Bachelor of Engineering & Master of Professional ... … · Flow Assurance and Natural Gas Hydrates Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas Natural gas hydrates are ice-like

1

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

Bachelor of Engineering & Master of Professional Engineering

Final Year Project Descriptions

Semester 2, 2017

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.

2


Aman, Zach, Assoc/Prof May, Eric, Prof Johns, Mike, Prof Stanwix, Paul, Dr Graham, Brendan, Dr Flow Assurance and Natural Gas Hydrates Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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 Hydrodynamic force on a inline cylinder group Pre-requisite skills: Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical A group of inline cylinders is often seen in offshore strictures. The flow field around the cylinder group involves a wide range of interesting flow mechanics features. A series of physical model tests will be conducted using the O-tube facility to measure the hydrodynamic force and flow velocity on the cylinder. 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 of offshore structures.

3


Antoszewski, Jarek, A/Prof Gu, Renjie, Dr Synchronization of IR Ellipsometer with Molecular Beam Epitaxy growth process Pre-requisite skills: Solid background in electronic hardware interfacing and software design Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software. Microelectronics Research Group (MRG) has been established in 1975 and today has about 35 research personnel including academics, researchers and postgraduate students. The main focus of the group is R&D in the field of Infrared based (IR) optoelectronics carried out in collaboration with a number of leading university and industry based Australian and oversees (USA, Europe, China) research institutions. MRG provides top class research and experience environment for students, with all facilities needed for the full cycle of optoelectronic device design (computer simulators), growth/deposition of semiconductor, metal, and dielectric materials (Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition, E-beam), full device processing (class 1000 clean room, sub-micron lithography), and characterization (x-ray, SEM, FTIR, I-V, C-V, advanced Hall effect, and many more). This project is related to the semiconductor material growth process with the aim to design and implement a PC based software interface allowing for synchronization of the data acquisition from existing IR ellipsometer (measuring substrate surface quality) with the substrate rotation during the growth process. The software interface will include two modules: first, for control of existing substrate rotation hardware, and the second for interfacing/synchronization with ellipsometer software. The project will require collaboration with original hardware and software manufacturers as well as efficient team work with other researchers from MRG. It will provide opportunity for gaining experience in the design and development of the real, fully functional (not a prototype), user friendly software module.

Antoszewski, Jarek, A/Prof Gu, Renjie, Dr Software interface for automatic characterization of photodetector arrays Pre-requisite skills: Solid background in electronic hardware interfacing and software design Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software. Microelectronics Research Group (MRG) has been established in 1975 and today has about 35 research personnel including academics, researchers and postgraduate students. The main focus of the group is R&D in the field of Infrared based (IR) optoelectronics carried out in collaboration with a number of leading university and industry based Australian and oversees (USA, Europe, China) research institutions. MRG provides top class research and experience environment for students, with all facilities needed for the full cycle of optoelectronic device design (computer simulators), growth/deposition of semiconductor, metal, and dielectric materials (Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition, E-beam),

4


full device processing (class 1000 clean room, sub-micron lithography), and characterization (x-ray, SEM, FTIR, I-V, C-V, advanced Hall effect, and many more). At MRG we are moving from fabrication of single PV photodetectors to arrays including up to one hundred of these devices. Consequently, a systematic measurement of basic I-V characteristics becomes laborious and time consuming if not automated. Therefore, the aim of this project is to design and implement a PC based software interface for existing data acquisition hardware which will allow automatic I-V data collection from all connected photodetectors and its analysis providing graphs showing basic trends like current density vs detector size, or statistical analysis providing information about uniformity between devices important for imaging arrays applications. The project will require collaboration with original hardware and software manufacturers (mostly Agilent) as well as efficient team work with future users of the system at MRG. It will provide opportunity for gaining experience in the design and development of the real, fully functional (not a prototype), user friendly software module.

Aslani, Farhad, Dr Liu, Yinong, Prof Bakhtiari, Reza, Mr (PhD Student) Superelastic SMA reinforced concrete beams Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical 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 Gunawardena, Yas, Mr (PhD Student) Behaviour of reinforced concrete bridge beam joints Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical 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.

5


Aslani, Farhad, Dr Dight, Phil, Prof Manca, Mirko, Mr (PhD Student) Mechanical behaviour of fibre reinforcing Pre-requisite skills: Disciplines: Civil There is little available in the literature about the mechanical behaviour of steel and poly macros fibres and their response to a simple pull-out test. Factors that would influence the behaviour include material specification, surface characteristics, fibre geometry, fibre strength and embedment length. This project will examine these factors for a range of commercially available fibres. The results will be compared with a simple model to compare the outcome. If the behaviours can be shown to be largely controlled by known factors, then the behaviour can be incorporated into beam and slab design.

Aslani, Farhad, Dr Chakrabortty, Anup, Dr New types of self-compacting concrete (SCC) Disciplines: Civil 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.

Basarir, Hakan, Assoc/Prof Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof The analysis of stresses around advancing longwall face: A parametric study Disciplines: Civil, Mining Longwall mining is a widely used method in underground coal mines. The assessment of the stresses around the advancing longwall face is very important not only for designing safe main and tail gate support systems but also for maintaining the overall stability of underground coal panel. Traditionally empirical and semi empirical methods are used for the prediction of

6


stresses (Whitttaker and Singh 1979; Hudson, 1993; Wilson, 1983). But such methods are restricted by simplifying assumptions (Basarir et al., 2014). The purpose of this project is to analyze the effect of different parameters such as coal seam thickness, inclination, production sequences on stress distribution around longwall panel. For this purpose 2D and/or 3D finite element (FE) method based software will be used. The results of numerical modeling will be analyzed in detail and the conclusions about the effect of aforementioned parameters will be derived. Wilson, A. 1983. The stability of underground workings in the soft rocks of the coal. Int J Min Eng ; 1:91-187. Whittaker, B., Singh, R. 1979. Design and stability of pillars in longwall mining. Min Eng; 139:59-70. Hudson, JA (ed). 1993. Comprehensive Rock Engineering. Oxford: Pergamon Press Basarir, H., Oge, I. F., Aydin, O., 2015. Prediction of the stresses around main and tail gates during top coal caving by 3D numerical analysis. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, 76, 88-97.

Basarir, Hakan, Assoc/Prof Hsieh, Ariel, Dr Use of different techniques for evaluating the damage during uniaxial compressive strength test Disciplines: Civil, Mining One of the most interesting discussions regarding the conventional laboratory rock material testing is the determination of damage level or onset failure during uniaxial compressive strength test. So far different researchers used different techniques and sensors such as volumetric strain, acoustic emission, for this purpose (Asadi et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2016). The aim of this thesis is to analyze the possibility of improvement of a method combining different techniques for damage evaluation or onset failure. A series of laboratory tests will be conducted on different rock samples (or concrete samples) using variety of sensors. Using the test results different modeling techniques will be applied for the development of the models to be used for damage evaluation. Asadi, M., Bagheripour, MH., Eftekhari, M., 2013. Development of optimal fuzzy models for predicting the strength of intact rocks. Computers and geotechnics, 54, 107-112. Chen, W., Konietzky, H., Tan, X., Frühwirt, T., 2016. Pre-failure damage analysis for brittle rocks under triaxial compression. Computers and geotechnics, 74, 45-55.

Basarir, Hakan, Assoc/Prof Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr

7


Production of high early strength, sustainable concrete for underground mining applications Disciplines: Civil, Mining Underground mines in Australia continue to go deeper to access viable ore bodies. This results in increased mining costs and safety concerns because rock instability becomes more likely as mining depths increase. One of the solutions for the issues is the production of early strength gaining sustainable concrete to be used for different mining applications i.e. backfilling applications, bulkhead construction. In this thesis different concrete samples will be prepared using alternative cement replacement materials i.e. mine tailings, fly ash, slag. The necessary quality assurance test will be conducted on prepared samples. Using the results of the experiments the models will be constructed for the prediction of the strength of concrete depending on the content and curing time.

Beemer, Ryan, Dr Chow, Shiao Huey, Dr Probabilistic Analysis of Soil Testing Disciplines: Civil The main focus of this research is to understand the variability in soil strength tests. What is the likelihood that measured strength of soil is higher tor lower than average? These statistics are needed for probabilistic design of geotechnical structures, but statistics for many soils are not readily available to practicing engineers. We are specifically interested in the variability of Direct Shear and Direct Simple Shear experiments when testing fine sands. This will involve repetitive testing of identical soil samples to measure its variability. Of specific interest are the statistics of samples with different dry densities, vertical effective stresses, and grain size. This is a continuation of research from a previous final year student who studied the statistics of coarse sand.

Bekki, Kenji, Dr Wu, Chen, Dr Vinsen, Kevin, Mr Deciphering galaxy evolution with deep learning Pre-requisite skills: Interest in deep learning (If possible, python programming) Disciplines: Software It has been a longstanding mystery how galaxies formed over the past 13.8 billion years history of the Universe. In this project, we try to understand the details of galaxy formation processes using computer simulations and deep learning. Recently, deep neural networks have been used in a variety of artificial intelligent tasks such as: image/speech recognition. We will be applying the latest advance of this technology.

8


Bennamoun, Mohammed, Winthrop Professor Dwivedi, Girish, Wesfarmers Chair in Cardiology Rybicki, Frank, Professor of Cardiology (University of Ottawa, Canada) A deep-learning-based approach for noninvasive computation of coronary fractional flow reserve (FFR) from computed tomography Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic and Software A deep-learning-based approach for noninvasive computation of coronary fractional flow reserve (FFR) from computed tomography of heart images will be developed. The deep-learning model will be trained on a large database of synthetic vessel trees, followed by verification and validation against an existing physics-based model, as well as invasive measurements.

Bennamoun, Mohammed, Winthrop Professor Dwivedi, Girish, Wesfarmers Chair in Cardiology Diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (heart attack) with deep learning Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic and Software Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a serious and patients typically present with chest pain. Electrocardiography (ECG) and laboratory tests are used in diagnosis. The aim of the study will be to diagnose ACS and help the physicians with the decision making i.e. when to discharge or to hospitalize using machine learning techniques by using patient data including age, sex, risk factors, and cardiac enzymes (CK-MB, Troponin I) of patients presenting to emergency department with chest pain.

Bennamoun, Mohammed, Winthrop Professor Dwivedi, Girish, Wesfarmers Chair in Cardiology Detection of nonobstructive and obstructive coronary arterial lesions from computed tomography angiography by machine learning. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic and Software Visual identification of coronary arterial lesion from three-dimensional coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) remains challenging. We aimed to develop a robust

9


automated algorithm for computer detection of coronary artery lesions by machine learning techniques.

Bennamoun, Mohammed, Winthrop Professor Dwivedi, Girish, Wesfarmers Chair in Cardiology Prediction of risk factors of atherosclerosis using machine learning techniques Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic and Software In this project we aim to develop machine learning techniques for predicting the risk factors of atherosclerosis based on a longitudinal study of patients taking part in the Busselton cohort of WA.

Blair, David, Winthrop Professor Ju, Li, Professor Zhao, Chunnong, Professor Research in vibration isolation for gravitational wave detectors Pre-requisite skills: Practical skills, understanding of basic concepts of resonance and vibration. Interest in physics and black holes. Helpful to have experience in finite element modelling and Mathematica or Matlab. Disciplines: Mechanical The first successful detection of gravitational waves recently gave humanity the opportunity to listen to gravitational sounds from across the universe. Detectors are masterworks of optical and mechanical engineering but there is enormous opportunity for improvements. These projects relate to one of the key technologies: vibration isolation. They involve testing of new concepts in vibration isolation based on Euler springs. Some of the project work could involve visits to UWA's Gingin Gravity Precinct. The projects are part of the research for the Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Braunl, Thomas, Prof Boeing, Adrian, Dr Electric Jetski

10


Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic. Our electric jetski has made some waves at the end of last year when it was first demonstrated to the public. For 2017, we are looking at a number of additions and improvements to make the system more useable and robust. Goals: ‐ Implementation of Battery Management System ‐ Development of Integrated Safety System ‐ Weight shifting for performance tuning ‐ Performance modelling, measurement and evaluation

This project will include numerous test drives with the completed jetski to collect data for your theses. See details at: http://revproject.com/vehicles/jetski.php

Braunl, Thomas, Prof Boeing, Adrian, Dr Autonomous Driving Systems Pre-requisite skills: Good programming skills in C or C++ Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. We are currently operating two autonomous vehicles, a donated BMW X5 and a student-built Formula SAE-Electric vehicle. Both vehicles already include the low-level drive-by-wire technology and are equipped with several sensor systems, including GPS, camera, Ibeo Lux lidar (laser scanner), Xsens IMU (inertial measurement unit) and wheel encoders. We further have the latest automotive control hardware in form of an Nvidia Jetson TX1 board that will be used for fast real-time sensor processing and deep learning algorithms. Goals: ‐ Autonomous navigation on UWA-internal roads and on external race track ‐ Sensor fusion of GPS, Lidar, inertial measurement system, odometry ‐ Path planning and collision avoidance ‐ Vision sub-system for road and vehicle detection using OpenCV http://opencv.org ‐ Exploring of deep-learning systems such as Caffe http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org ‐

Braunl, Thomas, Prof Croft, Chris, Mr Drones / Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Pre-requisite skills: Good programming skills in C or C++ Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. Drones are a new technology area with almost unlimited application areas from mining to agriculture, from architecture to logistics. In this project we want students to develop autonomous control and guidance software for an advanced hexacopter system. We are

11


using an open source Pixhawk controller in combination with a Raspberry Pi-3 for implementing practical application systems for the drone. See: https://pixhawk.org Goals: ‐ Autonomous mapping of specified 2D area (e.g. crop surveying) ‐ Autonomous mapping of presented 3D object

‐ Sensor fusion between GPS, inertial measurement unit, laser distance measurement. ‐

Braunl, Thomas, Prof Croft, Chris, Mr Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) Pre-requisite skills: Good programming skills in C or C++ Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software. We have two autonomous submarine systems, Mako and USAL. Both AUVs have a Raspberry-3 as controller, vision, distance sensors, IMU (inertial measurement unit), etc. Goals: ‐ Implementation of area surveying application for autonomous AUV ‐ Implementation of autonomous navigation in and mapping algorithms (SLAM) in

unknown environment ‐ Adaptation of AUV simulation system for our AUV models

See details at: http://robotics.ee.uwa.edu.au/auv/

Braunl, Thomas, Prof Croft, Chris, Mr Embedded Robotics Pre-requisite skills: Good programming skills in C or C++ Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software. We are using a more advanced version of the lab-robots you know from Embedded Systems. These are based on a Raspberry-3 controller, using vision, PSD distance sensors and a colour display. For this project we are looking at the development of several practical robot applications in the following areas: ‐ Autonomous navigation and path planning software in a maze environment ‐ Establishment of Robotics image processing library for visual navigation ‐ Intelligent learning systems for driving robots ‐ Integration of new robot features in the EyeSim simulation system

See details at: http://robotics.ee.uwa.edu.au/eyebot7/Robios7.html

12


Bräunl, Thomas, Prof Fourie, Andy, Prof Arthur, Dan, Adj Assoc Prof (BHP Billiton) Mine Truck Electrification Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical, Environmental, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Software Electrification of mining vehicles is inevitable. Since 2010, UWA's 'REV Project' has been converting vehicles from fossil fuel to electric drive (http://therevproject.com/). The team selected for this project will work with senior engineers from BHP Billiton's Global Technology team to design the next REV project, the Electric Mining Truck. As with all REV projects, the Electric Mine Truck project will provide a unique opportunity to learn and develop multi-disciplinary teamwork plus innovative, design, leadership, management, marketing, finance and practical skills.

