PhD in Civil Engineering
My name is Htet Nyi Nyi Lin I am 23 years old and a year 1 PhD student at UTS. I finished my Highschool at the age of 15 in 2017 and came to Australia in late 2017 to pursue my university degree. Then I finished my Bachelor degree with First Class honours in 2022 at UTS. I am awarded full scholarship by SmartCrete CRC and my current project is partnered with BG&E. I have work experience as an apprentice project engineer for 2 year and graduate civil engineer for 6 months.
BG&E
University of Technology Sydney
Professor Arnaud Castel
The name of the research is Refining Design Deformation predictions by Improving Concrete Volume Stability Assessment. The project is supported by the SmartCrete CRC. The majority of work will be carried out at Tech Lab. On all projects that use concrete as a material, serviceability management is critical particularly for controlling movement and managing cracking. A critical factor in assessing and designing for serviceability (material movement) is concrete shrinkage, which is in part covered in Australian Standards and guides. Shrinkage is critical in estimating movement and potential cracking in commonly used structural elements such as columns, beams and walls, and particularly slabs (including base pavement layers). Standards such as AS5100.5 (Bridge Design – Concrete) and AS 3600 (Concrete Structures) give guidance on shrinkage. This project aims to improve/refine concrete structures deformation predictions by improving concrete volume stability assessment. In this project, multiple concrete gradings which are infused with different supplementary cementitious materials will be tested to understand their shrinkage behaviours.
I was always passionate about civil engineering and I am always curious to know more. As I finished my bachelor degree in 2022, I was thinking to pursue further study. Therefore, I asked my supervisor, Dr Jun Li, who supervised me during my bachelor degree upon reference letter for further study. Dr Jun Li had recommended me to apply for this industry-led research project. As I am willing to learn and experiments are fun and my dream is to become a researcher, I couldn’t miss this opportunity and decided to undertake this research project.
The highlight of my PHD would be that I am awarded full scholarship by Smartcrete CRC project. As well as I am only in my year 1 and currently drafting my first paper publication aiming for Q1 quality.
Once I have completed my PHD, I would love to seek more industry experience in Australia before diving into academic and research. To be able to understand the crisis and problems facing in reality, it is the best to gain more experience at industry first then carry those knowledge and experience back to research for further study.
This research will be able to bring a lot for Australia concrete ecosystem. As my project is mainly focusing on the influence of SCM such as fly ash and slag on properties of concrete, being able to understand the characteristic of SCM blended concrete will be bring multiple benefits. As these SCM have different hydration mechanism than cement binder, SCM blended concrete tend to crack differently due to different shrinkage rate. However, with this research, people can use it to predict the influence of SCM on shrinkage and creep of concrete and hence they can prevent cracking on concrete structures. Furthermore, being able to understand more, people can replace more cement with these SCM hence production cost will be reduced as cement binder production are expensive and also emit lots of CO2 in the air hence it will also increase sustainability of the environment.
