SEDS Research Seminar “Building Capacity to Simulate High Speed and Urban Railway Structural Characteristics for Effective and Efficient Design”
Title: Building Capacity to Simulate High Speed and Urban Railway Structural Characteristics for Effective and Efficient Design
REGISTRATION: via link
Abstract
The static and dynamic response analysis of beams and slabs on foundations under moving loads has been a research interest of railway engineers, especially in the last few decades. Much research has been carried out in this field because of application in many practical fields of railway engineering like noise generation, wave propagation and track design optimization. This project is to specifically investigate novel and more accurate methods of simulation of beams supported by elastic and viscoelastic foundations.
The simulations developed are novel in that:
New ways of treating non-linear terms, which arise in the governing equations are explored looking for accuracy and efficiency of the analytical solutions. Current beam foundation models are unsatisfactory, mainly due to the fact that non-linear characteristics cannot be included easily or even at all. In all but a few references found in the literature, the foundation studied has been assumed to be linear, so as to simplify the mathematical model developed. In practice, however, the support structure of a railway track is highly non-linear because of the hardening characteristic of the ballast and also the rail-pad. Also different ways of including the loading and damping terms within the governing equations is examined.
About the Speaker:
Desmond Adair holds a PhD in Aerodynamics from Imperial College, London. He spent a number of years working as a Research Engineer with the Fixed-Wing Division, NASA Ames, Moffett Field California. This was followed with a position as a Senior Research Engineer at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, with secondments to the National Institute of Science and Technology, Washington, DC, and the Naval Warfare Center White Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland.
He has worked for British Aerospace in the capacity of Senior Research Engineer at Warton, Lancs., in the European Fighter Aircraft programme and also as the Senior Aeroscience Instructor for the Al Yamamah project in Saudi Arabia. Before his present position, he was a Senior Lecturer and Research Associate with the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. He now holds the post of Research Fellow with the University of Tasmania.
Dr. Adair’s teaching and education management experience is wide ranging. Lately his main teaching areas are Engineering Thermodynamics, Propulsion, Flight Mechanics, Sustainable Technology and Numerical Methods. His current research interests include: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Hydrogen Technology, Aeromechanics, Structural vibrations and novel non-linear analytical solution methods. Since 2011, Dr. Adair has published more than 100 research papers in impact journals and presented his research at more than 80 peer-reviewed international conferences.