Burrel Andrew, Senior Technician Kennywell John, Ass. Prof Coward David, Ass. Prof Remote internet power switch for a robotic observatory Pre-requisite skills: electronics and some software Disciplines: Electrical, Mechatronic The Zadko Telescope is a sophisticated research intensive robotic telescope operating remotely and with minimal human intervention. Project will develop a secure web based power switch that can turn on/off the Zadko computers, PLC etc. The system must be able to turn devices on/off in a programmable sequence via the internet.

Burrel Andrew, Senior Technician Kennywell John, Ass. Prof Coward David, Ass. Prof Electronic temperature controlled cooler for a CCD camera Disciplines: Electrical, Mechatronic The Zadko Telecope uses a very sensitive CCD camera for imaging. The project will design and build 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.

13


Cardell-Oliver, Rachel, Assoc/Prof

Virtual Sensing for Infrastructure Monitoring Prerequisite skills: Programming (e.g. R or Python or Java), data structures and algorithms, interest in smart buildings and sustainable building practices Disciplines: Electrical, Environmental, Mechatronic and Software Virtual sensing is a technique in which sensor readings in a sensor network are estimated some of the time instead of taking direct measurements. Virtual sensing conserves energy on the sensor nodes, and it can be used for recovering missing data due to node or network failure, and for estimating values where permanent sensor installation is in-feasible. The main challenge is to reduce the costs of a sensor deployment (purchase, installation, maintenance) while maintaining accurate estimation over a long time frame. This project will investigate virtual sensing using data sets including a UWA rammed-earth building-monitoring sensor network with over 100 heterogeneous, noisy sensors from different suppliers. Summer research scholarships will be offered for this project subject to good performance during the first project semester. Recommended Reading: Robust sensor data collection over a long period using virtual sensing http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3014341&CFID=764064222&CFTOKEN=96312380

Data‐Aware,Resource‐Aware,LosslessCompressionforSensorNetworkshttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-36672-7_6


Understanding public transport travel patterns Prerequisite skills: Programming (eg R or Python or Java), Web programming and visualization (e.g. Javascript, D3, visualization libraries), knowledge of data mining techniques. Disciplines: Civil, Environmental and Software This project is part of a group supported by the PATREC transport research centre. Students will build the results of 2016-17 projects to identify customer types based on their TransPerth smartRider log data. The project involves developing and testing data mining algorithms and visualization of the results. Summer research scholarships will be offered for this project subject to good performance during the first project semester. Recommended Reading:

14


Mining Ticketing Logs for Usage Characterization with Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, Poussevin et al, 2016 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-29009-6_8


Anomaly detection for smart city applications

Prerequisite skills: Programming (eg R or Python or Java), and/or Web programming and visualization (e.g. Javascript, D3, visualization libraries), knowledge of data mining techniques. Disciplines: Software This project is part of a group supported by the PATREC transport research centre. Students will build the results of 2016-17 projects to identify customer types based on their TransPerth smartRider log data. The project involves developing and testing data mining algorithms and visualization of the results. Summer research scholarships will be offered for this project subject to good performance during the first project semester. Recommended reading: Smart meter Analytics to Pinpoint Opportunities for Reducing Household Water Use http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000634

Cheng, Liang, Prof An, Hongwei, Dr Hydrodynamic forces on pipelines laid on rocky seabed Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical The aim of this project is to investigate the hydrodynamic forces on pipelines laid on rocky seabed. The effect of bed topography and porosity on hydrodynamic forces will be investigated through conducting a number of physical tests in the world unique O-tube testing facilities located at UWA and a wave flume located at Dalian University of Technology in China. The flow conditions examined include (1) steady currents, (2) waves and (3) combined waves and steady currents. Overseas travel scholarships will be provided for successful applicants of this project.

Chow, Shiao Huey, Dr Beemer, Ryan, Dr Orszaghova, Jana, Dr & Wolgamot, Hugh, Dr

15


Mooring of wave energy devices using plate anchors Disciplines: Civil, Oil & Gas Would you like to participate in the Woodside FutureLab RiverLab working on an innovative engineering solutions? This RiverLab project will pull together a multi-disciplinary team to study the response of plate anchors in mooring wave energy devices. This project is particularly relevant to meeting Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), with UWA located at the western coastline 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 anchoring system to anchor the floating energy device to the seabed. A solution could be the plate anchors. The performance of plate anchors relies on its embedment depth, which is dictated by the installation process, hence it is crucial to be able to predict the trajectory of the anchor during installation. Once installed, it is imperative to be able to predict the capacity of the anchor when subject to the environmental (wind, wave etc.) loading. This project will utilise the Swan River as a model wave basin by modelling the installation process of the anchor, and investigate the response of plate anchor as a complete system moored to a model floating device in the Swan River. Rather than require construction of a scaled wave energy device, the project will construct a resonating system which mimics the response of such a device. The project will require a team of three students working together on the following multi-disciplinary scopes: • Project 1: Design and response of the resonant floating oscillator and its mooring system (supervised by Jana Orszaghova, Hugh Wolgamot) The student will carry out a desk study to identify suitable test sites in the Swan River based on hydrodynamic considerations, design of the resonator (to match expected wave conditions) and its mooring system (taut mooring line with suitable restoring force). He/she will then be involved the deployment and field monitoring of the performance of the system. • Project 2: Installation of plate anchors (supervised by Ryan Beemer) The student will study the installation process of the plate anchor in the Swan River sediment. He/she will design and implement the instrumentation scheme that would monitor the anchor trajectory during installation. • Project 3: Mooring load on plate anchors (supervised by Shiaohuey Chow, Hugh Wolgamot) The student will work closely with the partner in Project 1 in identifying the test site, focussing on the geotechnical consideration. He/she will focus on investigating the required size of the anchor based on the capacity when subjected to the environmental loading. Interested students are encouraged to contact Dr Jana Orszaghova ([email protected]), Dr Hugh Wolgamot ([email protected]), Dr Ryan Beemer ([email protected]) or 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

16


Chua, Hui Tong, Prof High flux bright light synthesis of valuable nanomaterials Disciplines: Chemical 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 and WS2 nanoparticles from their naturally occuring MoS2 and WS2 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 Industrial waste heat distillation, desalination, bauxite residue remediation Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical This topic will have 2 sub-topics. 1. 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 for prepare for a career. Chemical engineering students are required. 2. 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 looking forward to investigate the prospect of substituting the traditional impoundment method as practiced by the industry. A mechanical/civil engineering student is good for this project.

Chua, Hui Tong, Prof Catalytic cracking of methane for graphitic carbons and hydrogen

17


Disciplines: Chemical This is an ongoing project with the UWA ASX-listed spin-off company, Hazer Group, to focus on producing graphene by cracking methane. There will be two aspects to this project. One is to work on fine-tuning the catalytic process to get consistent and good yield, another is to work on purifying the as-cracked carbons in favour of graphene and other carbon morphologies. The Hazer technology has been spun off from UWA lab and is now worth $20mil.

Chua, Hui Tong, Prof Geothermal energy applications Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical 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. The student needs to physically visit the Beatty Park Leisure Centre or other swimming pools to collect pool data - 1 student. This project has the potential of informing 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 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.

Doherty, James, Dr Grime, Andrew, Dr Strength and fatigue assessment of well conductions Pre-requisite skills: Soil and structural mechanics Disciplines: Civil The soil lateral stiffness (p-y response) has a strong influence on the overall strength and fatigue response of the well conductor. Current API/ISO guidance is provided only for generic ‘sand’ and ‘clay’ soils and recent research by BP indicates that the curves can be too soft for the small amplitude well conductor motions (Jeanjean 2009 OTC 20158). Previous work at UWA has shown that the p-y stiffness of a pile in soft soil can change significantly with time. Changes to the p-y stiffness over time not only affects the local curvature of the riser but also the fatigue hot spot location, both of which have a strong influence on the overall fatigue life. This project will involve conducting numerical simulations to assess the impact of changing soil stiffness on well conductor fatigue.

18


Doherty, James, Dr Performance of infrastructure on soft soils Pre-requisite skills: Geotechnical engineering Disciplines: Civil Using in-situ, laboratory and large scale field trial embankment data, this project will investigate the accuracy of numerical models for forecasting creep and consolidation settlement.

Doherty, James, Dr Lehane, Barry, Prof Back analysis of driven piles in sand Pre-requisite skills: Geotechnical engineering Disciplines: Civil This project will involve back analysis of piles driving into sand using three different methods, and subsequently tested under vertical and horizontal loads. The aim is to determine the influence of installation method on vertical and lateral pile behaviour.

Draper, Scott, Dr Measuring Surface Waves in the Swan River Pre-requisite skills: Preferably GENG 5501 (completed or taken concurrently) Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical This project will involve measurement and analysis of surface waves in the Swan River. One project will measure waves at several locations and compare these measurements with existing numerical model predictions. Comparison will be undertaken on the wave statistics and kinematics. The second project will measure wind near the water surface coincidently with the surface waves. The short term interactions between the wind and waves will then be explored. Both projects will build towards a better understanding of surface waves in the Swan River. This will be useful for the Woodside-UWA RiverLab project (www.bit.ly/riverlab), which aims to use the river as a giant wave basin to test floating structures.

Durham, Richard, Prof Industry topic based on your vacation work

19


Disciplines: Mining 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. Usually up to 50% of mining students get industry based thesis topics like this. They tend to be single student projects, but a multi-student topic can be considered.

Durham, Richard, Prof Electric Vehicles Underground (two student project) Disciplines: Mining “The use of electric vehicles in underground mining has many advantages when compared with the typical diesel vehicles. Primarily the removal of carcinogenic fumes. A thesis by Hewitson (2015) provided an economic comparison, based a single underground gold mine. He summarised the future work as: - a more detailed understanding of the ventilation requirements. Detailed ventilation simulation that accounts for the mine design and air flow characteristics should be conducted. - Refinement of the input data, such as clarifying the rimpull curves, production capacity and maintenance costs of electric vehicles should also be investigated. - Further development of electric solutions is also encouraged. Battery technology is rapidly advancing, meaning that larger more economically competitive machinery could be on the horizon. - Bucket capacity is the key downfall of electric loaders in this study, and so a focus on producing a large battery operated LHD is suggested. - Finally, it is recommended that this work be applied to existing operations to identify suitable targets for electric fleets. This can increase the rate of uptake, and research into electric fleets offering social, environmental and financial benefits. UWA's School of Population Health has done some research in the health issues associated with diesel fumes and mine workers, and there might be scope to liaise with the researchers there.”

Durham, Richard, Prof Price prediction (single student project) Disciplines: Mining A key issue with most mine planning is the prediction of the commodity price. Companies specialise in predicting these, but are they really any better than taking the current price, or a simple rolling mean? A back analysis of past performance is required

20


Durham, Richard, Prof 3D stereo-nets (single student project) Disciplines: Mining The classical stereo-net used in rock mechanics is a projection of a sphere (either equal angle or equal area) onto a 2D piece of paper, similar to the manner in which maps represent the earth’s surface. This is a necessary inaccuracy caused by the absence of the ability to view the data in its true 3D. However, nowadays with 3D software, it should be possible to reproduce all the mathematics of stereo-nets in a true 3D environment. Datamine software has had the ability to display rock mechanics data in a 3D display for 20 years, but without the necessary analysis tools.

Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Chen, Wensu, Dr GFRP RC Slabs and Beams under Dynamic Lateral Impact Pre-requisite skills: CIVL4403 "Structural concrete" Disciplines: Civil, Materials The use of Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcement as an alternative to steel for use in Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures has developed significantly in recent years. GFRP’s excellent corrosion resistance, high tensile-strength-to-weight ratio, nonmagnetic, nonconductive make it an excellent solution for projects requiring improved corrosion resistance or reduced maintenance costs. Despite a number of recent studies illustrating the effective use of GFRP rebars as longitudinal reinforcement for concrete compression members, the current international design codes such as ACI 440.1R-15 (2015), CAN/CSA S806 (2012), TR55 (2012), ISO 10406-1 (2015), and FIB (2007) do not recommend including GFRP reinforcement in the compression member capacity calculations. Recent Experimental research at UWA showed that GFRP RC columns are more ductile under their steel RC column counterparts. This project is a further step to compare the behaviour and design of such columns under dynamic loading. In this research project, laboratory tests will be conducted on RC slabs and beams reinforced under lateral impact.

Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof

21


Experiments to Repair Corroded Steel RC Columns Using GFRP Bars Pre-requisite skills: CIVL4403 "Structural concrete" Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum Deteriorating concrete infrastructure is costing the Australian economy millions of dollars every year. The use of Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcement as an alternative to repair steel Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures has developed significantly in recent years. GFRP’s excellent corrosion resistance, high tensile-strength-to-weight ratio, nonmagnetic, nonconductive make it an excellent solution for projects requiring improved corrosion resistance or reduced maintenance costs. Despite a number of recent studies illustrating the effective use of GFRP rebars as longitudinal reinforcement for concrete compression members, the current international design codes such as ACI 440.1R-15 (2015), CAN/CSA S806 (2012), TR55 (2012), ISO 10406-1 (2015), and FIB (2007) do not recommend including GFRP reinforcement in the compression member capacity calculations. Recent Experimental research at UWA showed that GFRP RC columns are more ductile under their steel RC column counterparts. This project is a further step to compare the behaviour and design of repaired columns under static loading.

Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Impact Tests for Rubberised and Geopolymer Concrete Material and Columns Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas, Petroleum The use of Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcement as an alternative to steel for use in Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures has developed significantly in recent years. GFRP’s excellent corrosion resistance, high tensile-strength-to-weight ratio, nonmagnetic, nonconductive make it an excellent solution for projects requiring improved corrosion resistance or reduced maintenance costs. Despite a number of recent studies illustrating the effective use of GFRP rebars as longitudinal reinforcement for concrete compression members, the current international design codes such as ACI 440.1R-15 (2015), CAN/CSA S806 (2012), TR55 (2012), ISO 10406-1 (2015), and FIB (2007) do not recommend including GFRP reinforcement in the compression member capacity calculations. Recent Experimental research at UWA showed that GFRP RC columns are more ductile under their steel RC column counterparts. This project is a further step to compare the behaviour and design of such columns under dynamic loading. In this research project, laboratory tests will be conducted on RC cylinders and columns reinforced with GFRP bars and with and without carbon fibre wrapping under lateral impact.

Faiello, Cosimo, Assoc/Prof

22


Sustainability applied to project management & engineering practice Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Materials, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas and 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 Integrating remote monitoring of tailings storage facilities with on-site measurements Pre-requisite skills: Bachelor of Engineering Science Disciplines: Civil, Electrical, Environmental, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Software Virtually every year there is one or more failure(s) of tailings storage facilities (TSFs) somewhere in the world. In November 2015 the Samarco TSF in Brazil failed, a failure that cost at least 17 lives and is expected to cost in excess of $5 billion when costs are finally tallied. Since then, there have been at least 3 other failures worldwide. To prevent future failures of this type requires vastly improved monitoring techniques. A previous Final Year project investigated the use of drones and satellites to monitor water on a TSF. This project will build on the outcomes of the previous project, using the drone that was acquired for field use. It will also implement procedures to link the data from the drone (and perhaps satellites) with in-situ instrumentation such as piezometers and settlement measurements, providing a real-time option for monitoring and managing a tailings facility.

French, Tim, Dr Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr. Reynolds, Mark, Prof Autonomous Transport Model Pre-requisite skills: Programming and basic electronics Disciplines: Electrical, Mechatronic, Software The aim of this project is to design and build a table top model that can support investigations of autonomous vehicle networks. The model will consist of bluetooth

23


controlled vehicles, raspberry pi microcomputers, a data projector and a machine vision camera. This is a complex large scale project, but the first phase will focus on building a basic control loop that can detect the location of different vehicles, and based on this pass driving instructions onto those vehicles. Later phases and projects will involve modelling observability and implementing traffic routing algorithms.

Fridjonsson, Einar, Dr Metaxas, Peter, Dr Johns, Michael, Prof Development of bench-top cancer detection technologies Pre-requisite skills: NB: this project DOES NOT require biomedical experience. Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical The intended outcome of this project is to pave routes towards the development of sophisticated technologies for rapid and economical diagnosis and monitoring of cancer. Benefiting from links with medical scientists, the project will focus on the testing and development of bench-top NMR techniques and novel magnetic sensor devices for detecting cancer bio-markers via magnetic "tags" (functionalised nanoparticles).

Fridjonsson, Einar, Dr Johns, Mike, Prof Industrial and Oilfield Water Management Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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 (formation) water which needs to be discharged back into the sea. We are currently developing technologies to both monitor ppm oil contamination of this discharge water such that it is compliant with environmental legislation, as well as the use of novel NMR-based 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 NMR based clamp-on monitoring technology, as well as, process modelling and optimisation.

Project are also 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, and the effective separation of frequently encountered and troublesome water-in-crude oil emulsions into their constituent parts.

24


Gong, Peijun, Research Associate Sampson, Danuta, Research Associate at LEI Sampson, David, Prof OBEL: Methods for non-invasive optical imaging of blood vessels Pre-requisite skills: Materials, mechanical systems or mechatronics, OR signal processing and computer programming OR both Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Computer, Materials, Mechanical, Software. 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.

Gong, Peijun, Research Associate Sampson, David, Professor OBEL: Pushing imaging into the UV Pre-requisite skills: Interest in optics (but no prior knowledge expected), instrumentation or experimental systems and good hands-on skills Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Computer, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software UV and narrow band visible light provide exciting opportunities to build contemporary endoscopes and microscopes that may make cancer more readily detectable. This project will investigate optical engineering of instruments that have a fundamentally new take on the age old problem of contrast. Build your own UV or narrow-band microscope or endoscope and put it to work.

Graham, Brendan, Dr Natural Biopolymers for Corrosion and Scale Control in Subsea Pipelines Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas

25


Corrosion is an ever present problem in subsea pipelines, especially where water and carbon dioxide can react to form corrosive acids. Traditional mitigation procedures involve injections of various industrial chemicals to control the corrosion and others to control scale formation where heavy ions, (Ca2+, Ba2+ Sr2+) precipitate on the pipe walls as carbonate salts and restrict the pipe flow. These salts can also cause problems in surface production equipment. This project is investigating the use of renewable natural biopolymers to control scale formation in pipelines allowing for novel corrosion control systems to be employed. This project is fully funded by Chevron and has already resulted in a patent being issued due to the successful initial experiments. The project will involve a number of different research areas to complete the overarching goal of optimising the use of this biopolymer so it can be deployed in the field. Research areas will involve (but not limited to), a) thermal stability, b) chemical characterisation, c) pipe flow studies, d) corrosion studies through Linear Polarisation Resistance Monitoring e) materials compatibility measurements, both structural materials and other associated injected chemicals. This work is suitable for both Chemical and Mechanical engineers and does not involve hard chemical knowledge.

Hassan, Ghulam Mubashar, Dr MacNish, Cara, Prof Optimization of cracks in deformation monitoring Pre-requisite skills: Programming experience (including Matlab) required Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software Visual monitoring is important in a range of applications from security to mineral exploration to space exploration. Structural health monitoring (SHM), which seeks to recognise very small changes in natural and man-made structures, is important for maintenance and disaster prevention. Traditional techniques for SHM assume a fixed sensor (camera, radar, etc). In future, more flexible and comprehensive monitoring will be available using moving sensors (drones). This project seeks to combine fine-grained image analysis techniques suitable for fixed sensors with adaptive search techniques suitable for larger scale movement, with a goal of observing small-scale changes from a moving platform.

Hu, Pan, Dr Bienen, Britta, Dr Cassidy, Mark, Prof Numerical modelling of jack-up foundation installation in subsoils Disciplines: Civil, Mining, Oil & Gas

26


In offshore oil and gas fields, the majority of drillings in shallow water are performed from self-elevating mobile jack-up rigs. The soil beneath the rig fails as its foundation is loaded during preloading until equilibrium is achieved at the end of the preloading operation. This project will carry out numerical modelling to investigate the mechanism of the above challenging problems. It provides opportunity of learning the software ABAQUS, though the student familiar with it is preferred. Please feel free to contact Dr Pan Hu ([email protected]) for more information.

Hu, Yuxia, Prof Leek, Colin, Mr (City of Canning) Pavement Engineering Disciplines: Civil Pavement design can follow the design guidelines by Austroad. However, some design aspects need to consider local conditions and climates. There are three projects proposed for these aspects: 1. The effects of pavement age and rainfall on FWD (falling weight deflectometer) data ( 1 student) 2. TMI map for metropolitan area of Perth (1 student) 3. Road trials using recycled concrete subbase and in situ bitumen emulsion stabilised limestone base (2 students)

Huang, David, Professor 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 wireless communication services provided by public telecom operators often cannot satisfy (or can only partly satisfy) the needs of open-pit mines. For example, the operations of open pit mines require more broadband uplink wireless communications to support automated mining and remote operations. As a result, mining companies often need to set up and maintain their own private wireless networks. 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. On the other hand, quickly deployable portable wireless nodes (e.g. a repeater or a portable base station) are critical for providing wireless services to the mining industry, as they can be used to quickly adapt to the change of a pit, extend the radio coverage, and cover black spots. By taking this project, you can choose the following research topics (but not limited to):

27


Algorithm design for iterative detection and channel estimation at the repeater or base station.

Enhanced signal processing at the base station for uplink transmission using turbo equalization.

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, Prof Build Your Own Digital Communication System Using USRP Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic Can you imagine using a single gadget to produce and receive all the possible radio signals (e.g., digital radio, TV signal, your mobile phone signal, to mention a few)? The USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral), aided with a general purpose computer and the “software‐defined radio” technology, can achieve this task. So using the USRP, you can easily build your own radio station. Potentially, you can also use the box to eavesdrop your mates’ mobile phone conversation, though we do not recommend you to do so. Potential projects include but not limited to: • Implement a digital radio receiver using USRP • Implement a TV receiver using USRP • Implement a digital communication system using USRP

Huynh, Du, Dr Study of state-of-art techniques for analysing crowded scenes Disciplines: Software It is of great interest to automatically analyze crowded scenes in computer vision research. However, crowded scenes pose many challenges because of severe occlusion issues. In recent years, researchers working in crowded scene analysis have focused on crowd motion pattern learning, crowd behaviour and activity analysis, and anomaly detection. A typical survey paper can be found at the website below: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.01812.pdf

28


In this project, the student is expected to do a detailed literature review in crowded scene analysis and compare two state-of-art techniques using some standard benchmark datasets. The student taking the project should have good background in computer vision and machine learning. As some the project will involve programming codes, the student should also have strong programming skills in Matlab/C/Python.

Iu, Herbert, Prof Fernando, Tyrone, Prof South West Energy Experience (SWEE) Pre-requisite skills: Matlab, knowledge of renewable energy Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic The Shire of Manjimup are in the process of delivering the South West Energy Experience (SWEE) – a new entry statement building for the town of Manjimup including a Museum, Café and Visitor Servicing Centre. The primary role of SWEE is to house the State’s energy collection, formerly in the Western Power museum. However the aim for this building is to not only display and interpret the history of energy but also showcase current energy developments and the future of energy. The building has been designed and engineered to a 50% design completion level which includes all of the essential components for delivering the project (e.g. requirements for the museum, café etc.) but leaves room for the Contractor (to be appointed this year) to deliver the project within budget whilst meeting the objectives. During the 50% design completion mechanical and electrical engineering plans and specification were developed (as well as others), which included a PV system to supply majority (if not all) power required and features such as an Energy Monitoring Display System that visitors can see as a component of the exhibition. The detail of this engineering is minimal, and aimed to help progress the project to a Design and Construct Tender process. The aim is for the building to be ‘off-the-grid’ but bring connected to grid in case of failure or emergencies. Therefore power generation that is equivalent to the buildings energy profile, inclusive of power storage. The Shire wish to engage final year students that are equipped to do a full design review of the buildings designs and drawings, and provide recommendations for the buildings energy systems including full specification of recommended products. The final product from the students is to be a practical solution for the Shire of Manjimup which can be implemented, which means the design and products must be robust, within budget, easy and affordable to repair and replace and has a demonstrated long life cycle. The selected students are encouraged to work closely with the Shire of Manjimup’s project manager to ensure all design solution considerations are suitable for the Shire’s needs and capacity. The aim of this partnership is to not only provide the most practical and innovative solution for powering the South West Energy Experience but also to show case the technological developments in the renewable energy industry.

Johns, Mike, Prof

29


May, Eric, Prof Carbon Sequestration Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas Western Australia has several major offshore gas assets containing significant quantities of carbon dioxide. Scenarios for dealing with this CO2 must be developed before these gas fields can be developed. One scenario involves the re-injection of carbon dioxide produced from one reservoir into the extremities of a different natural reservoir for the purpose of both CO2 disposal and enhanced gas recovery. However, such a strategy is only viable if the probability of breakthrough by the re-injected CO2 to the producing wells is small. Simulating reliably this novel reservoir production scenario requires an improvement in our fundamental understanding of the hydrodynamic behaviour of supercritical CO2 in heterogeneous gas and water-saturated rock. Research projects are available measuring this behaviour for its inclusion into relevant field simulations.

Jones, Nicole, Dr Internal wave dynamics on the Australian Northwest Shelf Pre-requisite skills: Desirable: Matlab skills (or equivalent); Strong interest in fluid mechanics Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Oil & Gas Internal waves are a ubiquitous feature of the Australia Northwest Shelf. They have a significant impact on the design of offshore infrastructure as they often provide the strongest near-bed currents. Furthermore, they cause vertical mixing and cross-shelf transport that delivers nutrients to support primary productivity. This project will examine 2.5 y of existing field observations to better characterize, understand and increase predictability of internal waves.

Jones, Nicole, Dr Rayson, Matt, Dr Riverlab-Swan River physical dynamics project Pre-requisite skills: Desirable: Matlab skills (or equivalent); Strong interest in fluid mechanics Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental The RiverLab – a collaboration between Woodside and The University of Western Australia – is a unique initiative aimed at developing innovations in offshore engineering via research, education and outreach. http://www.oceans.uwa.edu.au/collaborations/woodside-futurelab/riverlab This project will explore the physical dynamics of importance within the Swan River using existing and new field observations. For example:

30


1) Salt fluxes in the Swan River- quantifying the movement of the fresh and marine water in the estuary using new observations. 2) Turbulent mixing in the Swan River- developing techniques to observe turbulence using new instrumentation.

