Our research activity can be broadly grouped into two key themes:

• Geotechnical Infrastructure Asset Management; and
• Geohazards and the Built Environment.

There is particular emphasis on: climate change impacts on the hydromechanical performance of geotechnical assets, infrastructure deterioration and maintenance, buried infrastructure, intelligent sensing technologies, digital twinning and spatial measurement, problem soils and ground improvement, forecasting geohazards, human-landscape interactions, and sports surface engineering.

The group employs a wide range of techniques including constitutive modelling, numerical analysis and computational simulations, soil fabric analysis using SEM (scanning electron microscopy), m-XCT (X-ray micro computed tomography) and FIB (focused ion beam) scanning, laboratory element testing, large-scale physical modelling (e.g. National Engineered Slope Simulator), field testing and monitoring, and artificial intelligence.

We operate from a world-class research and education environment and offer opportunities to UK and international students to study with the us at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral level. We collaborate widely with industry and academia both in the UK and internationally.

Please feel free to contact any member of the Geotechnics and Geomatics Group.

Geotechnics:

• Professor Paul Fleming, Professor of Sports Surface and Ground Engineering
• Dr Ashraf El-Hamalawi, Reader in Engineering Modelling
• Dr Matthew Frost, Reader in Geotechnical Engineering
• Dr Tom Dijkstra, Reader in Engineering Geomorphology
• Dr Alister Smith, Reader in Geotechnics
• Dr Haitao Lan, Lecturer in Infrastructure Engineering

Geomatics:

• Dr Craig Hancock,  Reader in Geospatial Engineering
• Richard Stanley, University Teacher in Engineering Surveying

Doctoral Training Cluster – RAINDROP (Resilient eArthwork INfrastructure: Diagnosis, RehabilitatiOn & Prognosis)

Funding secured in 2025 will provide a series of PhD Studentships in research areas that contribute to sustainable, intelligent, and climate change-resilient engineered slopes. The Cluster aim is to deliver diagnostic, rehabilitation and forecasting approaches to manage earthworks in a dynamic and changing climate. For more information, please contact the Principal Investigator Dr Alister Smith.

National Engineered Slope Simulator (NESS)

NESS is the world’s first large-scale configurable climate-controlled testing facility for clay slopes. The 15-tonne steel box can be filled with 45 tonnes of compacted clay, then rotated to a typical infrastructure slope angle. The clay slope can be subjected to accelerated wetting and drying cycles to simulate seasonal weather conditions, deteriorating the clay mechanical and hydraulic properties. A suite of instrumentation enables monitoring of stresses, strains, deformation, pore pressures, suctions, moisture content, photogrammetry and more. After several months of deterioration by wetting and drying, the slope can be rotated to 45 degrees to cause failure. The facility is used to advance understanding of slope deterioration processes and climate change impacts, develop remediation strategies and new detection technologies, and inform design of new infrastructure. For more information, please contact the NESS Directors Dr Alister Smith or Dr Matthew Frost.

Pipe installation, performance and rehabilitation

Dr. Haitao Lan conducts buried infrastructure research including stability of horizontal boreholes during Horizontal Directional Drilling, new pipe installation methods, pipe performance and monitoring, and pipe rehabilitation using Trenchless Technology. 

Sport Surfaces – Safety, Performance and sustainability

Several projects are currently underway and recently completed across these broad themes of user safety, performance and sustainability – led by Professor Paul Fleming and Professor Steph Forrester. The group has a focus on artificial turf, and has also worked across indoor flooring, natural and hybrid turfs. The Sport Surfaces Group currently supervises 4 PhD students and one KTP associate. The group works closely with governing bodies such as FIFA and the FIH, and trade associations such as SAPCA (UK) and ESTC (Europe). The group is supported by sponsorship of projects from industry to the PhD programmes and bespoke research contracts, including Tencate, Labosport, Rawstadia, Fieldturf and more. The recent transition to a ban on microplastics in Europe has led to much interest and research into alternative organic infill materials such as wood chips and cork, and climatic effects. Increasingly player feedback and mechanical tests more representative of the playing experience are of interest. Two notable current projects in this space include: International Hockey Federation (FIH) funded work on a transition away from watering pitches to ‘dry’ turf (2022-2026) developing new mechanical tests and monitoring player satisfaction - in association with Labosport; and Football Foundation funded work on the monitoring of a trial site of organic infills across 6 small-sided pitches in Sheffield which includes some novel thermal monitoring of insulating properties and freezing behaviour – in association with Sportslabs.

ACHILLES

ACHILLES (Assessment, Costing and enHancement of long lIfe, Long Linear assEtS, EP/R034575/1) is a £4.9M EPSRC Programme Grant investigating climate change impacts on infrastructure slopes. The team comprises researchers from the universities of Loughborough, Newcastle, Durham, Southampton, Leeds and Bath, and the British Geological Survey, coalescing our field, laboratory and computing facilities. Working in collaboration with a team of stakeholder project partners, we have made significant advances in understanding of weather-driven deterioration in slopes, at the material- and asset-scales, and developing tools to forecast the long-term hydromechanical performance of slopes under future climate projections. Our key outcomes are summarised in a series of Reading Guides that can be accessed through our website (link above). Key Loughborough contacts: Dr Tom Dijkstra, Dr Ashraf El-Hamalawi and Dr Alister Smith.

Listening to Infrastructure (L2I)

Listening to Infrastructure (L2I) is a research programme led by Dr Alister Smith that is developing acoustic emission (AE) monitoring for geotechnical infrastructure systems (e.g. buried pipes, dams, foundations, retaining structures, tunnels). This research has been funded by an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (£285k, 2017-20, EP/P012493/1) and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering (£100k, 2020-22).

Slope ALARMS & Community Slope SAFE

Slope ALARMS & Community Slope SAFE were projects led by Professor Neil Dixon and Dr Alister Smith that developed acoustic emission (AE) landslide early warning systems. An algorithm quantifies a slope’s rate of subsurface movement and can alert users when it accelerates, enabling timely intervention or evacuation. Successful lab experiments led to full-scale field trials across the UK and in Austria, Italy, Canada, Malaysia, and Myanmar. A steel tube with granular backfill surround, installed in a borehole to intersect existing or anticipated shear surface(s), acts as an active waveguide. Slope movements cause backfill/steel interaction, dissipating energy in the form of AE. These mechanical waves propagate up the waveguide to the surface where they are detected by a piezoelectric transducer and converted to an electrical signal. The system processes the AE signals and generates alarms based on warning thresholds – alerting decision-makers. More information at the REF2021 Impact Case Study.