01.09.24: As a part of the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds the Oxford Centre for Heritage Research and Engagement (OCHRE). This centre will be led by Heather Viles and will involve the procurement of equipment for collaborative heritage science research. Part of the fund will be used to improve the DIC equipment and software to enable high speed and multi-view DIC applications. 

 

19.08.24: Zhiqi Hu joins the group as a postdoc to conduct work on full-field displacement, strain and crack monitoring using point cloud data, in collaboration with Harvey Burd and Yiyan Liu. Zhiqi recently submitted a PhD in Engineering at the University of Cambridge, focussed on automated generation of digital twins. 

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10.08.24: Sinan Acikgoz was awarded the Jean D'Alembert fellowship to conduct collaborative work with Dr Francois Hild at the Laboratory of Mechanics of Paris-Saclay University for 6 months during his sabbatical (January-July 2025). The work will be focussed on testing and characterisation of fracture in lime mortars.  

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24.07.24: Miles Judd, Sinan Acikgoz and Rhea Wilson attended the 18th International Brick and Block Masonry Conference. Miles and Sinan discussed work on the application of Virtual Fields Method for the mechanical characterisation of masonry while Rhea presented work related to creep in brick and lime mortar. 

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05.07.24: Baran Bozyigit, Sinan Acikgoz and Zheng-You Zhang attended the 2024 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering to present research related to 2023 southeast Turkey earthquakes and experimental work on flexible rocking bodies. 

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27.06.24: Sinan Acikgoz delivered a taster lecture describing the research activity of the group to a public audience. A video recording of this talk is available online. 

 

18.06.24: We have a postdoctoral vacancy: Job Detail (ox.ac.uk). on full-field displacement, strain and crack monitoring using point cloud data. Please consider applying if you are interested. 

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10.04.24: Huanian Zhu passed his viva examination for his thesis entitled 'Analytical models for laterally flexible rocking bodies'. His DPhil examiners were Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype and Orestis Adamidis. 

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09.04.24: Sinan Acikgoz and Bora Pulatsu are organising a special session on the behaviour of historic structures during the 2023 southeast Turkey earthquakes at the 7th International Symposium on Strengthening and Preserving Historical Structures. It will take place in Diyarbakir on 27 and 28 September 2024. 

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02.04.24: Sinan Acikgoz and Harvey Burd were awarded an EPSRC doctoral scheme impact award to develop point cloud comparison techniques for monitoring damage to masonry buildings during underground construction works. This project will involve collaboration with Ward & Burke (Ronan Royston) to conduct a field demonstration during the construction of the Athlone Main Drainage Scheme. Yiyan Liu, who developed the original techniques, joins the research group as a postdoctoral research associate. 

 

21.03.24: The project 'Solutions to Improve the Earthquake Performance of Masonry Structures in the Light of Material, Geometric and Structural Analyses of Antioch Ancient Buildings' was approved by TUBITAK 1001 programme. The project will involve physical, chemical and mechanical characterisation of Roman building materials in Antioch. Hatice Pamir (MKU) will lead the project, with support from Baran Bozyigit (DEU) and Duygu Ergenc (METU), Sinan Acikgoz will contribute to the processing of 3D data for geometric characterisation and laboratory tests for mechanical characterisation of building materials. 

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​11.03.24: We have recently completed loading tests on fibrous plaster wad-like samples with X-ray imaging and diffraction measurements at the Diamond light source in collaboration  with James Marrow. The data from these tests will help Jiaxu Zuo validate her work on categorising failure events (matrix cracking, debonding, fibre breakage) using acoustic emission signals. 

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29.02.24: 'The Innovative Pre-straining Tools and BOFDA Technology Assessment' project led by Kasun Kariyawasam wins Collaborate to Innovate Award 2023 from The Engineer Magazine under the 'Information, Data & Connectivity' category. 

