Introduction

The Granular Mechanics and Industrial Infrastructure research group is part of the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. This group contains more than 20 members and is led by Prof. Jin Ooi. Members use a combination of experimental testing, analytical methods and simulations (with appropriate verification and validation) to investigate the behaviour of a diverse range of granular materials.

The group is characterised by a multi-scale philosophy: the application of multiple complementary approaches to a given system to enable exploration of a broad range of scales from the single particle to the bulk material. The group also actively research multi-phase systems in which one or more fluids must be considered to fully understand the system’s behaviour.

Research emanating from this long-established group has had a considerable impact. Within an academic context, group members disseminate their research results in peer-reviewed journal publications and at major international conferences, and the group collaborate with many leading academic research groups around the world. Outside of academia, many well-known companies have benefited from the group’s expertise through consultancy and/or collaborative research projects, e.g., AstraZeneca, Johnson Matthey, P&G and Pfizer.

In recent years, the group have been highly successful in winning research funding from EPSRC, the European Union, the Royal Society and IFPRI, in addition to industrial funding. The group at Edinburgh currently coordinate the EU FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network TUSAIL (2021–Pres.), which follows on from a previous highly successful FP7 projects T-MAPPP (2014–2018) and PARDEM (2009–2013).

Research Activities

The group is characterised by a multi-scale philosophy: the application of multiple complementary approaches to a given system to enable exploration of a broad range of scales from the single particle to the bulk material. The group also actively research multi-phase systems in which one or more fluids must be considered to fully understand the system’s behaviour.

The research activities of the group may be divided into the following broad themes

• Particle Technology for Industrial Manufacturing
• Soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering
• Rheology of dense suspensions and granular systems
• Development of granular simulation tools
• Physical testing/imaging of laboratory-scale systems

Featured Research

Furthermore, the group have a strong track record of research commercialisation. Two software companies, DEM Solutions (now Altair EDEM) and Particle Analytics, have been formed as spin-out companies from this group, and in 2016 Freeman Technology launched the Uniaxial Powder Tester based on the Edinburgh Powder Tester with the technology licensed from the University of Edinburgh.