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Curtin University

Country: Australia

Curtin University

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17 Projects, page 1 of 4
  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/S008330/1
    Funder Contribution: 79,771 GBP

    This project will bring together two of the world's largest, most successful, and mutually distinctive palaeomagnetic groups to characterise the behaviour of Earth's ancient magnetic field and its link with deep Earth dynamics and evolution. Merging the complementary areas of expertise, sampling targets, and laboratory equipment available at Liverpool and Curtin promises to generate a novel longstanding collaboration with the potential to help revolutionise our understanding of Earth's deep interior. The PI has a long term research plan to produce and use the first empirically-based quantitative models of palaeomagnetic field behaviour (palaeo-geomagnetism) back across billions of years of Earth history. The motivation for this is that these will provide a numerical framework for understanding the physics of the geodynamo process and how it has changed with Earth's evolution (including secular cooling of the core and mantle, inner core nucleation and growth, and changes in core-mantle heat flux resulting from mantle convection). These models will also allow assessments to made of the realism of numerical dynamo simulations (including those running under different boundary conditions representing different stages in Earth's evolution). Finally they will provide a tool for improving the constraints provided by measurements of the palaeomagnetic field on past continental reconstructions and tectonic processes (classical palaeomagnetism) - these currently rely on simplistic assumptions concerning the time-averaged field and its variability in time and space. The PI has already secured substantial funding to build these models back to 750 million years ago and this project is designed to initiate a collaboration that will extend this endeavour firstly back to 1215 million years ago and then farther back into the Precambrian. In order to achieve this, we need to: (i) Obtain access to well-dated rocks from before 750 Ma that are reliable palaeomagnetic recorders to enable high quality full vector palaeo-geomagnetic records to be produced (ii) Initiate an intensive global measurement campaign to generate reliable data from such rocks that will constrain the statistical models of palaeo-geomagnetic field behaviour. (iii) Undertake collaborations with world-leading specialists in palaeogeography, classical palaeomagnetism and geodynamics to properly characterise Precambrian palaeo-geomagnetic field behaviour and exploit this information to improve our understanding of continental configurations at its surface and its relationship with deep Earth processes. Our approach will be to utilise the wealth of resources (human, technical and geological) accessible to Curtin and to share the tools and knowledge of palaeo-geomagnetic technqiues developed at Liverpool such that a new antipodal centre of excellence in palaeo-geomagnetic field characterisation is initiated. During this project, we will: (i) undertake collaborative field sampling of Australian Precambrian rocks that are known to behave reliably and share extant samples; (ii) perform reciprocal visits to teach one another about our respective disciplines, obtain measurements at both institutions, share goals and results, and discuss future sampling targets and projects; (iii) use Proterozoic continental reconstructions to improve our global statistical field models and iterate to predict how reconstructions might change as a consequence of how the palaeomagnetic field varied. The outcomes of this project will answer exciting research questions and kick-start a major new collaboration in a timely manner to capitalise on existing NERC and other UK funding and leverage additional funds aimed at producing a new world leading direction in palaeo-geomagnetic research.

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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: EP/I030174/1
    Funder Contribution: 77,129 GBP

    Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: EP/I03014X/1
    Funder Contribution: 272,437 GBP

    We are proposing to develop and implement new software on HPC platforms which will enable new wide-ranging scientific applications in materials simulations using static lattice techniques. The project will initiate new developments in the GULP (General Utility Lattice Program) which over the last decade has become the standard code for lattice simulations, with a very substantial national and international user base of several thousand users. Current versions of the code are, however, limited to single processor or small cluster platforms, which prevents applications to the type of complex problems and systems which are addressed by materials chemistry and physics. The project will develop new software, which will be based on (i) an efficiently parallelised version of GULP; (ii) a new integrated version of GULP bringing together developments from different groups; and (iii) a new master code KLMC (Knowledge Led Master Controller) that is able to setup novel complex simulations, span multiple GULP jobs, and analyse results in order to achieve the following main application types:(a) mapping energy landscapes as a route to complex simulations of solid state reactions, enumeration and sampling of local configurations in disordered systems;(b) ion ordering in solid solutions, which show unique magnetic, superconducting, optical and catalytic properties;(c) interaction and clustering of multiple defect centres in solid state systems, for example, materials exposed to radiation;(d) structure prediction and properties for complex solids with large unit cells and large clusters or nanoparticles;(e) surface and interface structure and property determination and prediction;(f) free energy calculations of a phase transitions and calculation of diffusion paths and rates;(g) crystal growth of nanoparticles and surfaces.The project is a collaboration between multiple developers as well as academic and industrial users.

