UNSW’s Energy Geotechnics Research Laboratory
UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering established its first Energy Geotechnics Research Laboratory (EGRL) in 2022. The Laboratory, led by Dr. Asal Bidarmaghz and jointly supervised by Associate Professor Arman Khoshghalb and Professor Adrian Russell, is pioneering research in energy geostructures and underground climate change.
EGRL is equipped with large-scale testing equipment which enable comprehensive fundamental studies on the thermal and mechanical behaviour of energy geostructures and soil types.
Ali Pirjalili was the first PhD student to join EGRL, in 2022. His research primarily focuses on developing a simple, accurate, and reliable method to evaluate soil thermal properties—thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity—to better understand soil behavior under thermal loading.
Although these two properties function in opposite ways, with thermal conductivity indicating soil's ability to transfer heat and specific heat capacity measuring its heat retention, they interact in the heat transfer equation governing soils' response to thermal loading. Ali’s research hypothesis is based on this interaction.
Ali has developed an innovative testing device, combined with a theory-based interpretation procedure, enabling these properties to be determined for saturated or dry soils using just one soil sample and one set of test results. The device allows experiments on a cylindrical soil sample that is subjected to constant thermal load at its outer boundaries. The new testing device and interpretation procedure provide reliable measurements and will have immediate application in industry or research.
Moreover, a third parameter defining the device-specific heat exchange efficiency (h) was established in this work which is independent of the soil type meaning that the device can be reliably used across different soils without the need for recalibration.
Thanks to Ali’s hard work and dedication, a paper on this very successful experimental output from the EGRL has recently been published in Geotechnique, the world's premier geotechnics journal, marking an exciting milestone for the UNSW research team.
Congratulations to Ali and the EGRL team!
For more information see https://doi.org/10.1680/jgeot.24.01232
