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

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

3. 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

4. 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…..

5. 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.

6. 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.

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

8. 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.

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

10. Combining 3D images and fluid simulations
Fluid in porous rock

11. Research on polymeric and metallic foams
Elasticity
Structure

12. 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.