Oxford University
Civil Engineering
Department of Engineering Science
Dr Subhamoy (Suby) Bhattacharya
Departmental Lecturer in Engineering Science
Junior Research Fellow (Somerville College, Oxford)
Dr Bhattacharya started his undergraduate studies in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, where he took the course of Exploration Geophysics. After successfully completing the first year of studies at IIT, he got interested in civil engineering and went to Bengal Engineering College (Deemed University, now Bengal Engineering and Science University) at Shibpore (Howrah, India). He graduated from Shibpore in 1998 with a first class honors degree in Civil Engineering. He was awarded the “Wolfeden Memorial Prize” for his overall proficiency during the 4 years of engineering studies. He was also the only recipient of University Merit Scholarship from Civil Engineering Department at Bengal Engineering College (Deemed University). His electives were advanced structural design, bridge design and Finite Element Analysis. In his final year of undergraduate studies, he won the first prize in the 28th All India Students Design Competition (organised by the Institution of Engineers) for the Structural Design of an Open Air Stadium.
After graduation in 1998, he began his career as a structural design engineer working for Consulting Engineering Services (India). This was an exciting phase for him as India was (and still is) witnessing massive infrastructural development. He got involved in many of those projects ranging from power plants, bulk material handing plants, water treatment plants. He was also involved in designing piled foundations for multi-storeyed buildings and bridges. In the span of about 2 years, he designed more than 6000 piles. These buildings were often located in landfill (Salt Lake, Rajarhat, Haldia) and liquefiable sites. He was also involved in designing the foundation for more than 100 bridges in Assam under the ARIASP [Assam Rural Infrastructural and Agricultural Supporting Project]. Assam is one of the dangerously seismic active areas arising from the Himalayan Fault. His research interest in earthquake resistant foundation came in 1999 following the earthquakes of Turkey and Taiwan and he decided to carry out postgraduate studies. In the year 2000, he received the Nehru Cambridge Fellowship and Overseas Research Student (ORS) award to carry out postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge. He started his postgraduate studies in October 2000. His PhD thesis was supervised by Dr Gopal Madabhushi and Professor Malcolm Bolton.
His thesis was titled “Pile Instability during earthquake Liquefaction” and was completed in September 2003. His PhD examiners were Professor Ross Boulanger from University of California (External examiner) and Dr Kenichi Soga from University of Cambridge (Internal Examiner).
Download the abstract of the thesis
Download the full thesis (10.64Mb, pdf)
His PhD work provided a fresh perspective on the problem of the collapse of piled foundations in liquefiable soils. Following the completion of his PhD, he joined the consultancy division of Fugro Limited (U.K) and worked for four months [October 2003 to January 2004] in offshore engineering projects, before taking sabbatical leave to the Centre for Urban Earthquake Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan).
This was to take up an invited fellowship offered by Professor Kohji Tokimatsu to discuss his research findings with the Japanese engineers. After spending 8 months [February 2004 to September 2004] in Japan he returned to Fugro and worked for more than a year [October 2004 to October 2005] before taking his current post as Departmental Lecturer at Oxford University. He also holds a college lectureship and fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford. At Fugro, he was involved in deepwater offshore consultancy projects, and developed a keen interest in this area. He carried out independent design reviews of critical aspects of deepwater technology for oil companies. One was the design of anchor piles for a FPSO [Floating Production Storage and Offloading] platform due to extreme storm loading.
He maintains an interest in soil dynamics, and collaborates with
Shimizu Corporation (Japan)
Centre for Urban Earthquake Engineering (Tokyo, Japan)
Yamaguchi University (Japan)
Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore)
Fugro Limited (U.K)
ConocoPhillips (U.K)
Previous research
- His doctoral work looked at the failure mechanisms of piled foundations in seismically liquefiable soils using dynamic centrifuge modelling. Previous experiments had concentrated on lateral loading of piles. His experiments showed for the first time that a piled structure can collapse under the action of axial load alone when the soil surrounding the pile liquefies in an earthquake. Lateral loads are not necessary for failure, but can make the situation worse. More can be read in his Geotechnique paper (Geotechnique 54, Vol. 3, pp 203-213). This research won the 2005 T. K. Hsieh Award from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). He presented invited lecture on this topic in various countries.
- While in Japan, he was involved in testing foundations in the world’s largest shaking table at NIED (Tsukuba).
- During his time at Fugro, he managed two model testing projects:
- Model tests to identify methods of easy removal of installation mudmats from the seabed for BP’s Caspian Gas field development project (ACG project, acronym of Azeri Chirag Gunashli). These mudmats will be used to install a pin-pile which will support a fixed jacket temporarily while the main piles are installed. These mudmats are to be reused nine times during the entire installation process. This project was supported by BP as the operator, KBR [Halliburton] as the designer, Saipem Eni as the contractor and MSL as an independent reviewer. Various proposals for removal were suggested by the contractor as well as the consultants. The main task was to evaluate the proposals and recommending one system of removal and the other as back-up.
- Investigation of the cause of excessive tilt (termed as Rack Phase Difference) during the installation of the Maersk Inspirer jack-up alongside Judy platform. The task was to study the mode of failure (looking at the field evidence i.e. video footage taken from a ROV camera) and replicate the same in a small scale model.
His current students are:
- Richard Sandford, carrying a D.Phil on “Lateral response of on-bottom (unburied) HP/HT pipelines in seabed”. This is co-supervised by Professor Guy Houlsby and Mr Richard Davies of ConocoPhillips (U.K).
- Josh Macabuag, carrying out his Masters thesis (4YP) on “Increasing the collapse time of non-engineered buildings during earthquakes”. This is co-supervised by Dr Tony Blakeborough.
- Adri Kericku, carrying out his Masters thesis (4YP) on “Stability of piled foundations in liquefiable soils”. This is co-supervised by Dr Harvey Burd.
- Will Wholey carrying out his Masters thesis (4YP) on “Design Built and Testing of a rig to measure the dynamic properties of liquefied soil”. This is co-supervised by Dr Tony Blakeborough.
- James Liu carrying out his Masters thesis (4YP) on “Numerical and Analytical Modelling of the penetration of skirted spudcan in the seabed”. This is co-supervised by Dr Chris Martin.
Recent Publications
- Bhattacharya, S. and Adhikari, S. (2007)
"Vibrational characteristics of a piled structure in liquefied soil during earthquakes: Experimental Investigation (Part I) and Analytical Modelling (Part II)"
OUEL 2294/07
report as pdf (2.11Mb)
Professional activities:
- Served as a chairman of a session “Soil-Foundation Interaction–1” in the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held at Vancouver between 1st and 6th August 2004. http://www.venuewest.com/13wcee/index.cfm
- Organising an International Workshop on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering in India on 10th Jan 2007. This workshop is supported and sponsored by:
- NPEEE [National Program for Earthquake Engineering Education] http://www.nicee.info/npeee/showpage.php?id=95 [A Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India Initiative]
- TEQIP [Technical Education Quality Improvement Program] http://www.npiu.nic.in/project_tech4.htm
- Bengal Engineering and Science University (West Bengal, India) www.becs.ac.in and www.becollege.org
The main purpose of this workshop is to produce an edited text book titled “Design of foundations in seismic areas: Principles and some applications”. The book will later serve as a resource material for teaching post graduates and handbook for practicing engineers.
