The Granular Mechanics and Industrial Infrastructure Group conducts fundamental research on the mechanics of granular materials and their interaction with industrial infrastructure, with broad applications in silo design, bulk solids handling, paste rheology, fluidisation and natural hazard mitigation.
About the Group
The research group has diverse research expertise and themes studying granular materials from particle to full-industrial scales, from dry to multiphase systems; and has been developing novel discrete and continuum theories and numerical methods and experimental techniques to enable such research.
The long standing focus is to gain new scientific insights using a combination of simulation tools, extensive experimentation and analytical methods; and to transform these insights to support innovative engineering designs and solutions.
Our research has had a considerable impact, ranging from significant scientific discoveries, to development of design standards, to practical industrial applications, and has generated two spin-off companies EDEM Simulations and Particle Analytics.
People and Partners
The director of our group is Prof Jin Y. Ooi, and his affiliates are Dr Jin Sun, Dr Kevin Hanley, Dr Stefanos Papanicolopulos, Dr Xianfeng Fan and Dr Chris Beckett. The group has around 20 members including postdocs, PhD students, and various visitors to the group.
We have international partnerships with industry and universities including Johnson Matthey, P&G UK, International Fine Particles Research Institute, Zheijiang University, and many others.
Research Activities
The group is currently coordinating the TUSAIL EU Horizon 2020 Innovative Training Network, and has coordinated in the past two EU FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network, PARDEM (2009-2013) and T-MAPPP (2014- 2018), to promote major advancement of discrete element and multiscale methods applying to industrial granular processes. It has also participated in another EU FP7 research project, VELaSSCo, to take advantage of the Big Data technologies for large-scale visualization of scientific simulations. We also work with other funders including EPSRC, IFPRI, P&G UK, and The Royal Society.
You can also watch this video on Media Hopper.
Contact
The group can be contacted via the group email: granular@ed.ac.uk
