Structural Engineering

A.P.S. Selvadurai, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, Canada

Professor Patrick Selvadurai is a visitor to the Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW, where he is collaborating with Professor Nasser Khalili on topics related to coupled processes in porous media subjected to mechanical deformations, pore fluid flow and heat transfer. During his visit he will investigate aspects of thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical modelling that has applications to geomechanics problems related to the geologic storage of carbon dioxide. Capture at the source and deep geological storage CO2 is regarded as the most viable of immediate options for mitigating its impact on global climate change. The injection of CO2 in a supercritical (sc) form into geologic formations raises a number of fundamental issues of scientific and engineering importance and the gaps in knowledge have to be addressed before storage activities can commence on a large scale. 

Professor Selvadurai is both William Scott Professor and James McGill Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics at McGill University. His research expertise covers areas germane to geomechanics, continuum mechanics, applied mechanics and applied mathematics. Recognized internationally for his contributions to theoretical, computational and experimental modelling of coupled processes in geoenvironmental engineering, he has been a consultant and advisor to the Canadian Programs for High Level Nuclear Waste Management initiated by Atomic Energy of Canada limited, The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Nuclear Waste Management Office, Ontario, the International DECOVALEX effort for validation of THM modelling and to the National Energy Board on resource exploration in the Beaufort Sea and on research related to buried chilled gas pipelines. He is the author or co-author of eight texts books covering geomechanics and applied mathematics, 260 papers in Scientific Journals and a similar number in Conference Proceedings. His research accomplishments have received national and international recognition, being the only Canadian to receive the Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (1998), The Killam Research Fellowship (2000), The Max Planck Research Prize in the Engineering Sciences (2003) and The Killam Prize in Engineering (2007) awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. He is in the Editorial Boards of eight International Journals covering geomechanics and computational mechanics and an Executive Associate Editor for the Journal of Engineering Mathematics. He has been elected Fellow of six engineering and mathematical societies and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.