Ju, Li, Prof Blair, David, Winthrop Prof Zhao, Chunnong, Prof Suppression of ultrasonic acoustic modes in gravitational wave detectors Pre-requisite skills: Some experience in finite element modelling and excellent understanding of vibration and acoustics. Practical skills of test instrument. Other software such as Methematica and Matlab would be helpful. Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic The first successful detection of gravitational waves recently gave humanity the opportunity to listen to gravitational sounds from across the universe. Detectors are masterworks of optical and mechanical engineering but there is enormous opportunity for improvements. These projects relate to the suppression of ultrasonic modes in massive mirror test masses. They involve modelling and testing of resonant absorbers that consist of small resonant structures with eddy current energy absorption. The projects are part of the research for the Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Karnowski, Karol, Research Fellow Li, Qingyun, PhD Student OBEL: Optical engineering of novel components for polarization Pre-requisite skills: Interest in optics (but no prior knowledge expected), mechanics, modelling in solid works and good hands-on skills Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical We developed advanced prototype of polarization sensitive imaging system providing additional contrast, promising for instance in cancer diagnosis. The aim of this project is to improve existing system by providing novel optical solutions and/or reducing current system size bringing this technique towards handheld, clinical applications. Come and talk to us about this project.

Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof

31


Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Analytical and Numerical modeling of steel structures with and without strengthening using CFRP Disciplines: Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining, Oil & Gas In this project, analytical and numerical models will be developed for design presupposes for steel structures reinforced with CFRP. Steel structures all around the world including bridges, offshore platforms and mining infrastructure require retrofitting. Conventional methods for repairing and strengthening steel structures has generally always been to cut out and replace plating, or to attach additional external steel plates that are bulky, heavy, difficult to install and prone to corrosion and fatigue. In addition, welding or bolted connection repair works are not a favorable solution due to further fatigue issues, and extensive installation time respectively. The superior mechanical, fatigue, high strength to density ratio and in-service properties of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites make them excellent candidates for strengthening and retrofitting of steel structures.

Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Elchalakani, Mohamed, Dr Numerical Modellling of Single and Double Skin Columns filled with Rubberised Concrete Disciplines: Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Oil & Gas In Australian modern construction, concrete filled double skin 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.

Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Tasker, Lee, Mr Attar, Mostafa, Dr

32


Comparing modeled strain changes of a concrete wall experiencing increasing load, with measured single-channel Ground Penetrating Radar data Pre-requisite skills: Programming skills Disciplines: Civil, Mining, Software The objective is to observe if there are similarities in the modeled strain distribution of a concrete wall that is experiencing increasing load and the measured amplitude response of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) data collected during the loading of a wall with similar properties and dimensions. The theoretical 3D strain distribution of the concrete wall should be modeled for an incrementally increasing point load. The 3D model will require 2D visualisation (e.g. slices) of strain distribution through the modeled wall, at specific depth intervals. The 2D strain-slices will be compared to previously measured 2D GPR data amplitude distributions at the same depth intervals. GPR data can be provided to the student if they would like to visualise the GPR data with their own code.

Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Tasker, Lee, Mr Attar, Mostafa, Dr Comparing modeled strain changes of a concrete wall experiencing increasing load, with measured 3D Multi-channel Ground Penetrating Radar data Disciplines: Civil, Mining, Software The objective is to observe if there are similarities in the modeled strain distribution of a concrete wall that is experiencing increasing load and the measured amplitude response of 3D Multi-channel Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) data collected during wall loading. The theoretical 3D strain distribution of the concrete wall should be modeled for an incrementally increasing point load. The 3D model will require 2D visualisation (e.g. slices) of strain distribution through the modeled wall, at specific depth intervals. The 2D strain-slices will be compared to measured 2D GPR amplitude slices, taken through the 3D data-set, at the same depth intervals. The student can assist with designing and collection of engineering data for the experiment (e.g. measuring changes in strain etc.). The measured engineering data can be used as input parameters for models created by the student.

33


The student can also assist with the data acquisition of 3D Multi-channel GPR during the loading of the concrete wall. 3D Multi-channel GPR data can be provided to the student if they would also like to visualise GPR data with their own code.

Karrech, Ali, Assoc/Prof Tasker, Lee, Mr Attar, Mostafa, Dr Finite Element Modeling of a Concrete Wall Subjected to Bending Disciplines: Civil The purpose of the proposed project is to model a reinforced concrete wall subjected to bending moment. A general purpose finite element (FE) software will be used to mimic an experiment that has been carried out at the UWA structures laboratory. The model will be quality-ensured through simple convergence and validation studies. In particular, the validation step will include a comparison between the FE results and existing Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) data that have been collected during the experimental monitoring of the wall.

Keating, Adrian, Assoc/Prof Putrino, Gino, Assoc/Prof Sugar cube sized energy harvesting for tracking Pre-requisite skills: Much of the work leverages electrical engineering, design skills, instrumentation and data collection and analysis Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic This project has significant industrial interest. Students will consider energy harvesting technologies, specifically to harvest the heat or vibration from a vehicle's engine. We need to create extremely small sensors than can be attached onto a vehicle allowing it to continuously return data. All students working of this project will assist in the development of the basic energy harvesting circuit and associated system are they are interconnected. System integration will require connecting the energy harvestor to a wireless radio, accelerometer and/or GPS transponder.

Keating, Adrian, Assoc/Prof Parish, Gia, Prof

34


Materials made from thin air - porous film properties Pre-requisite skills: Much of the work leverages electrical engineering, instrumentation and data collection and analysis Disciplines: Electrical, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic This project investigates how the addition of nanometer sized pores in a materal can alter the mechanical, electrical, thermal and optical properties. Such "meta"-materials are useful in 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. Thermal characteristics is required a thermal imaging system to be developed and existing thermal characterization of devices is required. Electrical characterization of noise in these micron thick films is also required based on preliminary results obtained.

Kennywell John, Ass/Prof Coward David, Ass/Prof Howell Eric, ARC DECRA Fellow Robotic telescope smart scheduling algorithms Pre-requisite skills: Python programming Disciplines: Mechatronic, Software The robotic Zadko Telescope will be used to develop and test algorithms for space debris tracking. The algorithms will be used to test the sensitivity of the CCD for imaging small Earth orbiting space debris. In addition a parallel project will develop telescope scheduling software that is linked to alerts sent from NASA and LIGO. The software will be optimised and linked to a commercial robotic telescope software package. The project will play an active role in understanding rare and unpredictable astronomical transient events.

Kim, Youngho, Research Assoc Hossain, M. Shazzad, Assoc/Prof Investigation of Dynamically Installed Anchors (DIAs) Pre-requisite skills: Basic knowledge of geotechnical engineering principles. Disciplines: Civil, Oil & Gas Dynamically Installed Anchors (DIAs) are a recent type of mooring technology that have been shown to provide a cost-effective alternative to other forms of anchoring system in deep water clayey sediments. These anchors are released from a designated height above the seafloor, causing the anchor to penetrate into the seabed by the kinetic energy obtained through ‘free-fall’ and through the self-weight of the anchor.

35


The project will investigate the behaviour of DIAs in clay at different impact velocities and soil conditions using Finite Element Method (FEM) and theoretical solutions. This project would be suitable for students interested in practical applications of geotechnical engineering, particularly when applied to the deep sea developments.

Kimiaei, Mehrdad, Ass/Prof. Machine Learning Algorithms for Damage Detection of Fixed Offshore Platforms Pre-requisite skills: Familiarity with basic dynamic analysis and offshore engineering concepts (enrolled in CIVL5505 or already passed it) and structural / mechanical engineering background are necessary. Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical Structural Health monitoring (SHM) is one of the most powerful and well established tools for structural integrity management of civil infrastructures. It consists of continues, periodic or occasional data acquisition from dynamic response of the structure through a sensor network and then post processing the data to detect possible structural damages. Machine Learning (ML) is one of the techniques for statistical modelling to analyse the distribution of the extracted features. MLAs have shown high sensitivity and accuracy in damage detection of complex structural systems. There are different established ML methodologies with wide range of applicability and classification performance in detecting damages. Main aim of this research, defined as a part of Woodside RiverLab project in UWA, is to investigate different ML algorithms for damage detection of fixed offshore platforms which are always under time varying environmental conditions. It consists of experimental (monitoring and data acquisition of a sample frame in the Swan river) and numerical works (post processing the data and then using ML algorithms). This project is suitable for two final year, preferably MPE, civil/mechanical engineering students who are interested in combination of experimental and numerical works with main focus on dynamics of structural systems and signal processing.

Kostylev, Mikhail, Prof Ivanov, Eugene, Prof Microwave interferometric instrument for low-noise high-precision measurements of super-low levels of microwave absorption Pre-requisite skills: knowledge of electronic engineering and/or computer control

36


Disciplines: Electrical, Software The microwave interferometric instrument recently developed at School of Physics @ UWA is able to perform unique low-noise measurements of microwave power absorption of extremely low magnitude [1]. This instrument is largely used by Spintronics and Magnetisation Dynamics Group (Kostylev) and Frequency Standards and Metrology Group (Ivanov) for their experimental activities. The goal of the proposed project is to bring the instrument closer to commercialisation. The students will design proper packaging for the instrument, fabricate, and commission a prototype of the instrument in the form ready for commercialisation. They will also test the fabricated instrument to determine its operational characteristics to be included into the data sheet for it. Sub-projects for two students within this topic are anticipated. One will be responsible for hardware design and implementation. The other one will work on developing computer control for the instrument. [1] E. N. Ivanov and M. Kostylev, ArXiv1402.3459 (2014).

Lehane, Barry, Prof The effects of impact frequency on the axial and lateral response of displacement piles in sand Pre-requisite skills: CIVL4401 Disciplines: Civil This is an ongoing project motivated by the needs of the offshore wind industry to reduce noise effects during pile installation. The students will assist in field scale pile testing at Shenton Park and use the information obtained to assess the effects of the mode of pile installation on the axial and lateral response. The research will also involve examination of a range of different predictive approaches and a comparison of these with the Shenton Park tests and other recently completed tests in Europe.

Lehane, Barry, Prof Doherty, James, Dr An optical method for strain measurement in triaxial tests Disciplines: Civil This project will explore the use of the PIV technique to measure strains locally on triaxial samples and hence allow cost-effective and efficient measurement of the stiffness characteristics of soil.

Lehane, Barry, Prof

37


Fourie, Andy, Prof Liquefaction under earthquake loading Disciplines: Civil The students will initially use proprietary software designed to predict the response of horizontally layered soils to earthquake loading and compared the response observed to that seen in experiments with the new shaking table housed in the structures lab.

Lei, Wen, Prof Semiconductor Nanosensors Pre-requisite skills: Required background: Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Material Science, Physics, and Chemistry 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: (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;

38


(4) Nanoscale material and device characterisation;

Leong, Yee-Kwong, Prof Floc fragmentation in Taylor Couette Flow Cell Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental Flocculation is an essential separation process in mineral processing and wastewater treatment. In this study polymer-bridged kaolin flocs were fragmented in a Taylor-Couette flow cell. The particle size distribution was measured as a function of fragmentation time. The parameter to be evaluated are shear rate or rotational speed, and polymeric flocculant properties. Population balance software will be used to model the temporal PSD data.

Leong, Yee-Kwong, Prof Laponite-bentonite composite slurry rheology and pipeline transportation of dilute clay slurry Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental Laponite and bentonite are swelling clays that displayed complex rheological behaviour in gel form. They displayed significant time-dependent gelation properties at very low solids concentration. The yield stress can reach several hundred Pa at a few weight percent solids. The study aims to answer the question: is the rheological behaviour being significantly different for the mixed clay gel or does mixing the clays produced a more processable gel.

Leong, Yee-Kwong, Prof Solubility of salts in high density liquid Disciplines: Chemical, Materials High density liquid is commonly used to separate minerals of different density in ore for chemical analysis. Current aqueous high density liquids are not high enough to do the job. The project aim to look at the effect of soluble salts on the density of these liquids.

Li, Jianxin, Dr AI Hasan Haldar, Nur, Mr

Location-aware social media sentiment analysis

39


Prerequisite skills: Strong web development skills with python and matlab experience, independent learner, strong data analytical skills Disciplines: Software 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/ .

In this project, we have developed the models to label users’ location. The FYP applicant will co-work with one of our PhD students in the project. The FYP applicant will mainly focus on the location-aware sentiment analysis based on the existing sentiment analytical tools or models.

Li, Jianxin, Dr Cai, Taotao, Mr

Identifying dense traffic flow in SmartRider data Disciplines: Software In this project, we would like to learn the passengers’ travel behavior pattern from the smartrider dataset. To do this, graph connectivity, density detection, clustering techniques like DBScan can be applied to consider the individual routes and the region-based frequent common routes. The final goal is to identify and discover the congestion in the road traffic networks, and measure the quality of the existing road networks and the current bus traffic service. To be able to apply, you should have strong programming skills in Python and know a little data structure in graph. It is a plus merit if you have experience to do data visualization.

40


Liu, Yinong, Prof Characterization of corrosion monitoring probes Pre-requisite skills: MECH4428 Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Mining Corrosion probes are widely used to monitor corrosion and structure integrity of pipelines, reaction vessels, equipment and infrastructure by many industries, such as oil and gas, mining, chemical processing and transportation industries. This project aims to characterize the performances of three common industrial corrosion monitoring probes. Such knowledge are of direct benefit to the industry making use of these probes.

Liu, Yinong, Prof Mechanical performance of a bio-inspired metal nanocomposite Pre-requisite skills: love of knowledge and good ability of logical thinking Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Mechanical Inspired by the unique structure of nacre, we designed a metallic nanocomposite containing a phase transforming matrix and a hard intermetallic compound in lamellar configuration. The topic of this project is materials engineering. It involves metallography (microscopic examination), mechanical testing, and good understanding of solid phase transformations in metals. This project applies the knowledge of nanoscience to engineer applicable engineering materials, and is intellectually challenging and much in depth of materials science. Some of the materials we have design are breaking many records of metal materials and we hope this could be another breakthrough. I highly recommend this project if you have aspiration to continue your intellectual development into higher degree research.

