The Geoenvironmental Research Centre carries out research on a broad front of problems, with its interest ranging from fundamental studies of soil behaviour, through project based applications to commercial exploitation and development.

Problems of contaminated land, landfill engineering, land reclamation, slope stability, waste disposal and heat losses from buried objects are studied, together with the influence of environmental conditions on the performance of underground distribution systems.

Students pursuing largely computer based projects are well catered for. Research dedicated UNIX mainframes are available and eight distributed UNIX workstations provide powerful computer platforms for CPU intensive computational analysis, computer aided design, (CAD), and graphics software. High performance computing facilities also exist via two new multi-processor SUN E6500 systems.

For prospective students interested in experimentally based research, a range of first class, comprehensive testing facilities are available. The full range of traditional experimental facilities covering consolidation and shear strength testing of soils, for example, is also available. These are supplemented by high quality computer controlled triaxial testing equipment and graviometric and volumetric pressure plate extractor equipment for use in unsaturated soil characterisation.

The Research Centre has excellent experimental facilities in the area of Geoenvironmental Engineering. These included, for example, leaching columns and triaxial permeameters which are used to investigate the effect of contaminated pore fluids on soil hydraulic properties; together with analytical facilities for solids, liquids and gases, such as X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, electron microscopy, gas chromatography, ion chromatography and atomic absorption spectrometry.

• Art Research
• Medio Ambiente