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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: EP/K016709/1
    Funder Contribution: 615,454 GBP

    Superconductors have the potential to revolutionise the way the world uses electricity. There are already many practical applications of these materials, ranging from energy transport to uses in medical diagnosis, communications and mass people transport. However for more wide-ranging impact we need to discover materials which have even better properties than are already known today. In order to tune these properties and to guide the search for new materials, knowledge of the fundamental physical reasons why these materials are superconducting is highly desirable. Although this is known for so-called conventional materials, mostly discovered before 1980, an understanding of the superconducting mechanism responsible for copper oxide based high temperature superconductivity, discovered in 1986, is still lacking. The research in this proposal aims to advance our understanding of the electronic structure of copper oxide high-temperature superconductors. We believe this knowledge will provide a major step forward in the world-wide quest to understand and hence improve these materials. We are proposing a wide ranging programme which will study the thermodynamic and quantum coherent properties of extremely well ordered samples of these materials. In less well ordered samples, the signatures of the fundamental symmetry-breaking phase transitions may be smeared out, making them invisible to experiment. Also quantum coherence effects which give unique information about the electronic structure are made unobservable by disorder. We will use techniques developed over the last twenty years to grow highly ordered single crystal samples and study their behaviour under the world's highest available magnetic fields of up to 100 T (which is roughly 2 million times larger than the earth's field) at temperatures less than one degree above absolute zero. From these measurements we will discover how the Fermi surface, which characterises the momentum distribution of the current carrying electrons in the material, evolves with electron concentration. This will give unique and important information to guide the development of a theory of superconductivity in these materials.

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  • Funder: UKRI Project Code: NE/F004699/1
    Funder Contribution: 889,180 GBP

    The main objective of this proposal is to determining the nature and kinetics of fluid-rock interactions between CO2-rich brines and rocks, in field settings as well as in laboratory experiments, in order to formulate and test models of the behaviour and fate of CO2 injected in geological strata. To do this we need to determine the processes which moderate the fluid-mineral reaction kinetics, particularly the nature of the processes which result in much more sluggish kinetics in field settings compared with the predictions from laboratory experiments. The ultimate objective is to creat a database and methodology that enables the results of this study to be used in risk assessments and performance modelling of geological carbon storage sites. To achieve these main objectives we will need to carry out the following: 1) Evaluate natural (CO2 natural gas reservoirs) and anthropogenic (CO2 injection EOR - Enhanced Oil Recovery) sites as analogues for geological CO2 storage. As necessary, determine the hydrology and the nature of the CO2-fluid to reservoir brine interactions in these sites and characterise the reservoir mineralogy, mineral characteristics that might control reaction rates (e.g. mineral surface areas and topologies) and fluid-mineral reactions by using a range of mineralogical, geochemical and isotopic analytical techniques. 2) Carry out laboratory experiments on reservoir materials, cap rocks and single minerals to investigate mineral-fluid reactions and reaction kinetics under controlled conditions and to test the reactions and reaction kinetics inferred from the field-scale studies. 3) Perform laboratory experiments to make detailed measurements of noble gas solubility in, and partitioning between, supercritical and liquid CO2 and brine and extend the data available for the natural analogues to include high precision noble-gas isotopic and concentration data. This data will inform modelling of the hydrology of the naturalCO2 reservoirs. 4) Utilise existing and develop improved thermodynamic modelling of both equilibrium and kinetically-rate limited mineral-fluid reactions to a) relate the results of field-based and laboratory experiments, b) enable more general application of the results from this and other studies to specific field sites and c) use the laboratory and field results to test the applicability of widely used thermodynamic models for mineral reaction rates.

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