Overview and background Mohammad Saadatfar Department of Engineering, The Australian National University

Research School of Physics & Engineering ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences

School Structure • The largest university based physics research activity in Australia • ~ 170 full time academic staff ~ 150 graduate students ~ 110 technical and administrative staff Full undergraduate teaching program (3-4 years) 9 Research Departments

Dept. Applied Mathematics Founded by Prof Barry Ninham in 1971 Chemists, physicists, mathematicians and engineers Theoreticians and experimentalists working together What shapes matter? How does matter interact? Complex and hierarchical (multiscale) Fields: geometry and topology in nature, molecular force measurement, nanomaterials, packing in granular materials and flow in porous materials Applications : biomineralisation, composite materials, adhesion, oil & gas, printing and paper making, wood, mineral processing, crystallographic theory, textiles, osteoporosis…..

i. Granular materials ii. Elasticity of sandstones My PhD research: A combination of experimental and numerical study the following topics: i. Granular materials ii. Elasticity of sandstones iii. Mehcanical and transport properties of polyurethane foams. I developed a series of Finite Element codes for fluid and elasticity simulation. All codes developed during my PhD have now been integrated into Mango (3D image processing toolkit) Post PhD: sine PhD in 2006, my research has been focused on metallic foams, rock physics and granular materials using tomography. I worked as a postdoc and/or visiting researcher in Germany/UK/Ireland/France. I returned to ANU in 2009 and started my independent research on granular materials. Currently I am leading a small group comprised of a postdoc + three PhD students and a technician. The result of my research has been published in over 30 journal publications and over 10 conference proceedings.

Industry collaboration   Digicore Consortium: I am a part of a core team of 12 people running the Digicore Consortium, which is the largest Oil/Gas Consortium in Australia, bringing over $8M funds to ANU over the last 8 years, and was the basis of the spin-off, Lithicon. FEI: I am a named contributor on the ANU’s contract with FEI, which has recently acquired Lithicon (a spin-off of the Department of Applied Mathematics) for $78M. The ANU contract has two phases; $4M technology transfer and a series of R&D projects for applications development in CT. Adidas: I am currently the lead person in negotiation with Adidas to fund a project aiming to research and improve the performance of cricket bats through the understanding of the role of wood cellular structure in mechanical resilience. ANLEC: Over the past 18 months, a substantial amount of my research has been focused on a project funded by ANLEC, which is investigating CO2 geosequestration.

Snapshot of my research Grain identification 2D Each sample has up to 100,000 GRAINS!!! In space!!!! 3D

Grain/pore partitioning used in pore network representation of rocks Measure grain contact network; find loose vs. well compacted systems. Measure grain coordination number… Can give geologist a comprehensive grain analysis tool.

Numerical simulations of single phase flow attempting to quantify local changes in flow properties. Visualisation of flow paths within a porous system

Combining 3D images and fluid simulations Fluid in porous rock

Research on polymeric and metallic foams Elasticity Structure

Granular materials: used as model systems for unconsolidated rocks to better understand their mechanics and localised phenomena such as stress/strain localisation and shear banding.