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Engineering
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(023) 8059 8796
Email:
G.deAlmeida@soton.ac.uk

Dr Gustavo A. M. de Almeida PhD., BEng

Lecturer in Hydraulic Engineering

Dr Gustavo A. M. de Almeida's photo

Dr Gustavo A. M. de Almeida is a Lecturer in Hydraulic Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton. He is a member of the Water and Environmental Engineering Group and is currently the Director of School of Engineering Postgraduate Research programmes. After completing his PhD in hydraulic engineering at UPC BarcelonaTech, Gustavo worked at the universities of Newcastle (Australia) and Bristol, before joining the University of Southampton as a lecturer in 2013.

Gustavo’s main research interests are in the application of fundamental principles of fluid mechanics and applied mathematics to understand and solve engineering and environmental problems.

Particular applications span across a wide range of problems, including the development of methods to predict and mitigate the impacts of floods (e.g. efficient flood inundation computational models, improved methods to assess scour around bridge piers and the effects of wood debris transported in rivers on submerged infrastructure), the hydrodynamic optimisation of raceway ponds used to cultivate algae, as well as the fundamental investigation of  how sediment particles are transported by turbulent flows.

His research has attracted funding from research councils (e.g. NERC funded “DEBRIEF” project NE/R009015, Innovate-UK grant TS/V002414) and industry (e.g. Jacobs Engineering).

Research interests

Gustavo’s main research interests are in the application of fundamental principles of fluid mechanics and applied mathematics to understand and solve challenging engineering and environmental problems. Particular interests include the development of numerical and computational methods to model large scale fluid dynamics problems (e.g. flood inundation), the transport of scalars (e.g. sediment, microalgae, microplastics) by turbulent flows, and the stability of infrastructure exposed to flow).

Resilient submerged infrastructure

The aim of this research is to understand and predict the potential damage to infrastructure submerged in rivers or the coast, such as bridge piers, tidal or offshore wind turbines. Scour around bridge piers and abutments submerged in rivers is responsible for the vast majority of bridge failures around the world. While a wide body of knowledge is available for scour around single piles under current or wave action, the effects of other complicating factors that occur in the real-world remains largely unknown. For example, debris accumulations at piers can increase the depth of scour by a factor of two or more, and has been shown to contribute to about one third of all bridge collapses in the UK, Ireland and the US; however, predicting the effects of debris accumulations at bridges remains challenging.

A specific component of this research looks at the mechanics of floating debris accumulation around bridge piers and its effects in increasing the risk of flooding and the potential failure of the bridge. The detailed understanding of these fundamental phenomena is key to improve our ability to perform accurate simulations of flood flow problems in many urban areas.

Resilient submerged infrastructure
Resilient submerged infrastructure

Modelling floods

This research focuses on the development of methods to understand, model and mitigate the risk of flooding. Specific interests span across a wide range of scales, from grain-scale fundamental questions through local (e.g. urban flooding) to large-scale flooding problems. Research activities are strongly based on a combination of theory, experimentation and the development and application of computational models. A significant part of the current work involves the development of innovative methods –such as upscaling and machine learning– to model flood propagation problems at high-performance. These algorithms are designed to make efficient use of increasingly vast amounts of data and computational resources available.

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Flood modelling

Interactions between river flow, sediment transport and morphodynamics

This research aims to develop a thorough understanding of flow-sediment interactions in rivers and their effects on channel morphology over a range of temporal and spatial scales. Research activities include the development and application of river hydraulics-morphodynamics computational models, laboratory experimentation as well as the analysis of field data. The combination of these three methods has proved extremely helpful to unveil important mechanisms governing complex morphodynamic phenomena such as the behaviour of pools and riffles in rivers.

 

Research group

Water and Environmental Engineering Group

Director of School of Engineering PGR programmes

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Dr Gustavo A. M. de Almeida
Engineering, University of Southampton, Southampton Boldrewood Innovation Campus, Burgess Road, Southampton, SO16 7QF

Room Number: 178/5013/B1

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