Australian and other countries’ large cities are facing a watershed moment in their upgrade to future cities, which rely on not only the intelligent buildings above the ground but also on the infrastructure required to support them. Among various underground assets in the modern cities, pipelines play a vital role, maintaining the normal operation of the cities. However, the frequently occurred pipe leak events are lagging behind the growth and development of the future cities, causing resources waste (over 20% water wasted due to leak in Australia) and even severe accidents such as explosions, fires, and fatalities, as shown in the figure.

Most current device/technologies detect the leak location from the ground by measurement and the processing of vibrio acoustic signals generated by the leak; however, for underground pipelines, the accuracy is not satisfactory and low efficient, but prone to be disturbed by ambient noise and subgrade materials. A few other technologies rely on an in-pipe detector, say a ball that flows with water; however, it requires many acoustic receivers along the pipeline to identify and locate the leaks. To install these acoustic receivers is costly and time-consuming, and the running ball may be diverted into other connecting pipelines by the flowing fluid.

To align the future of our cities, our infrastructure networks, particularly the pipelines, need to change to be “smart”, i.e., automatically, quickly and accurately monitor and identify the locations of the oil, gas and water leaks. However, here the “smart” is more than the automatic leak detection; the pipeline condition assessment, service life prediction, and risk alert would be integrated into a smart platform to ensure efficient asset management for the future cities.

The project is therefore proposed to develop state-of-the-art research and technology in leak detection. Some preliminary research work, e.g., on fibre optics in pipelines, has been performed from our group’s international critical pipe project. With the robust research strength of our Monash group, and great support from the local water, oil, and gas utilities, it is highly expected the proposed project will gain a promising outcome that benefits industry and informs and influences policy and government.

Objective

This project is aimed to model the generation and distribution of thermally induced stresses in rocks subjected to microwave irradiation.

Project Details

Rocks need to be fractured for various purposes, e.g., to exploit underground energy (i.e., heat) deeply beneath the Earth’s surface. However, traditional mechanical drilling technology is neither economic nor environmentally friendly. Alternatively, an emerging promising approach is using thermal treatment, e.g., microwave power, to break rocks, which is the focus of this project. Through numerical modelling and experiments, we aim to provide valuable insights into the nature of the complicated thermal-induced fracturing mechanism. The research outcomes from this project may help improve the exploration efficiency of underground energy; it is the energy that is estimated to enable Australia to be self-sustained for thousands of years.

It is a general practice to assume that the vertical stress is equal to the weight of the overlying rock, 0.027 MPa/m on the average. However, this breaks down in some cases owing to the effects of geological structure. For instance, the vertical stress might vary along horizontal planes cutting through a succession of rigid rock layer folded into synclines and anticlines. A limited number of studies pointed out that the vertical stress varies from perhaps 60% greater than rZ under the syncline to zero just beneath the anticline. Additionally, the more rigid folded layer may result in higher variations in the vertical stresses. Nevertheless, there appears no systematic research on this issue.

This project aims to investigate the changes of vertical stresses due to the presence of a folded rock layer. Parametric analysis including the thickness, rigidity, curvature of the fold will be carried out to systematically examine the influence of the folded rock layer on vertical stresses. Comparison between the fold-induced vertical stress and rZ will be presented and analysed, from which a closed-form equation to describe the vertical stresses at different cross-sections might be derived.

A (Cumulative) particle size distribution (PSD) has been widely used in geotechnical engineering and geomechanics, which provides fundamental features to explain the mechanical and physical behaviours of granular materials. Most current description for PSD is to use a fractal form (through a power law equation) to fit a PSD curve; however, this does not always work well, as there are many irregular patterns of the size reductions.

This project aims first to review the current approaches that have been adopted to describe the PSD and its evolution. Their similarities, unique features and limitations will be highlighted and investigated. Then, a large number of size reduction data of many different types of granular materials from the literature will be gathered to examine the feasibility of the different approaches; a recommendation of using various approaches will be given. Based on the collected dataset of PSD, a new general approach to universally describe general patterns of PSD will be attempted to develop. Comparison between the proposed method and other current ones will be made with detailed discussion over their pros and cons.

This is the CRC Program for $3 million in government funding and over $2.7 million from industry to support the research and validation of liners for pipeline rehabilitation.

This project is a collaboration between WSAA, manufacturers, applicators, utilities, and researchers, and seeks to improve and validate product and application knowledge, enabling the development of industry standards, specifications and tools and confirming the demand for lining technologies.

As a significant proportion of water and wastewater infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life, with high quality and reliable pipe lining products providing a potentially cost-effective solution. The market opportunity is significant, however, there are currently no clear performance and application guidelines and standards in Australia, limiting uptake and innovation of this technology and therefore investment of Australian SMEs in lining innovations.

The technical deliverables include:

• Develop industry standards and guidance documents
• Perform analytical tests for validation and testing of linings
• Field-test liners
• Develop and test multi-sensor robot prototypes

The tangible industry outcomes expected from this project are:

• Improvements to design and application of smart lining products
• Commercialisation of intelligent sensing/robotic technologies
• Extending the life of critical infrastructure
• Market growth for Australian lining SMEs
• Enhanced Australian innovative linings knowledge and capacity

As a trenchless rehabilitation technology, cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) lining has been widely used in various types of deteriorated water pipelines. For example, CIPP lining replaces conventional bursting method to repair asbestos cement (AC) pipelines, to avoid causing harm to the local environment. However, when generating CIPP liner in a host water pipeline, the liner may be oversized to accommodate the diametrical variations, a typical manufacturing defect of the pipe. This common practice may often lead to the formation of liner folds along the entire pipe length. The resulted liner folds may cause large stress concentration and deteriorate the designed life of the CIPP. However, this critical aspect has yet to be investigated sufficiently.

This project is therefore to investigate the mechanical responses and failure pressures of CIPP liners with folds in various configurations, to enhance the understanding of the pressure degradation mechanism due to the presence of the liner folds.

Overburden failure in mines is a hazard which can cause considerable damages, e.g. surface subsidence induce by coal mining, failure of underground aquifers, etc. The heights of the overburden caved zone, and the fractured zone is significant indexes when evaluating the extent and characteristics of overburden failure. The fractured overburden undergoes bending, and subsidence and then the adjacent rock blocks form an articulated structure, while the coalface and the fractured rock blocks may also form a cantilever beam structure in the periodic fracture process.

This project aims to investigate the fracture process due to overburden during coalface excavation. Rock-like materials, mixed sands, gypsum, lime and water, will be used to examine the heights of the caved zone and fractured zone with rock fracture, and simultaneous surface subsidence with coalface excavation.

Photoelasticity technique has been widely used for the acquisition of stress fields of transparent materials under compressive, tensile or shear loading conditions. When a specimen is subjected to loading, it shows double refraction to the incident light due to the change of the stress field. Therefore, photoelasticity can be used to demonstrate the distribution of stress and stress concentrations of transparent materials.

This project aims to visualise the instantaneous stress fields of polycarbonates in Brazilian tensile tests. Students need to use an HD camera to record the images of testing samples and compare the results with those obtained from FEM simulations to verify the feasibility of photoelasticity equipment.