficiency and emissions of a diesel engine
fuelled with biodiesel fuel
In this sub-project, the effect of FPC on the efficiency and emissions of a diesel engine fuelled
with a biodiesel fuel will be examined. The palm oil based biodiesel provided by Wilmar
International will be used in this study. The effect of FPC dosing ratio, engine load and speed
on the fuel efficiency, exhaust emissions will be systematically studied.