Biological Approaches in Geotechnics

Biological Stabilisation & Bioinspired Data Analysis

Biological pathways often provide green and sustainable solutions for treating problematic soils.

Bioinspiration also lie at the heart of several artificial intelligence methods that assist in analysis of complex geotechnical datasets.

We use the following biomediated and bioinspired solutions to address a range of geotechnical engineering challenges including soil strengthening, erosion prevention, permeability control and development of pedotransfer functions. Some of the research area under this theme are:

(a) biomineralisation using microbial, enzymatic and chemical pathways

(b) biopolymerisation

(c) bioinspired data analysis tools including but not limited to artificial neural network (ANN), multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS) and functional networks (FN)

(a) naturally developed calcite in the field (a mine site); (b) a biocemented tailings sample in the lab (c) scanning electron microscopy revealing diamond shaped calcite crystals (lab scale)

Back