Prof. Kenichi Soga

Kenichi Soga is Professor of Civil Engineering and the Head of the Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group, which hosts more than 60 PhD students at present (www-geo.eng.cam.ac.uk). He is the Secretary of the Technical Oversight Committee of ISSMGE. At Cambridge, he is an executive member of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure Construction (CSIC, www-smartinfrastructure.eng.cam.ac.uk) and a Deputy-director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sensor Technologies and Applications (Cambridgesens, cdt.sensors.cam.ac.uk). Working together with his research associates, he leads a research team of more than 20 PhD students working in the various areas of geotechnical engineering. Kenichi has strong research interest in fundamental soil behaviour and its application to geotechnical engineering problems. He was the Chair of the recently successful International Symposium on Geomechanics from Micro to Macro (IS-Cambridge 2014, is-cambridge.eng.cam.ac.uk), as part of ISSMGE TC105’s activities. The recent research work of his research team members includes (i) modelling the plastic to liquid state transition of sensitive clays using the Critical State Soil Mechanics and its application to submarine landslide run-out simulations using the Material Point Method (MPM) (Takaaki Kobayashi), (ii) finding the micro-macro relationship of granular particles-pore fluid interaction using a coupled DEM-Lattice Boltzmann Method (LEM) code and its application to understand the hydro-mechanical processes occurring in submarine landslides (Krishna Kumar), (iii) understanding the mechanism of seepage-induced large deformation failure of embankments using a coupled soil deformation and fluid MPM code (Samila Banda), (iv) constitutive modelling of unsaturated sand and its application to large deformation soil-pipeline interaction and landslide problems (James Fern), (v) simulating hydraulic fracture process in heterogeneous geological media using a fluid coupled Lattice Element Method (LEM) code (John Wong) and (v) investigating the process of Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation for soil improvement (Osama Dawoud, Ningjun Jiang). Many of the computational codes used for the research (MPM, DEM-LBM, LEM, THM-FEM) are in-house developed; GPU implementation is one of the recent initiatives in the group to perform large scale simulations. Kenichi is the Vice-Chair of the newly established TC308 on Energy Geotechnics. His research projects in the deep-sea energy sector include (i) methane gas production from hydrate bearing sediments (Carter Zhou, Hao Luo), (ii) wellbore integrity considering the construction process of oil/gas producing wells (Ermao Xu), (iii) wellbore cementing (Shyamini Kularathna), and (iv) sand production and its mitigation (Ningjun Jiang). There are also research activities in the area of geothermal energy, which include (i) assessment of the thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) interaction in energy piles and walls (Rui Yi, He Qi), (ii) evaluation of city- and district-scale implementation of ground source heat pump systems (Yi Zhang) and (iii) thermo-hydro modelling of a deep geothermal reservoir for low grade heat recovery (Xiaoyu Lu). His recent research projects in underground structures are associated with engineering performance assessment (short-and long-terms, nearby construction effects, etc) of cast-iron tunnels (Zili Li, Matthew Wilcock), concrete segmental lining tunnels (Matthew Wilcock), sprayed concrete lined tunnels (Masanari Nakashima) and deep large diameter circular shafts (Tina Schwamb). These research projects aim to understand the real performance of large scale underground structures by actual field measurements coupled with detailed numerical modelling using advanced soil constitutive models. These students and his CSIC research associates (Drs Loizos Pelecanos, Xiaomin Xu, Michael Williamson and Sinan Acikgoz) have been engaging in many field monitoring projects, which demonstrate the applicability of innovative sensor technologies such as fibre optics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and wireless sensor network. They are developing methodologies to evaluate the actual performance of geotechnical structures from various monitoring tools. Kenichi’s team in CSIC also develops new innovative sensor systems for infrastructure monitoring. Along with his research associates (Drs Jize Yan, Cedric Kechavarzi, David Rodenas Herráiz, Sarfraz Nawaz, Simon Hartley, Ankur Handa and Yunfei Gu), he leads several sensor projects that include PhD projects on (i) a low cost fibre optics distributed strain measurement system (Yifei Yu, Ying Mei, Bo Li and Linqing Luo), (ii) wireless sensor systems (Heba Bevan, Tao Feng) and (iii) a computer vision system coupled with a dashboard tool that aids engineering interpretation (Mehdi Alhadadd). Further details of the developments in this area can be found from www-smartinfrastructure.eng.cam.ac.uk.