Male, Sally, Dr Development and trial of virtual work integrated learning modules Pre-requisite skills: An interest in engineering practice, good communication skills Disciplines: Civil, Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Mechanical. Students of accredited engineering programs in Australia must be exposed to 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. The new final year students will develop and test virtual WIL modules, building

41


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, and roles of engineers, among others.

Martyniuk, Mariusz, Prof Lei, Wen, Prof Umana-Membreno, Gilberto, Assoc/Prof Investigation of mechanical properties of mercury cadmium selenide thin films via nanoindentation Pre-requisite skills: physics/engineering/materials science Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical. 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 Graham, Brendan, Dr Stanwix, Paul, Dr Hughes, Thomas, Dr Al Ghafri, Saif, Dr Natural Gas & LNG Properties Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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. In addition, LNG production systems are over-engineered because the predictions of process simulators are unreliable, and this has significant implications for the cost of modern plants, especially FLNG. More generally, the natural gas industry needs new physical property data at high-pressures and low temperatures to develop more efficient processes capable of handling more problematic gas reserves. These projects aim 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.

42


McCormick, Paul, Prof Photovoltaic Energy Systems Disciplines: Mechanical 1. Elimination of fluctuations in battery current caused by clear/cloudy solar transitions. 2. Solar battery characterization • Comparison of flow and Li-ion batteries • Effect of current fluctuations on battery performance • Characterization of battery degradation 3. Solar modeling • Characterization of instantaneous solar radiation • Comparison of one-minute and one-second radiation measurements • Modelling of battery current fluctuations 4. Applications • Optimization of remote stand-alone solar system with Diesel backup. • EV/solar system o Economics and practicality of using EV batteries to augment home storage • Analysis of Blockchain solar systems • Demand side analysis

McFerran, John, Dr Ivanov, Eugene. Prof. Auto-locking systems for laser frequency control with cold atoms Pre-requisite skills: Some electronics and circuit design background Disciplines: Electrical UWA Physics has in operation an ultra-cold-atom optical clock that relies on multiple lasers for its operation. These lasers use electronic control systems to stabilize their frequency. However, the control systems need to be further advanced by including auto-relocking capabilities. The student(s) will be given necessary design software to develop the new circuits, after which the circuits will be printed, populated and tested with atomic clock laser systems.

Mian, Ajmal, Assoc/Prof Gilani, Syed, Dr

43


Automatic apparent age estimation and gender classification from facial images using deep learning Disciplines: Electrical and Software Automatic age and gender classification have 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, age estimation and gender 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 for this purpose are available at https://data.vision.ee.ethz.ch/cvl/rrothe/imdb-wiki/ .

Mian, Ajmal, Assoc/Prof Gilani, Syed, Dr

Automatic pedestrian detection in videos Disciplines: Electrical and Software 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, Prof Computer simulation of brain deformations for epilepsy treatment Disciplines: Mechanical, Civil This project is in collaboration with Computational Radiology Laboratory http://crl.med.harvard.edu, Harvard Medical School.

Miller, Karol, Prof

44


Computer simulation of breast deformation for image-guided surgery Disciplines: Mechanical, Civil This project is in collaboration with PERK Lab, Queen’s University http://perk.cs.queensu.ca/ .

Milne, Ian, Dr Whelan, James, Dr Wolgamot, Hugh, Dr & Zhao, Wenhua, Dr Numerical Simulations of FPSO Mooring Integrity Pre-requisite skills: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas, Petroleum Disciplines: Fluid mechanics, Dynamics, Statistical analysis, Computer programming Mooring system integrity is critical to the successful operation of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO’s). Detection of mooring line failure is difficult as it is costly to inspect the mooring chains and inspection can only occur periodically. The objective of this project is to undertake numerical simulation of an FPSO mooring system to identify the change in behaviour of the mooring response between an intact and 1-line removed mooring system. The research is likely to involve the following steps: (i) Review of existing mooring and FPSO model; (ii) static analysis of intact and 1-line removed mooring system; (iii) Analysis of the natural period of the mooring system; (iv) Analysis under selected metocean combinations; (v) analysis over a long term time history of metocean conditions and (vi) statistical analysis to quantify changes in mooring response to support prediction of mooring line failure. The analysis is focused on the performance of mooring system in ambient conditions. The project being run as part of an ongoing mooring reliability research stream under the Offshore Floating Facilities Hub and the Woodside FutureLab RiverLab The project will be of attractive to a student with an interest in offshore oil and gas sector, fluid mechanics, statistical analysis and programming. The project is academically challenging and is most suitable for students with a distinction or above average.

Nener, Brett, Prof Atmospheric scintillation over short distances Pre-requisite skills: C, C+ and MATLAB programming necessary, Physics desirable Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software There is a world-wide trend to use light to communicate point-to-point over short ranges. Light has a larger bandwidth than wireless and is also more secure. However, one of the

45


major limitations is the effect of the atmosphere itself on the signal-to-noise ratio due to scintillation effects. Code currently exists to simulate this effect. This project will involve the improvement of the code and the testing against known results.

Nener, Brett, Prof Atmospheric scintillation over long distances Pre-requisite skills: C, C+ and MATLAB programming necessary, Physics desirable Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software Currently communications between ground and satellites is performed using microwaves. However, with the rapidly increasing need to more data, the bandwidth is no big enough. Currently lasers are being tested to perform the transmission of data. However, the large distances involved and the effect of the atmospheric scintillation has an impact on the signal-to-noise ratio. This project involves writing code to simulate long distance scintillation effects on laser light.

Phan, Anthony, Research Assoc Karnowski, Karol, Research Fellow OBEL: New generation of microscope in a needle Pre-requisite skills: Interest in instrumentation or experimental systems or 3D modeling or electronics or mechatronics or mechanical systems and good hands-on skills. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Computer, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. Our microscope in a needle won The Australian newspaper’s Innovation Challenge in 2015. We are looking for passionate students who would like to participate in the prototyping of next generation needle microscopes. Possible projects include: a robotic-like probe with microscope objective and MEMS scanner; a robotic, ultra-light optical fibre-based probe with piezo-actuated scanning mechanism for prolonged in vivo measurements; development of a UV, or narrow band imaging needle, development of a concentric scanner to keep the needle scan rotation perfectly axial; or development of algorithms to correct for non-uniform rotation distortion. Within this project, we can accommodate students with different background and interests, from 3D designing, optical instrumentation, electronics, and mechatronics; from optical modeling, through designing, making and experimental testing. Come and talk to us about this project.

Ravanbakhsh, Mehdi, Dr – Mapizy CEO Mian, Ajmal, Professor, Ramzi, Pouria, Dr and Mapizy CTO

46


Automatic solar panel extraction in aerial images Prerequisite skills: Programming, image processing, computer vision Disciplines: Civil, Computer, Environmental, Oil and Gas, Software 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 learning technology followed by their delineation through computer vision methods and techniques.

Reynolds, Mark, Prof Fernando, Tyrone, Prof Iu, Herbert, Prof Genetic Algorithms and Linear Programming for Optimisation of Power Distribution Networks Prerequisite skills: The student(s) should be competent programmers (Python, or Matlab preferred but Java or C++ ok). Disciplines: EE, Software Western Power is responsible for distribution and transmission of electrical power within the metropolitan areas and rural areas, which are collectively called the “South-West Interconnected System (SWIS)”. The network underwent a very rapid ad-hoc expansion between 1960 and 1980, and now the infrastructure needs to be replaced and updated over the coming decades. This is a great opportunity for rethinking it, and redesign as well as replacement. Instead of replacing all the ageing equipment piece by piece, standalone power supplies and microgrids can be employed to effectively disconnect isolated individuals and cluster of individuals from the main distribution network. Microgrids are locally generated power systems, with a great opportunity to use renewables, which can reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions. This project is to help with finding the ideal locations and arrangements for microgrids which has become an important planning question. AI and other optimisation techniques such as Genetic

47


Algorithms and Linear Programming will be employed and compared. Interest in other algorithms such as shortest paths, clustering and bin-packing will be useful.

Reynolds, Mark, Prof While, Lyndon, Dr

Genetic Algorithms for Engineering Applications Prerequisite skills: Successful completion of at least a first programming unit in Matlab, Python or a similar language. Disciplines: EE, Mining and Software Genetic and Evolutionary algorithms are general techniques for optimisation and search problems. The approach is inspired by the biological processes of natural selection and has successfully been applied to many problems across Engineering. These projects are to develop and tune specific algorithms to tackle some contemporary problems in applications such as haultruck despatch, mine train car dumper assignment, crew scheduling, delivery routing, power distribution and maintenance.

Reynolds, Mark, Prof Sun, Chao Dr

Simulations with Autonomous Vehicles

Prerequisite skills: Programming, preferably Python or C++ but not a must; Excel data analysis. Disciplines: EE, Mining and Software There has been a lot of hype and hope on Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). However, there is little research on what impact they might have on the transport system at a macro level. For example, many are hoping for a large increase on road capacities because of the precision driving capacity of the machines. However, current research suggests that AVs are going to have limited impact if they are not connected. Other researchers have suggested that the performance is at the cost of passenger comfort. If parameters of AVs have to be tuned down to take care of the latter, then the whole system might suffer. Currently, microsimulation is the best way to answer these questions. Students will create customised AV simulation models and use those models for scenario testing.

Sampson, David, Prof Karnowski, Karol, Research Fellow OBEL: Nanoscope in a Needle

48


Pre-requisite skills: Interest in one of instrumentation, experimental systems, mechatronics, and good hands-on skills Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Chemical & Process, Mechanical, Mechatronic. Our group has developed the award-winning microscope-in-a-needle, which can image deep in tissue at 10 micrometer resolution to a millimeter distance away from the needle. Now we are developing next-generation needles that can image on the nanoscale, so that they can see individual cells. This could be developing a needle-based optical fibre Raman system, a confocal microscope in a needle, or a mechanical properties imager. The nanoscope could be applied to anything from breast cancer to brain surgery to basic biology. This project will investigate aspects of the system design and explore issues in implementing it in optical fibre. It requires an interest in doing optical engineering of an advanced photonics-based instrument. Come and talk to us about this project.

Sampson, David, Prof Rigby, Paul, CMCA Karnowski, Karol, Research Fellow OBEL: Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) Pre-requisite skills: Interest in instrumentation or experimental systems, programming, data acquisition, data processing, interfacing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Chemical & Process, Computer, Mechanical, Software. One of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014 has moved on to light-sheet microscopy, declaring it to be even better than his Nobel effort! We have built a Selective Plane Illumination Microscope (SPIM) based on an open source. We now need to refine it, tune it up and develop the software to enable it to be put to work. Expert microscopist and applications specialist Paul Rigby from Optical Microscopy at the UWA core facility CMCA is keen to see it put to work in real projects. Come and talk to us about this project.

Schediwy, Sascha, Dr Gozzard, David, Mr Tobar, Michael, Prof Free-Space Laser Links for Space Applications Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic 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

49


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 incorporate a new custom-built, continuous-wave laser system with a technique to actively supress atmospheric path-length fluctuations and test it over a free-space link in the laboratory at UWA. This will then be deployed at the Mount Stromlo Satellite Laser Ranging Observatory for atmospheric trials. This work will be conducted in collaboration with the Australian National University and the Technical University of Munich.

Schediwy, Sascha, Dr Gozzard, David, Mr Synchronisation of the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical 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 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, to also distribute high-quality timing signals to each antenna. The student will work as part of the international SKA consortium for ‘Synchronisation and Data Transport (SaDT)’ 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 in our UWA laboratory and tested on Perth’s iVEC and 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 SKA Signal and Data Transport Consortium, the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Schediwy, Sascha, Dr Dodson, Richard, Dr Robotham, Aaron, Dr

50


Towards the Direct Imaging of Exoplanets Pre-requisite skills: Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic 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 interferomters, 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, Berkley’s Infrared Spatial Interferometer, and combining this with recent development in stabilised optical frequency transfer over 100’s of kilometres of optical fibre. This work could open the door for a telescope with spatial resolution 100’s of times greater than 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 with a multidisciplinary team including astronomers and experimental physicists, to build a three-element interferometric optical telescope, with a baseline length of up to several kilometres using well-established optical techniques and standard laboratory components. This research will be conducted in collaboration with interstate Australian optical astronomers, the University of California, Berkley, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Sercombe, Tim, Prof Powder heater for Selective Laser Melting Disciplines: Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic This is the third continuation of a project which is aimed as designing, installing and testing a new powder heat system for a metal 3D printing technology known as Selective Laser Melting. Previous projects have designed and improved the design to the point where it has undergone preliminary testing in the SLM machine. However, radiant heat is proving to be a significant problem. This project will undertake design modifications aimed at reducing the radiant heat and then testing the heater in the SLM machine

Sercombe, Tim, Prof Improving the surface finish of metal 3D Printed parts Disciplines: Chemical, Materials, Mechanical 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

51


manufacturing technologies. A project has begun which is aimed at improving the surface finish of SLM parts. However, this have not be particularly successful. The aim of this project is to build on the work already done.

Silva, Dilusha Prof Faraone, Lorenzo Prof Putrino, Gino Assoc/Prof Advanced Sensing Technologies: A novel nanotechnology fabrication technique Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. Fabrication of micromachines utilizes the same "lithography" techniques used by the integrated circuit industry. However, some micromachine structures, particularly sloped structures, require too many masking steps to be viable. As such, this project will examine an alternative stepped masking technique to create a "shadow-mask" in this process. The student undertaking this work will be working on cameras for image-recognition and computer-controlled motion stages to achieve the automated stepped mask-exposure process.

Silva, Dilusha Prof Putrino, Gino Assoc/Prof Faraone, Lorenzo Prof Advanced Sensing Technologies: Nanotechnology Spectrometers Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. 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

52


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.

