Sam has a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering (2007) and a Doctorate in Geotechnical Engineering (2011), both awarded by the University of Sheffield. Following award of his doctorate Sam moved to the University of Western Australia to work at the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems where he worked on a wide range of geotechnical problems related to the offshore energy sector, on both oil and gas and offshore renewable energy (wind and wave energy in particular) related applications.
Previous research has resulted in – to name a few – methods for predicting the “punch-through” or “crème brûlée” failure of jack-up rigs, new tools for subsea pipeline soil interaction assessment, numerical techniques for measuring displacements in images, and a simple model that explains why sand castles stand up!
Current research interests revolve around the “whole-life” modelling of soil and geostructure response, acknowledging that soil changes state and thus strength and stiffness due to loading, which can have significant effects on the performance of infrastructure throughout their design life. This work is developing new constitutive models for soft soils with non-local regularisation, methods to calibrate constitutive parameters using digital imaging techniques and simple design methods that account for the evolution of soil properties with time for industrial application.
