Our School offers consultancy services in many areas, including geotechnical, structural, hydraulic and resource engineering.

There is a wide range of expertise available within the School available to help you, and world-class facilities including a 40g-tonne capacity fixed-beam centrifuge and closed-loop boundary layer wind tunnel.

1. Certification and calibration services
2. Hydraulics and fluid mechanics

Certification and calibration services

Force measuring devices

• Calibration in the range 100 N to 3 MN in compression and 100 N to 600 kN in tension to Grade A requirements of AS 2193 with least uncertainties of measurement of - 0.5%.

Elastic force measuring devices

• Devices such as force measuring rings for soils testing machines.
• Load cells.

Testing machines

• Tension and compression machines at forces from 100 N to 600 kN to Grade A requirements of AS 2193.
• Compression machines in compression at forces from 100 N to 3 MN to Grade A requirements of AS 2193

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Hydraulics and Fluid Mechanics

Laboratory testing in Water Flumes and Wind Tunnel

Testing facilities include a wind tunnel, wave and current flumes, O-tube facilities and underwater jetting.

The laboratories are equipped with state of art measurement devices such as hot-wire anemometer, ADV, laster profilers, pressure and force transducers.

The group has an experienced team to carry out testing and consulting projects related to hydrodynamic loading on various structures, local scour around river and marine structures, erosion threshold and erosion rate of soil samples, underwater jetting, hydrodynamic stability of subsea rock berms, wind flow and loading on buildings and offshore structures, flow-induced vibrations and flow visualisations.

Examples of recent testing performed for industry:

• Pluto LNG Pipeline Crossing Rock Berm Stability Model Testing
  Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng
  Woodside Energy Ltd, Funds Approved: $71,745.00.
• Pluto Sand Wave Mobility Study
  Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng, Research Assistant Professor Ming Zhao
  Woodside Energy Ltd, Funds Approved: $31,440.00. 
• Erodibility Testing of Gorgon Silts
  Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng
  Advanced Geomechanics, Funds Approved: $45,500.00.
• Assessment of Scour Potential for Turkmenistan Block 1 Gas Development Project
  Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng
  Advanced Geomechanics, Funds Approved: $14,260.00.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modelling

We can develop CFD packages that can be used for research and projects. The packages developed so far include:

• SCOUR-2D
  Animation of scour process below a sub-sea pipeline in current [AVI, 1.5MB]
• SCOUR-MPI-3D
  Animation of local scour around a vertical cylinder [WMV, 2.2.MB]
• RANS-2D
  Animation of oscillatory flow past a circular cylinder [AVI, 2.75MB]
• RANS-MPI-3D
  Animation of flow past a circular cylinder at an oblique attack [WMV, 1.2MB]

SCOUR-2D and SCOUR-3D are two-dimensional and three-dimensional local scour simulation programs respectively that are able to simulate local scour around various structures under steady currents, waves and combined waves and currents conditions.

RANS-2D and RANS-MPI-3D are two-dimensional and three-dimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equation solvers respectively that are able to simulate hydrodynamic forces on slender objects and vortex-induced vibrations of pipelines and risers subject to steady currents, waves and combined waves and currents. RANS-MPI-3D is a parallel solver based on Message Passing Interface.

Examples of recent software developed for industry:

• Scour and Scour Protection Around Gravity Anchors
  Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng, Research Assistant Professor Ming Zhao
  ARC Discovery Projects, Funds Approved: $170,000.00.
• Wealth from Oceans - Subsea Pipelines for Reliable & Environmentally Safe Development of Ocean Hydrocarbon Resources - Seabed Morphology
  Winthrop Professor Mark Cassidy, Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng
  CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund Clusters, Funds Approved: $246,494.00. 
• Wealth from Oceans - Subsea Pipelines for Reliable & Environmentally Safe Development of Ocean Hydrocarbon Resources - Seabed Characterisation
  Winthrop Professor Mark Cassidy, Professor Mark Randolph, Winthrop Professor Liang Cheng
  CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund Clusters, Funds Approved: $548,140.00. 

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