Background

Dr Sadegh Nadimi is an engineering scientist and Lecturer (Assist. Prof) in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. He holds a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from City, University of London and an MSc in Geotechnical Engineering from Newcastle University. Following the award of his doctorate, Sadegh moved to the University of Leeds as Post-doctoral Research Fellow to focus on tribology of particulate solids, working directly with Prof Mojtaba Ghadiri, FREng and Prof Anne Neville, FREng, FRS.

In 2014, Sadegh was awarded a full University Doctoral Scholarship to study the multiscale nature of soil at London Geotechnical Centrifuge Centre, City University of London, under the supervision of Dr Joana Fonseca and Prof Neil Taylor.  Before his PhD study, he joined an engineering consultancy for two years to supervise geotechnical site investigations.  He was involved in a world-class research project during his MSc at Newcastle University called the Round Robin Tunnel Test (organised by Universities of Cambridge and Napoli Federico II) to predict the centrifuge data by advanced finite element modelling.  He has gained a great deal of experience in repeatedly running large complex nonlinear numerical analyses.  He has been actively engaged in ground engineering research since the second year of his undergraduate course through his tutor’s industrial research work.

Sadegh is committed to advancing fundamental engineering research and teaching.  He is an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and has been involved in teaching since 2015. In July 2016, Sadegh was awarded the prize for the best presentation at the Young Geotechnical Engineers Symposium (YGES) organised by the British Geotechnical Association. 

Industrial Experience

2012-2014 Geotechnical Consultant at Barsoo Engineering – involved in site investigation and ground improvement projects

 

Membership of Learned Societies

Member of British Geotechnical Association (BGA) since 2011.

Associate Fellow of Higher Education Academy (HEA) since 2015.

Member of Institute of Physics (IOP) since 2018.

Member of International Technical Committee of ISSMGE (TC105, TC211, TC306) since 2019.

Research

Sadegh is accepting applications for PhD students.

Sadegh is available for consultancy.

 

Research Interests

The research themes are wide ranging, but the main focus is on:

Tomography to Simulation

Fundamental characterisation and modelling of geomaterials

Multi-scale modelling of particulate media using Discrete Element Method

Development of contact mechanics models for particles and geo-surfaces – application in foundation design, slope stability, landslide and etc.

Image-based Geotechnics – application of imaging techniques, such as X-ray tomography, PIV, and DIC in particle characterisation, centrifuge modelling, offshore foundation, pilling, settlement monitoring, and so on.

Railway Engineering – Sanding in wheel/rail contact tribology, modelling degradation of ballasted track

 

Funded Projects

2019-2021 Joint JSPS-Royal Society, International Exchanges 2018 Cost Share - IEC\R3\183026 with collaboration of University of Tokyo - Entitled: The role of particle shape and surface friction on interlocking phenomenon for granular materials. £36k

2018-2020 Newton Fund, Royal Academy of Engineering, with collaboration of University of Cape Town in South Africa - Entitled: CAPE Partnership – Characterisation Advances in Particle Engineering. £55k

 

Consultancy Projects

2019 - Hewlett-Packard (hp) - Particle characterisation and modelling of metal 3D printing

 

Postgraduate Supervision

Second supervisor

Vasileios Angelidakis

Cailin Wang

 

Esteem Indicators

Sadegh regularly reviews for the eight international journals, such as International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, Granular Matter, International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and Journal of Computing in Civil Eng.

Member of Organising Committee of 16th European Symposium on Comminution & Classification (ESCC2019) at Leeds (UK) on 2nd-4th September 2019.

Member of Organising Committee of Powders and Granular Materials Challenges and Future Trends at Montpellier (France) 6th-7th June 2019.

Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching

Module leader for CEG8204 Ground Improvement Techniques

 

Project supervision

CEG8296 Project and Dissertation in Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology (MSc)

Publications

• Ghadiri M, Bonakdar T, Nadimi S. Breakage of Particles in Gas Phase. In: Ko Higashitani, Hisao Makino, Shuji Matsusaka, ed. Powder Technology Handbook. CRC Press, 2019, pp.584. In Press.
• Nan W, Pasha M, Bonakdar T, Lopez A, Zafar U, Nadimi S, Ghadiri M. Corrigendum to “Jamming during particle spreading in additive manufacturing” [Powder Technol. 338 (2018) 253–262]. Powder Technology 2019, 347, 255-255.
• Nadimi S, Bai M, Inkson B, Neville A, Ghadiri M. The role of glidants in interparticle friction. In: International Congress on Particle Technology (PARTEC 2019). 2019, Nuremberg, Germany: PARTEC.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. A micro finite element model for soil behaviour: numerical validation. Géotechnique 2018, 68(4), 364-369.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. A micro finite-element model for soil behaviour. Géotechnique 2018, 68(4), 290-302.
• Nadimi S, Ghanbarzadeh A, Ghadiri M, Neville A. Discrete element modelling of shear deformation of rough particles. In: 6th European Conference on Computational Mechanics (ECCM 6); 7th European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics (ECFD 7). 2018, Glasgow, UK: International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE).
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. Image based simulation of one-dimensional compression tests on carbonate sand. Meccanica : An International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics 2019, 54(4-5), 697–706.
• Fonseca J, Nadimi S, Kong D. Image-Based Modelling of Shelly Carbonate Sand for Foundation Design of Offshore Structures. In: Proceedings of the 1st Vietnam Symposium on Advances in Offshore Engineering. 2018, Hanoi, Vietnam: Springer.
• Nan W, Pasha M, Bonakdar T, Lopez A, Zafar U, Nadimi S, Ghadiri M. Jamming during particle spreading in additive manufacturing. Powder Technology 2018, 338, 253-262.
• Nadimi S, Di Pasquale L, Fonseca J. Influence of fine fraction on breakage of binary granular materials. In: 19th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. 2017, Seoul, South Korea: International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. On the tensile strength of soil grains in Hertzian response. In: 8th international conference on micromechanics on granular media. 2017, Montpellier, France: EPJ Web of Conferences.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. On the torsional loading of elastic-plastic spheres in contact. In: 8th International Conference on Micromechanics on Granular Media. 2017, Montpellier, France: EPJ Web of Conferences.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. Single grain virtualisation for contact behaviour analysis on sand. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering 2017, 143(9), 06017010.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J, Barreto D, Taylor RN. A new approach to investigate the particle size effects in centrifuge modelling. In: 3rd European Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics. 2016, Nantes, France.
• Nadimi S, Divall S, Fonseca J, Goodey R, Taylor RN. An addendum for particle image velocimetry in centrifuge modelling. In: 3rd European Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics. 2016, Nantes, France.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J. Enhancing soil sample preparation by thermal cycling. Géotechnique 2016, 66(11), 953-958.
• Fonseca J, Nadimi S, Reyes-Aldasoro CC, OSullivan C, Coop MR. Image-based investigation into the primary fabric of stress transmitting particles in sand. Soils and Foundations 2016, 56(5), 818-834.
• Le BT, Nadimi S, Goodey RJ, Taylor RN. System to measure three-dimensional movements in physical models. Géotechnique Letters 2016, 6(4), 256–262.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J, Besuelle P, Viggiani G. A microstructural finite element analysis of cement damaging on Fontainebleau Sandstone. In: 2nd International Conference on Tomography of Materials and Structures. 2015, Québec, Canada: INRS-ETE.
• Nadimi S, Fonseca J, Taylor RN. A microstructure-based finite element analysis of the response of sand. In: 6th international symposium on deformation characteristics of geomaterials. 2015, Buenos Aires, Argentina: IOS Press.
• Elia G, Rouainia M, Nadimi-Shahraki S. Blind prediction of the seismic response of tunnels. In: World Tunnel Congress (WTC2013) Underground: The Way to the Future!. 2013, Geneva, Switzerland: Taylor & Francis.