Silva, Dilusha Prof Putrino, Gino Assoc/Prof Faraone, Lorenzo Prof Advanced Sensing Technologies: Absorption spectroscopy for organics in solution Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic, Software. 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 Prof Putrino, Gino Assoc/Prof Faraone, Lorenzo Prof Advanced Sensing Technologies: Sensing in liquids Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. Researchers within AST are the leaders in Australia for micro machines (MEMS). One of their recent inventions is an ultra-sensitive 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

53


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 Prof Putrino, Gino Assoc/Prof Faraone, Lorenzo Prof Advanced Sensing Technologies: Spectral Camera Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software. 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 developing the software to acquire and process spectral images.

Smith, David, Prof Gardiner, Bruce, Prof

Oxygen transport in the renal medulla Prerequisite skills: This challenging project requires excellent knowledge of non-linear reactive transport theory, porous media theory, ion activity and osmosis theory, knowledge of partial differential equations and boundary conditions, finite element methods and computational modeling, and a willingness to learn the requisite renal biology (and language). Disciplines: Chemical The renal medulla enables a reduction in water loss from the kidney. Countercurrent flow and countercurrent ‘multiplication’ play an important role in achieving medullary hyperosmolality required

54


for water conservation, but due to tradeoffs, blood supply is limited while oxygen demand at the tissue is high. This leaves the renal medulla prone to hypoxic damage (known as ‘acute kidney injury’ or AKI), particularly following cardiac-bypass operations, while repeated AKI events may lead to cumulative damage and chronic kidney disease (CKD). It would be beneficial if oxygen concentrations in the renal medulla could be predicted, as then evasive action during surgery may be possible. The proposal is to develop a multiscale computational model of oxygen (and salt) transport in the renal medulla using porous media theory and 2D cross-sectional diffusion analyses, which are arranged to predict the oxygen distribution in the renal medulla.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Ahmad, Arfah, Ms. Data Compression for Smart Grid Pre-requisite skills: Students should expert in Matlab and Microsoft Excel and have high knowledge in Linear Algebra. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mining, Software. This project require the students to study about data compression and smart grid data. Focusing method to be used are singular value decomposition and wavelet transform method. Mathematical formulation on singular value and wavelet transform is needed to go through this project. Student should also be able to get smart grid data from online sources.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Lamsal, Dipesh, Mr. State of charge and state of health estimation of battery energy storage system Pre-requisite skills: MATLAB SIMULINK. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. In this project, a combined state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH) estimation method of lithium-ion battery storage system will be proposed. First, the SOC dependency of the nominal parameters of a first-order resistor-capacitor model is determined and performance degradation of the nominal model over the battery lifetime is quantified. Second,SOH is estimated using Kalman filter based on deterioration of the model.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Lamsal, Dipesh, Mr

55


Fuzzy logic based coordination strategies for sharing the smoothing target power of battery Pre-requisite skills: Fuzzy logic, MATLAB SIMULINK. Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. The battery energy system (BESS) is a powerful tool to smooth the fluctuated output power of wind and PV systems. The BESS absorbs or generates power so as to achieve smooth output power. The amount of power absorbed or generated by the battery is known as smoothing target power and this power is to be shared among the different units of the BESS. This smoothing target power of each unit depends on the state of charge (SOC) of each unit. When the battery SOC deviates from the expected range, there is a need for a controller which can adaptively adjust the smoothing target power. A controller based on the Mamdani Fuzzy Logic Controller (MFLC) will be proposed to have coordination among different units of battery for sharing the smoothing target power.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Kharrazi, Ali, Mr. Distributed Energy Storage System Pre-requisite skills: Power Systems, Power Electronics, Power System software (PowerFactory, PSCAD, OPENDSS,MATLAB) ). Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. Renewable sources are becoming the dominant source of energy to provide electrical power. They are favoured over conventional fossil fuel-based technologies due to lower or zero emission. Although the renewable energy sources have many advantages, their output power possesses the stochastic and intermittent properties. In order to solve these problems, the energy storage units (ESUs) should be employed to restrain the power fluctuation. Considering the distributed connection of the sources and loads (in form of microgrids) distributed ESUs (DESUs) are communally used. An ESU is usually comprised of series connected battery cells and the whole ESU consisting of above battery cells is connected to the common bus with power electronics interfacing converters. The control system of the ECUs is composed of two parts: Battery Management Systems (BMS) and Power Converter Systems (PCS). BMS system are in charge of monitoring the status of each battery unit in an ESU and to balance the State-of-Charge (SoC) of each cells. The function of PCS is to control the output voltage and current, and also to reach the proper load power sharing. The secondary topics of the project could be focused on as follows: • Modeling of Battery systems (Dynamic models) • Battery Management system (Charging scheme and control) • Power Electronic interface Converter Control • DC microgrid topology and management system • Optimum penetration level of ESUs in grids

Sreeram, Victor, Prof

56


Kharrazi, Ali, Mr. The Impact of Plug-in Electrical Vehicle on Distribution Network Pre-requisite skills: Power System, Stochastic Programing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. Due to environmental concerns, the electrification of future transportation is on the rise. It is estimated that a large portion of future vehicles are run by electrical motors. These Electrical Vehicles (EVs) are equipped with battery racks to save electrical power and could be plugged into electrical grid to charge their batteries (Grid To Vehicle Mode). Since the charging time and duration of charging are dependent on vehicle owners behaviour, uncoordinated charging, especially during peak demand, could stress the distribution network and distribution transformer. Thus, an assessment of the impact of penetration of this new random loads on distribution network is of paramount importance. On the other hand, EVs' batteries could be a valuable asset for distribution network. Since the vehicles are parked stationary in long portion of the day, their batteries could be used as a distributed energy storage unit. They could inject electrical power into the grid (Vehicle to Grid) to smooth the load profile and restrain renewable energy fluctuation. The secondary topics of the project could be focused on as follows: • Assessment of impact of EVs on distribution network. • Grid To vehicle mode assessment and management • Vehicle to Grid mode assessment and management

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Azhar, Uzma, Ms. Dynamic interaction between Photovoltaic inverters with reactive power regulation devices installed on a distribution system with high PV penetration. Pre-requisite skills: MATLAB Simulink, Power system Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. High penetration of Photovoltaic systems installed in power supply system has potential impact on the system performance and reliability. Voltage deviations, reverse power flow, harmonics, PV islanding etcetera are some of the concerns mentioned in IEEE 1547.7 which deals with impact of distributed generators on distribution feeders. Previously, PV inverters were considered to only inject active power into the system. However, the new studies include the PV inverters which are also allowed to supply reactive power and regulate voltage. It is, therefore, important to understand and investigate the interaction of such Photovoltaic inverters with each other and with traditional voltage regulation devices such as tap changing transformers, fixed or switched capacitor banks and step voltage regulators (SVR).

57


The study will be conducted on a distribution feeder with medium to very high PV penetration. The student is expected to design an equivalent model of such distribution feeder or work on actual feeder design. This study will play a pivotal role in the latest distribution system operation and power quality control.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Azhar, Uzma, Ms. Development of New Maximum Power Point Tracking Algorithm for Photovoltaic System. Pre-requisite skills: MATLAB Simulink, Algorithms Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software. The project focuses on obtaining maximum power output from a PV generator installed in a distribution system. Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is a technique that automatically finds the voltage or current at which a PV array should obtain the maximum power output under given temperature and solar irradiance. Different MPPT control algorithms suiting different applications are available in literature. For distribution system, incremental conductance algorithm is preferred for MPPTs. In this algorithm, the PV array output voltage is tracked continuously according to the MPP voltage by comparing the instantaneous conductance to incremental conductance to adjust the operating point on I-V characteristic curve to MPP corresponding voltage. This algorithm is not efficient under rapidly changing weather conditions. The maximum power point is also affected by the shading of objects like trees, building, clouds which partially or fully block the sunlight on PV array resulting in shifting of maximum power point on I-V curve. A pulse-width-modulator sliding mode controller algorithm is also available in literature for partially shaded conditions but the method shows slow response time to rapid change in load. Therefore, the aim of this project is to develop an improved MPPT control algorithm for PV systems by integrating two or more existing algorithms and using adaptive control techniques in order to obtain improved responses under different atmospheric conditions and rapid changes in load. The performance of new proposed MPPT control algorithm will be compared with three control algorithms which are: Perturb & Observe (P&O), Incremental Conductance (INC) and Pulse-width modulator sliding mode (PWM) controller algorithm. This work is important to enhance the efficiency of photovoltaic systems.

Sreeram, Victor, Prof Azhar, Uzma, Ms. Droop control based Parallel operation of Photovoltaic-Battery Energy Storage System (PV-BESS). Pre-requisite skills: MATLAB Simulink, Power System / Renewable Energy

58


Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. The Photovoltaic sources interfaced with battery energy storage system (BESS) have the advantage to emulate a conventional generator with the added attribute of reserve power provision. The objective of this project is to study the parallel operation of Photovoltaic systems equipped with battery energy storage devices. A droop control based power sharing scheme is to be used for voltage regulation. The droop method is an effective method to control inverter based Photovoltaic systems. This method helps in automatic sharing of load among PVs and plays its part in voltage regulation. The student is expected to develop a model of distribution feeder dominated by PV generators with energy storage units feeding different types of loads and study the behaviour of such model with droop control based parallel operation of PV-BESS.

Stanwix, Paul, Dr May, Eric, Prof Microwave Cavities for Phase Behaviour Sensing Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas Accurate knowledge of the phase behaviour 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 behaviour 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.

Stanwix, Paul, Dr Developing novel methods for skin diagnostics using magnetic resonance Pre-requisite skills: Programming experience Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical Whilst clinical MRI 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 of the skin, 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) spectroscopy to the profiling of skin as a diagnostic and monitoring tool, for conditions including burns and wound management.

59


Stanwix, Paul, Dr Signal enhancement for low-field NMR sensing Pre-requisite skills: Programming experience Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical Low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LFNMR) is an attractive technique for the development of sensors to monitor 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 required to develop hardware, perform experiments and analyse the results.

Stanwix, Paul, Dr Diamond sensors for investigating chemical processes Pre-requisite skills: Programming experience Disciplines: Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical 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 in porous media. Understanding this type of process would benefit from an ability to perform in-situ measurements of pressure and temperature at the pore-scale. Diamond is a promising platform for development of such a sensor as it is chemically inert, can withstand harsh environments, is sensitive to a range of parameters, and can be performed at the nano-scale. Students on this project may be involved in the development of laser-based experiments to probe diamond material, software development, and data analysis.

Sunderland, Andrew, Dr Ju, Li, A/Prof Airborne Gravity Gradiometer suspension Pre-requisite skills: Experience making, modelling or designing mechanical systems Disciplines: Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic Airborne Gravity Gradiometers are extremely sensitive instruments that are used for mineral and hydrocarbon exploration. These gradiometers are currently limited by aircraft motion and turbulence. We are looking for Physics or Engineering students to help design a new suspension system for the Falcon airborne gravity gradiometer. The suspension will use novel materials and isolation structures to help reduce the amount of airborne vibration being transmitted to the gradiometer though the frame of the aircraft.

60


Tavner, Angus, Dr Experimental Investigation of adhesive bonding Pre-requisite skills: Some experience with composite materials would be useful. Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Oil & Gas This project has run for several years and we are building a data set of results which investigate the relationship between surface preparation (and contamination) and ultimate bond strength, looking at steel-steel and wood-wood bonding. One of the next steps with this work is to look at some novel surface priming techniques. Ultimately this data will be of use to the maintenance industry for use during infrastructure repair.

Tavner, Angus, Dr UWA Motorsport projects Disciplines: Electrical, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Oil & Gas These projects are available to members (or prospective members) of the UWA motorsport team, and project topics are generated from within the team according to the team's requirements. Project topics usually cover technical aspects such as engine, powertrain, vehicle structure, vehicle dynamics, batteries and electrical control/drive. The 2018 UWA car will be an electric vehicle, so there is much development work to do.

Tavner, Angus, Dr Fire testing Pre-requisite skills: Some experience with composite materials would be useful. Disciplines: Civil, Materials, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Oil & Gas Previous students have constructed a test rig for fire testing various materials to the Australian Standard AS1530. We are still working on instrumentation for smoke detection, and have also been testing flame-retardant intumescent coatings. This project will continue that work looking at additional fire-protection materials.

Tian, Yinghui, Dr Numerical modelling of the dynamic process in offshore engineering

61


Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical This project will investigate the dynamic process in offshore engineering, including the pile driving modelling and pipeline damage under falling objects. Commercial finite element software ABAQUS will be taught and used to carry out the analysis. High quality results are expected to be obtained from this project and potentially prepared for publication.

Tobar, Michael, Prof Veryaskin, Alexey, Prof Electromagnetic Gradiometry: A New Low Risk Highly Sensitive breast Cancer Detector Disciplines: Electrical, Materials, Software We have just been funded as part of a cross-disciplinary group lead by Prof Martin Ebert to develop a totally new method of breast cancer detection. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the capability of Extremely Low Frequency (ELF, in the range 3 – 300 Hz) Electromagnetic Gradiometry for breast cancer detection. To characterise and optimise the detection system and establish limits of sensitivity and resolution in both model and ex vivo systems. This part of the project will develop a finite element electromagnetic mode of a breast using Comsol, and model a cancerous tissue with the aim to evaluate a secondary EM field ( B-component and its spatial gradients ) both in-phase and quadrature with respect to the primary EM filed pumped into a weakly conductive media of a semi-spherical shape. The secondary EM field is a result of conductive and molecular currents, which appear inside the media under the influence of the primary EM field. The most interesting case is when the media contains minute conductivity contrasts,which can be modeled as point-like magnetic dipoles having the same orientation as the primary B-field. The primary B-field will be treated as a uniform one inside the media, pointing in X, Y or Z directions.