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06.02.24: The EEFIT Field Mission report, which describes the effects of the earthquakes which struck southeastern Turkey, is published on the 1-year anniversary of the earthquakes.

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01.02.24: We are working together with Blenheim palace to develop new acoustic emission monitoring techniques to characterise and localise oxide jacking failures in Blenheim Palace. This work is enabled by the Oxford-Blenheim partnership and conducted in collaboration with Heather Viles. 

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22.01.24: Yiyan Liu passed his viva examination for his thesis entitled 'Displacement and Damage Monitoring for Masonry Buildings Subjected to Ground Movements Induced by Underground Constructions'. His DPhil examiners were Robert Mair and Gunes Baydin. 

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06.12.23: Burcu Gulen passed her viva examination for her thesis entitled 'Simplified Numerical Modelling Strategies to Assess Tunnelling-Induced Damage to Masonry Buildings'. Her DPhil examiners were Giulia Viggiani and Barbara Rossi. 

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13.10.23: The paper 'Innovative monitoring of the response of a heritage masonry building to nearby tunnelling in London Clay', published in the journal in Geotechnique, received the Manby Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers. 

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28.9.23: Sinan Acikgoz, Medine Ispir and Anil Ozdemir have started a project on the mechanical characterisation of building stones collected during recent field missions to south east Turkey. Yunus Arca and Kerem Kurnaz will be conducting the tests. We thank MatchID for providing us their DIC software to enable this work. We also thank Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (Ozlem Ersan & Ahmet Cakmak) and Mineral Research and Exploration General Directorate for assisting us with the experiments. 

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15.09.23: Sinan Acikgoz, Yixiong Jing, Miles Judd, Marialuigia Sangirardi and Jiaxu Zuo participated in the SAHC 2023 conference in Kyoto. Sinan Acikgoz organised a special session on the impact of the 2023 southeast Turkey earthquakes on the historic built environment.

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06.09.23: Sinan Acikgoz presented recent research on damage detection of masonry arch bridges as a part of an even organised for the EPSRC project ERMABI – Exploiting the Resilience of Masonry Arch Bridge Infrastructure at Imperial College, London. ERMABI Workshop 2023 - Day 2, Session 2 (youtube.com)

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17.08.23: We were awarded the EEFIT Research Grant 2023 with the project 'Quantifying masonry construction quality and damage using 3D reality capture data'. As a part of this project, Yilong Yang will develop improved segmentation and point cloud comparison algorithms to improve post-earthquake damage assessments. 

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20.07.23: We have completed a recent refurbishment and update of our laboratory, with financial support from EPSRC Core Equipment Award and the Department of Engineering Science. Please check the laboratory section to see equipment we have access to (in our own labs and via collaborations) for research and consultancy purposes.  

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01.07.23: Jiaxu Zuo conducted on-site tests at the library of the Insitution of Civil Engineering in London. She will use the data from these tests to validate the acoustic emission localisation algorithms that she has recently developed. 

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19.04.23: Sinan Acikgoz took part in two field missions to explore the impact of 2023 earthquakes in southeast Turkey. The first mission was organised by EEFIT (Lead: Yasemin Aktas and Emily So) and the second mission was organised by Sinan Acikgoz, with financial support from EPSRC (EP205641/1) and TUBITAK 2221 programme.

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09.09.2022: Sinan Acikgoz and Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype organised a special session on 'Modelling Rocking Systems' in the 3rd European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, held in Bucharest, Romania. 

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04.04.2022: Sinan Acikgoz and Brian Sheil were awarded the Institution of Civil Engineers Research & Development Enabling Fund with a project entitled 'Digital eyes and ears to monitor historic fibrous plaster ceilings', in collaboration with Sarah Mayfield (Mayfield Heritage). The project will characterise fibrous plaster materials, explore the behaviour of panels and wads with full-scale tests and develop new monitoring techniques using acoustic emissions. 

