Research Themes
The main research themes are:
- Materials used in highway engineering
- Hydraulic scour of river channels
- Geo-polymers
- Non-contact methods of measurement
- Digital construction
- Building information modelling
Materials used in highway engineering group
The materials used in highway engineering group has been established for many years and currently specialises in areas related to the tyre / road interface.
Areas include skid resistance, rolling resistance and noise generation.
It has a strong background in aggregates and asphalt mixtures. It has collaborated with the quarrying and asphalt industries for many years in areas such as new product development and predicting product performance.
This research has been applied to roads, runways and race track surfaces.
Current projects involve road authorities in Northern Ireland, South Ireland, England and Qatar.
Hydraulic scour of river channels
The hydraulics group is currently centred on laboratory scale modelling the scour around bridge abutments.
Geo-polymers
The geo-polymer group is currently looking at innovative ways of developing geo-polymer based products for specialist road surface application.
Non-contact methods of measurement
The non-contact measurement group has been involved in the development of 3D modelling techniques to obtain new forms of measurement that may previously have been difficult to quantify.
This has included road surface textures from pot-holes, road surface roughness to the texture of aggregate particles