Tobar, Michael, Prof Goryachev, Maxim, Dr Ivanov, Eugene, Prof Direct Detection Dark Matter Experiments in the Lab Disciplines: Electrical The composition of dark matter is one of the greatest outstanding issues in physics. One of the most promising dark matter candidates is a hypothetical family of particles referred to as the Weakly Interacting Slim Particles (WISPs). These particles have origins in particle physics

62


yet also make excellent dark matter particles. They are extremely light (sub-eV masses) and interact gravitationally and very weakly with current standard model particles. Efforts to search for WISPs typically involve exploiting WISP-to-photon coupling mechanisms, which provide a powerful portal to detection with minimal model dependency. Cosmological constraints restrict the generated photon frequencies to a regime focused on the RF and microwave spectrum. Such low energy signals are well suited to lab-based precision measurement. Here at UWA we are working on direct detection experiments searching for cold dark matter WISPs. We are looking for capable and motivated students to join our team and work at the forefront of this exciting field of modern physics. There will be opportunities to develop skills in a variety of areas, including microwave electronics, low noise measurement techniques, low temperature (sub-mK) systems, quantum-limited measurements and electromagnetic simulations and theory.

Togneri, Roberto, Prof Partridge, Julian, A/Prof Draper, Scott, Dr Healthy Sounds: Listening to the beehive and the Noises underwater Pre-requisite skills: acoustic signal acquisition and processing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Environmental, Software. WA is fortunate in having healthy bees but we still need smart ways to monitor bee health, specifically the health of an entire hive. Sound recording has great potential and could provide a low cost monitoring system easily added to any hive. To be useful, however, the recorded sounds would need intelligent processing to understand the ‘state’ of the beehive and its occupants. This project would record beehive sounds and would use advanced computational methods to analyse the recorded acoustic signatures, relating the sounds to bee activity and ambient conditions. Similarly for fish welfare in underwater environments, sound is generally not considered. Natural aquatic environments vary from very quiet (the deep sea, for instance) to noisy (e.g. tide pools and fast running rivers). Compared with most natural environments, many artificial fish housing conditions are likely to be very noisy. We know little about the effect of noise on fish, but it is likely that high-noise environments will both affect fish sensory development and hearing, and may be an underestimated welfare issue. This project will use hydrophones deployed in aquaria, tanks, and on fish farms, as well as in rivers and in the sea to provide baseline information that will allow the man-made and natural sound scapes to be compared.

63


Togneri, Roberto, Prof Partridge, Julian, A/Prof Draper, Scott, Dr Heart Rate Monitor: Measuring the health of crabs, crayfish and molluscs Pre-requisite skills: circuits and electronics design; signal processing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Mechatronic. Just as in humans, the health and wellbeing of crustaceans like crabs and crayfish, or that of molluscs like abalone and mussels, is reflected in their heart rate. In crabs, for instance, a pause in the heart beat cycle occurs when they are visually startled. Despite their hard shells, heart rate can be measured in crustaceans and molluscs relatively easily by using a non-invasive, externally mounted, IR LED and photodiode detector; IR wavelengths are transmitted by the shell and are reflected from the beating heart, providing a measureable signal of heart movement. The ability to measure heart movements has practical value in experimental biology (e.g. studies of crab vision), and may well have applied value too. For instance, could an abalone farmer detect sub-optimal rearing conditions by monitoring the heart rate of farmed abalone? If we were to measure the heart rate of mussels on a jetty, what will that tell us about water quality? This project will develop the heart rate monitor described in https://tinyurl.com/lhu6yc8. This will involve hardware modifications that provide: optimisation for different animals; miniaturisation; on-board data storage; and blue-tooth or wifi data transmission for wire-free monitoring. The project will also involve the analysis of waveform of the data recorded from the heart and the development of algorithms more sophisticated than simple heart rate to provide the best measures of physiological ‘state’; an approach analogous to a medical ECG/EKG measurement of heart function in a person.

Togneri, Roberto, Prof Audio Surveillance and Speaker Spoofing Pre-requisite skills: signal processing or pattern recognition Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software. We live in a very insecure and dangerous world. Around every corner somebody is watching us through that hidden CCTV camera, but most of the time they won't be listening. With the advent of cheap and reliable audio sensors the ability to listen to the world around us, using sound for surveillance has become reality (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.7787.pdf and Google for DCASE2017). But so has the ability of imposters to steal your voice and use forged recordings to fool speaker recognition systems (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2014.10.005 and Google ASVspoof2017). In this project join the team of PhD students investigating state-of-the-art techniques in audio surveillance and spoofing and countermeasures. What can we see with our ears? And how easily can we use technology to imitate who we are and the same technology to counter this? Sign up and find out!

64


Togneri, Roberto, Prof Source Separation and Speech Enhancement Pre-requisite skills: signal processing Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic. If you are given a stereo recording of two or more sources which have been mixed together (the sounds overlap and are hard to make out) did you know you can separate out the sources and hear each one individually (https://tinyurl.com/ldt3z74)? Or if it is a single noisy recording of speech, that you can remove any noises and make the speech more intelligible (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.06.032)? In this project explore what array processing, blind source separation and speech enhancement are all about, and if you are brave try out some of the latest research ideas in these areas. Use real or synthetic recordings of noisy or mixed audio and separate the speech from noise and interfering speakers, enhance its quality and listen to how good it sounds. This is the heart of signal processing and it is amazing what you can do!

Togneri, Roberto, Prof Audio and Visual Speech Recognition Pre-requisite skills: good programming skills Disciplines: Electrical & Electronic, Software. The race is on to get a computer to understand what you are saying when you speak to it using normal conversational speech in ambient noise conditions. Isn't this what naturally speaking is about? The advent in machine learning has pushed the boundaries (https://tinyurl.com/lawkwpj), and if you are brave you can have a taste. But before you can run, you need to walk. In this project you will build your own simple speech recognition system of words or phrases using either your voice (https://tinyurl.com/ljdpm3o and https://tinyurl.com/mxk28ay) or your lips (https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2013.6638089) or both! You can make it as easy or as challenging as you like, you decide!

Tong, Feifei, Dr Zhou, Tongming, Prof The vortex-induced vibrations of two cylinders in close proximity Pre-requisite skills: hydrodynamics, fluid mechanics Disciplines: Civil

65


One of most interesting phenomenons of viscous flow around cylindrical structures is the vortex-induced vibration (VIV), which have been attracting sustained research activities in fluid mechanics; and in recent decades, the study has been further driven by developments in coastal civil engineering, offshore oil and gas industry and ocean wave energy. Enormous effort has been expended on understanding the flow behaviors around a bluff body, where vortex shedding is expected to occur at certain condition. The vortex dynamics in the wake, along with the boundary layer development and separation around the structure, are believed to attribute to the vortex-induced vibrations. This project aims to provide a quantitative experimental study on vortex-induced vibrations of multiple rigidly-connected cylinders in the wind tunnel. Depending on the cylinders' arrangement, the flow interference due to the proximity of structures may completely alter the feature of vortex-induced vibration compared to that of a single structure, and thus brings new understanding to this subject. The project is suitable for students who aim to work in ocean&civil engineering or pursue a higher degree in fluid mechanics after their undergraduate study.

Tong, Feifei, Dr The flow resonance phenomenon in the wake of an oscillatory body Pre-requisite skills: hydrodynamics, fluid mechanics, interest in numerical modeling Disciplines: Civil This project bases on a basic concept in fluid dynamics -- vortex shedding. When a fluid past a circular cylinder, the vortex shedding describes the flow detaches alternatively from either side of the body in a periodic manner. If one deliberately oscillates the cylinder submerged in a steady flow, the frequency of vortex shedding from this cylinder may undergo a significant departure from the intrinsic one of the otherwise stationary body, as a result of the interactions between the self-excited wake and the externally posed perturbation. Such a feature has been used as a way in active wake control, which is of interest in many engineering applications. At certain combinations of driving frequency and amplitude of oscillations, the vortex shedding synchronises with the cylinder oscillation, where the flow is characterised by ordered and repeatable wake formation and thus the flow resonance occurs. This project aims to study this flow phenomenon by numerical approach. The project is suitable for students who aim to work in fluid mechanics and the participants in this project will have the opportunity to access the largest supercomputer in the southern hemisphere.

Wallace, Vincent, Assoc/Prof Hodgetts, Stuart, Assoc/Prof Development of a near infrared optical device for irradiation of spinal cord injuries Pre-requisite skills: basic optics, electronics, software knowledge

66


Disciplines: Electrical, Mechatronic, Software Light in the red to near-infrared (R/NIR) part of the spectrum can protect neurons and preserve function after spinal cord injury injury. We develop implantable devices based on light emitting diodes (LEDs) to deliver the clinically relevant dose directly to the injured spinal cord to improve function after injury.

Wallace, Vincent, Assoc/Prof Fan, Shuting, Post Doctoral researcher Terahertz Computer Tomographic Imaging Pre-requisite skills: system design and set up, basic optics, software. Disciplines: Electrical, Software Develop a THz CT scanning system to create 3D images of hidden objects.

Wen, Linqing, Prof Bosveld, Joel (PhD student) Chu, Qi, Ms Signal Processing to Detect Gravitational Waves Pre-requisite skills: Programming skills in C or Python, some data analysis/algorithm design/statistics background Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software Overview: It is an exciting time for gravitational wave research. The first gravitational wave signal from merging binary black holes was detected in September 2015 during the first science run of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States. This not only confirmed Einstein’s theory on gravitational waves but also marked the beginning of a new era in gravitational wave astronomy. The second LIGO science run is ongoing. Many more are expected in the next few years. We are leading one of the online detection pipelines for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries of black holes and neutron stars using LIGO detector data. Our group was actively searching for gravitational waves online using the LIGO data during the first science run where the first discovery was made. The group is currently actively search for new gravitational wave signals in the ongoing 2nd science run of LIGO. This part of the project includes, - Directly involve in the online real-time searches for gravitational wave signals in LIGO/Virgo detector data, and offline processing for detected signals.

67


- Algorithm design and implementation for coherent detection and localization of gravitational wave sources by combining data from 3+ detectors. - Develop and test new strategies to identify glitches from real signal including using machine learning and apply them to real detector data - Compute IIR filter coefficients to best detect gravitational waves from merging binaries of neutron stars and black holes.

Wen, Linqing, Prof Bosveld, Joel (PhD student) Chu, Qi, Ms Supercomputing for Gravitational Wave Search Pre-requisite skills: Strong computer skills with C or Python Disciplines: Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software Overview (same as Topic 1): It is an exciting time for gravitational wave research. The first gravitational wave signal from merging binary black holes was detected in September 2015 during the first science run of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States. This not only confirmed Einstein’s theory on gravitational waves but also marked the beginning of a new era in astronomy. The second LIGO science run is ongoing. Many more are expected in the next few years. We are leading one of the online detection pipelines for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries of black holes and neutron stars using LIGO detector data. Our group was actively searching for gravitational waves online using the LIGO data during the first science run where the first discovery was made. The group will continue to be actively involved in detecting gravitational waves in science runs of LIGO as well as the Virgo detector in Europe. This part of projects include : - Speed up the search pipeline by applying supercomputing technique, including the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) - Identify and reduce the latency (delay) of the pipeline - Test and optimize the gravitational wave search pipeline using latest GPUs - design and implement web interface for gravitational wave event triggers

Wittek, Adam, Prof

68


Singh, Surya, Dr (University of QLD) Evaluation of Biomechanical Simulations for Remote (Robotic) Surgery: Determining Deformations Within the Organ (Brain) Phantom Pre-requisite skills: Mechanical and Civil Engineering students need to have sound background in Solid Mechanics (ENSC3004) and feel confident in working with electronic circuits. All students involved in the project need to have sound background in Numerical Methods (GENG4405). Disciplines: Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic 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) that affects not only traditional engineering applications but also health care delivery (e.g. surgery). So far application of surgical robots has been limited. 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 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 biomechanical can augment the currently used imaging techniques for surgical tracking. Such predictions need to be validated. Although the final validation needs be done against the data obtained using the actual organs/tissue, there are numerous technical (postmortem tissue decay, specimens cannot be moved between different sites) and ethical constraints/challenges when acquiring such data. Therefore, it is not uncommon to use mechanical phantoms of the body organs in the initial validation stage. The validation involves measuring of the forces acting on surgical tools and determining deformations within the body organ (phantom) caused by the tool. Although numerous well-established methods for determining such deformation exist, many of them (including MRI and X-ray/CT) impractical (high cost, strong electromagnetic field, radiation risk) in the context of research on surgical robots. This project focuses on creating/development of robust and cost effective method/methods for determining deformations within the brain phantom subjected to loads compatible with those occurring during neurosurgical procedures.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. Note: The study may involve manufacturing of the brain phantom.

Wittek, Adam, Prof Open-Source Finite Element Meshes of the Brain for

69


Neurosurgical Simulation and Brain Injury Analysis and Prevention Pre-requisite skills: Some experience in computer programming. Experience/background in computational mechanics/finite element analysis would an advantage. Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Software Construction of computational grids (finite element meshes when finite element analysis is used) for computational biomechanics models of the brain and other human body organs tend to be a tedious and time consuming task. It typically start from segmentation of the Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) – a process in which the boundaries between different anatomical structures within the organ are distinguished. From the segmentation the discretised surfaces are created and then used to build a finite element mesh. 8-noded hexahedral elements are often preferred in computational biomechanics as they are well-suited for incompressible continua, such as soft tissues. High-quality meshes of the brain and head are often offered as commercial products. However, open-source digital atlases of then brain (and other organs) provide the computational biomechanics community with the opportunity to create open-source meshes that can be used free-of-charge by the research community. In this project such meshes will be created from the open-source multi-modality brain atlas created at Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL) at Harvard Medical School (http://www.spl.harvard.edu/publications/item/view/2037 and https://dev.openanatomy.org/atlases/nac/brain-2016-09/viewer/-/state/53d74539-8edb-4a34-8014-6e13c146b6bd) . Your task is not only to create meshes of the selected anatomical structures of the brain, but, more importantly, to formulate and verify process/processes that would facilitate replacing meshes of the specific anatomical structures to fit specific needs of the analysed problems (e.g. meshes for neurosurgical simulations tend to be more detailed than for injury analysis/prevention). This may include mesh parametrisation, creating specific data structures to handle meshes with different resolution etc. It is expected that your results will be incorporated into the SPL brain atlas and made publically available to the research community.

