Dr Madabhushi's research goal is to improve the performance of our infrastructure under geohazards by engineering with - not against – the response of geomaterials. He hopes to achieve this by deepening the insight and understanding of geotechnical problems from a mechanistic point of view. The complementary use of physical modeling, and in particular centrifuge modeling, with numerical or analytical models is a key component of his research. The combination of techniques is used to fundamentally explore the deformation and failure mechanisms of a variety of civil engineering systems, such as foundations, retaining walls, coastal defenses and earthen slopes. As the design paradigms for tomorrow's infrastructure continually evolve, striking the balance between efficiency and sustainability with multi-hazard resiliency requires the interacting components in civil engineering systems to be understood at a fundamental level. Relating the observed and predicted material response of the soil to the global system behavior, for example progressive dynamic soil-structure interactions, fluid-soil-structure interaction, changes of climatic environments, and the consequences of soil liquefaction are of particular interest.
keywords
Centrifuge Modeling, Multi-Hazard Modeling of Geotechnical and Civil Engineering systems, Static and Dynamic/Seismic Soil Structure Interaction, System level response to Soil Liquefaction, Thermomechanical Response, Landslide Triggering Comparative study between centrifuge modeling and numerical analyses, Instrumentation development and verification for geotechnical applications, Coastal Engineering, Fluid-soil-structure interaction