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11.02.22: The project 'Strengthening of Substandard Reinforced Concrete Columns with Eco-Friendly-Smart-Hybrid External Coating' is funded by TUBITAK 1001 programme. It will develop the use of jackets woven from recycled PET to strengthen substandard columns. Deniz Dalgic (IZTECH) will lead the project, with support from Medine Ispir and Alper Ilki. Sinan Acikgoz will contribute to the laboratory instrumentation. 

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07.02.2022: The executive summary for the large scale settlement test work we carried out with the support of IStructE Research Award can be accessed online. This work was presented by Burcu Gulen at a recent online workshop organised by Prof Medine Ispir and Prof Alper Ilki. 

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11.06.2021: Sinan Acikgoz was awarded the New Investigator Award for the project proposal MINT: Masonry In-situ Testing and Identification, in collaboration with Lucideon, MatchID, Buro Happold and DIANA FEA. This project will develop practical techniques to identify historic masonry materials in-situ, using imaging and rapid identification techniques. The project will start in December 2021. 

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01.03.2021: The Oxford team have completed the large-scale settlement testing and monitoring of various half-scale masonry buildings. Burcu Gulen and Yiyan Liu conducted the monitoring during the first phase of tests together, while Burcu Gulen collected the data during the second phase of tests. 

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25.01.2021: Daniel Powell, Associate Director of the Advanced Technology and Research Group at Arup, has joined the Civil Engineering Group as a Visiting Royal Academy of Engineering Professor. Dan will contribute to our second year civil engineering coursework module, third year bridge design course and offer fourth year projects. 

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04.12.2020: Marco Nunzio Pascariello (co-supervised with Emilio Bilotta at the University of Naples Federico II and now working as a tunnelling engineer at Italferr) was awarded the third prize for his Master's thesis in the 7th edition of the Italian Tunnelling Society (SIG) award. 

 

21.10.2020: We (Harvey Burd - Oxford,  Ben Gilson & Michael Devriendt - ARUP) were recently awarded the 2020 IStructE Research Award with for testing of half-scale masonry buildings subjected to settlements with Dr Deniz Dalgic (IZTECH) and Prof Alper Ilki (ITU), with support from Fibrobeton and Kilsan.  

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15.06.2020: Ruth Faherty was awarded the annual poster prize in Civil Engineering for her 4th year project entitled "Parametric Analysis of Bridge Response to Tunnelling". Ruth is now conducting a PhD at the University of Cambridge. 

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11.10.2019: Colleagues from the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (Sam Cocking, Haris Alexakis, Simon Ye and Matthew DeJong) were given the Rail Visionary Award at the 2019 edition of the NCE Techfest award for collaborative work on the Marsh Lane Viaduct (see papers: 1, 2, 3 and 4).

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23.04.2019: Eugene Wong (co-supervised by Prof Giulia Viggiani and Dr Andrea Franza for an MPhil at the University of Cambridge) won the annual Harding Prize for his paper "Deformation of framed structures due to tunnelling - a rational and practical assessment approach". Eugene is now doing a PhD . 

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29.03.2019: Sinan Acikgoz presented the paper Measurement errors in vision based displacement monitoring of masonry bridges (co-authored by Matthew DeJong and Kenichi Soga) in the IABSE conference in Guimaraes, Portugal. The paper was awarded Outstanding Young Engineer Contribution Award.

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07.12.2018: The project Innovative Monitoring of Tunnelling-Induced Displacements and Strains, Bank Station Capacity Upgrade, has won the Innovation in Instrumentation & Monitoring Award (Delivery Team) in the 2018 edition of the Tunnelling Festival. The project was conducted in collaboration with CSIC, Geocisa, Dragados and Transport for London. 

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20.09.2018: The project Health monitoring of heritage buildings with fibre optic sensors during the Bank Station Capacity Upgrade, has won the Research Impact: Application in the Industry Award in the 2018 edition of the NCE Techfest. The project was conducted in collaboration with CSIC, Geocisa, Dragados and Transport for London.