Wittek, Adam, Prof Biomechanical Simulations for Remote (Robotic) Surgery: Needle–Tissue Interactions and Real-Time Computations Pre-requisite skills: Mechanical and Civil Engineering students need to have sound background in Solid Mechanics (ENSC3004). Prior experience with finite element analysis is helpful, but is not a requirement. All students involved in the project need to have sound background in Numerical Methods (GENG4405). Disciplines: Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronic, Software 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) that affects not only traditional engineering applications but also health care delivery (e.g. surgery).

70


So far application of surgical robots has been limited. 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 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 biomechanical can augment the currently used imaging techniques for intraoperative surgical tracking. This project focuses on: • Fast (“real-time”) biomechanical algorithms and models for predicting intraoperative organ/tissue deformations due to interactions with a surgical tool; • Integration of biomechanical models with medical image processing software; • Integration of biomechanical models with robotic systems; • Evaluation of the proposed modelling and hardware solutions using experiments on mechanical phantoms of body tissues/organs. 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. Note: The study may involve manufacturing of the brain phantom.

Xiao, James, Dr Graham, Brendan, Dr May, Eric, Prof Advanced Gas Separations Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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 for improved capture efficiency that are either solid adsorbents, including carbons, zeolites and calixarenes, or liquid solvents, such as transition metal complexes. In addition, the production of high value zeolites from waste materials such as fly ash will be investigated. Students working on these projects will help develop and characterise the separation performance of new materials synthesized in our laboratory over a wide range of temperature, pressure and mixture compositions, and/or use the results of such experiments to develop numerical models of advanced industrial separation processes.

Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zhu, Mingming, Dr Zhang, Zhezi, Mr

71


Pyrolysis of spent tyres Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical, Oil & Gas, Petroleum Spent tyres discarded in Australia amounts to more than 400,000 tonnes per annum. Being highly flammable, rich in sulphur and capable of releasing polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and other toxins if burnt uncontrolledly, spent tyres in landfills and stockpiles pose serious environmental hazards and health risks. Pyrolysis is a simple, robust, and scalable approach for simultaneous production of gas, liquid and char. The overall aim of this project is to investigate the operation conditions on the yield, composition and properties of pyrolysis products including gas, liquid and solid residue. Sub-project 1: Effect of temperature on the yield and composition of pyrolysis gas and solid The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of pyrolysis temperature on the yield and composition of pyrolysis gas, liquid and solid residue. The pyrolysis experiments will be performed in a fixed bed reactor. The pyrolysis products will be collected for further analysis. The compositions of pyrolysis gas will be analysed using GC-MS. The solid residue will be characterised for its proximate and ultimate analyses and reactivity. Sub-project 2: Effect of temperature on the yield and composition of pyrolysis liquid The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of pyrolysis pressure on the yield and compositions of pyrolysis gas, liquid and solid residue. The pyrolysis experiments will be performed in a fixed bed reactor and pyrolysis liquid will be collected for further analysis. The compositions of pyrolysis liquid will be analysed using GC-MS. Sub-project 3: Effect of vapour residence time on the yield and properties of pyrolysis gas and solid residue The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of vapour residence time on the yield and composition of pyrolysis gas, liquid and solid residue. The pyrolysis experiments will be performed in a fixed bed reactor and the pyrolysis products will be collected for further analysis. The compositions of pyrolysis gas will be analysed using GC-MS. The solid residue will be characterised for its proximate and ultimate analyses and reactivity. Sub-project 4: Effect of vapour residence time on the yields and composition of pyrolysis liquid The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of particle size on the yield and composition of pyrolysis gas, liquid and solid residue. The pyrolysis experiments will be performed in a fixed bed reactor and the pyrolysis liquid products will be collected for further analysis. The compositions of pyrolysis liquid will be analysed using GC-MS.

Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zhang, Zhezi, Mr Hernandez, Jorge E. Preciado, Mr Preparation of activated carbon from solid residue of spent tyre pyrolysis

72


Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication 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 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 CO2 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, surface functional groups, etc. 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-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, surface functional groups, etc. 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, surface functional groups, etc. 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, surface functional groups, etc.

73


Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zhu, Mingming, Dr Setyawan, Hendrix Y. Mr Manufacturing of specialty carbon black by partial combustion of heavy fraction of spent tyre pyrolysis liquid Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Oil & Gas, Petroleum 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 specialty 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 the flat burner system simulating industrial channel 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 the flat burner system simulating industrial channel 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 the flat burner system simulating industrial channel 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 burner 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 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

74


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 the flat burner system. The flat burner will burn natural gas with air to provide high temperature flue gas. The heavy pyrolysis liquid fraction will be injected at precise 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.

Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zhu, Mingming, Dr Sunyoto, Nimas M. S, Ms Two-phase anaerobic digestion Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication Disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Environmental Two-phase anaerobic digestion (TPAD) is expected to produce hydrogen enriched biogas 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 biochar addition on TPAD using different feedstock and under different operational conditions. Sub-project 1: The effect of biochar addition and operation condition on the hydrogen production from cheese whey The aim of the study is to examine the effect of biochar addition and operation condition (initial pH and temperature) on hydrogen production from the first phase of bench scale two phase anaerobic digestion of cheese whey. The gas volume and compositions will be measured daily using water displacement methods and GC, respectively. Volatile fatty acid and pH as a function of time will also be monitored periodically. Sub-project 2: The effect of biochar addition and operation condition on the methane production from cheese whey The aim of the study is to examine the effect of biochar addition and operation condition (initial pH and temperature) on methane production from the second phase of bench scale two phase anaerobic digestion of cheese whey. The gas volume and compositions will be measured daily using water displacement methods and GC TCD, respectively. Volatile fatty acid (VFA) and pH changing will also be monitored periodically. Sub-project 3: The effect of biochar addition and operation condition on the hydrogen production from wastewater sludge The aim of the study is to examine the effect of biochar addition and operation condition (initial pH and temperature) on hydrogen production from the first phase of bench scale two phase anaerobic digestion of wastewater sludge. The gas volume and compositions will be measured daily using water displacement methods and GC, respectively. Volatile fatty acid and pH as a function of time will also be monitored periodically. Sub- project 4: The effect of biochar addition and operation condition on the methane production from wastewater sludge

75


The aim of the study is to examine the effect of biochar addition and operation condition (initial pH and temperature) on methane production from the second phase of bench scale two phase anaerobic digestion of wastewater sludge. The gas volume and compositions will be measured daily using water displacement methods and GC TCD, respectively. Volatile fatty acid (VFA) and pH changing will also be monitored periodically.

Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zhang, Zhezi, Mr Zhu, Mingming, Dr Catalytic cracking of tar over a bed of biochar using tar model compounds Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Oil & Gas, Petroleum Tar is generated in biomass pyrolysis and gasification processes and is finally present in the pyrolysis gas, resulting in the blocking and corrosion problems in the downstream processes. It is of significance to develop an economic and sustainable method to crack the tar to improve the quality and quantity of pyrolysis gaseous products. As biochar is a low-cost by-product from pyrolysis with high catalytic activity, this project will focus on the catalytic cracking of tar over a bed of biochar using tar model compound such as toluene. Sub-project 1: Effect of cracking temperature on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of cracking temperature on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition. Tar cracking experiments will be conducted in a fixed-bed reactor at different cracking temperatures. The tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition will be measured using GC-MS and GC-TCD/FID located at Centre for Energy of UWA. This sub-project is expected to provide an insightful understanding of the effect of cracking temperature on the tar cracking process. Sub-project 2: Effect of residence time on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of residence time on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition. Tar cracking experiments will be conducted in a fixed-bed reactor at different residence times. The tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition will be measured using GC-MS and GC-TCD/FID located at Centre for Energy of UWA. This sub-project is expected to provide an insightful understanding of the effect of residence time on the tar cracking process. Sub-project 3: Effect of steam and oxygen additions on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of steam and oxygen addition on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition. Tar cracking experiments will be conducted in a fixed-bed reactor with steam and oxygen additions. The tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition will be

76


measured using GC-MS and GC-TCD/FID located at Centre for Energy of UWA. This sub-project is expected to provide an insightful understanding of the effect of steam and oxygen additions on the tar cracking process. Sub-project 4: Effect of biochar particle size on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition The objective of this sub-project is to experimentally study the effect of biochar particle size on the tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition. Tar cracking experiments will be conducted in a fixed-bed reactor while biochar with different particle sizes will used as catalysts. The tar conversion rate, gas product yield and gas product composition will be measured using GC-MS and GC-TCD/FID located at Centre for Energy of UWA. This sub-project is expected to provide an insightful understanding of the effect of biochar particle size on the tar cracking process.

Zhao, Chunnong, Professor Ju, Li, Professor Blair, David, Winthrop Professor Active Control of Seismic Vibration for Gravitational Wave Detectors Pre-requisite skills: Concept of vibration isolation, control system theory. Mathematica or Matlab, analog and digital electronics. Disciplines: Mechanical, Mechatronic The first successful detection of gravitational waves recently gave humanity the opportunity to listen to gravitational sounds from across the universe. Detectors are masterworks of optical and mechanical engineering but there is enormous opportunity for improvements. These projects relate to the suppression of seismic tilt vibrations. They involve building/testing tilt sensing and active tilt correction using piezo actuators. Some of the project work could involve visits to UWA's Gingin Gravity Precinct. The projects are part of the research for the Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Zhao, Wenhua, Dr Wolgamot, Hugh, Dr Draper, Scott, Dr; Milne, Ian, Dr Prediction of wave-induced motions for offshore floating structures Pre-requisite skills: Fluid mechanics, computer programming Disciplines: Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Mining, Oil & Gas, Software Offshore floating facilities may experience significant motions when exposed to waves in open sea, which is a key concern for the design of offshore floating structures.

77


This project is aiming to build up a model to predict the wave-induced motions of a floating structure in a time-efficient way. As a result, this model can be used to facilitate the design for offshore floating structures. This project will involve the development of a numerical model for floating structures, the calculation of hydrodynamic coefficients, the generation of a random sea sate, and short-term analysis. This project will provide the knowledge for the design of offshore structures, so it is suitable for students who are planning to work in oil & gas industry; it will build up the basic knowledge which is necessary for those who are planning to pursue further degree.

Zhou, Tongming, Prof Wake flow characteristics of a circular cylinder covered with soft marine growth Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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, e.g. seaweed as soft marine growth and mussel as hard marine growth, will develop on offshore pipelines and risers over some time of operation in the sea. The growth may chnage the hydrodynamic and VIV characteristics of the marine structures. In the present project, soft 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.

Zhou, Tongming, Prof Wake flow characteristics of a circular cylinder covered with porous materials Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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, e.g. seaweed as soft marine growth and mussel as hard marine growth, will develop on offshore pipelines and risers over some time of operation in the sea. The growth may chnage the hydrodynamic and VIV characteristics of the marine structures. In the present project, hard marine growth will be simulated using porous materials and the students will work as a group to find appropriate materials. Their effects on cylinder wake modification and VIV suppression will be examined in a water flume using PIV and in a wind tunnel.

78


Zhou, Tongming, Prof Suppression of vortex-induced vibration through structural damping Disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Oil & Gas 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. Therefore, a marine riser, which may experience strong sea currents and waves, must be designed such that excessive motion due to vortex shedding can be prevented or mitigated. In the present project, suppression of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) through structural damping will be examined in a wind tunnel. The students will need to work as a group to find appropriate methods to change the structural damping, e.g. by inserting a smaller elastic pipe inside the pipe (which is used as a model for a marine riser). The effectiveness of this structural modification on VIV will then evaluated in a wind tunnel.

Zhu, Mingming, Dr Zhang, Dongke, Prof Zheng, Ce, Mr Spent tyre pyrolysis liquid: speciation, desulphurization, distillation, recovery of valuable chemicals and synthetic fuels Pre-requisite skills: Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and dedication Disciplines: Chemical, Environmental, Oil & Gas, Petroleum 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 screen various commercial adsorbents and catalysts for the sulphur removal. Sub-project 1: mesoporous alumina oxides based adsorbents The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the feasibility of the use of some commercial mesoporous alumina oxides based adsorbents for sulphur removal in spent tyre pyrolysis liquid. The experiments will be conducted in a batch reactor. The effect of temperature, alumina oxides loading ratio and operation time on the removal efficiency of sulphur will be studied. The chemical compositions of raw and processed liquids will be analysed using advanced analytical techniques including GC, GC-MS and HPLC for identification of sulphur containing species. Sub-project 2: ZSM-5 zeolites based adsorbents

79


The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the feasibility of the use of some commercial ZSM-5 zeolites oxides based adsorbents for sulphur removal in spent tyre pyrolysis liquid. The experiments will be conducted in a batch reactor. The effect of temperature, adsorbent loading ratio and operation time on the removal efficiency of sulphur will be studied. The chemical compositions of raw and processed liquids will be analysed using advanced analytical techniques including GC, GC-MS and HPLC for identification of sulphur containing species. Sub-project 3: Activated carbon The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the feasibility of the use of some commercial activated carbon for sulphur removal in spent tyre pyrolysis liquid. The experiments will be conducted in a batch reactor. The effect of temperature, adsorbent loading ratio and operation time on the removal efficiency of sulphur will be studied. The sulphur content in the pyrolysis liquid before and after being processed will be measured, respectively. The sulphur containing species will also be identified using GC-MS. Sub-project 4: layered double hydroxides based adsorbents The objective of this sub-project is to investigate the feasibility of the use of some commercial layered double hydroxides for sulphur removal in spent tyre pyrolysis liquid. The experiments will be conducted in a batch reactor. The effect of temperature, adsorbent loading ratio and operation time on the removal efficiency of sulphur will be studied. The sulphur content in the pyrolysis liquid before and after being processed will be measured, respectively. The sulphur containing species will also be identified using GC-MS.

Documents

Bachelor of Engineering & Master of Professional ... … · Flow Assurance and Natural Gas Hydrates Disciplines: Chemical, Mechanical, Oil & Gas Natural gas hydrates are ice-like