Syed, Mohd Ahmad, BTech (Hons), MTech, PhD

• Climate change modelling
• Resilient infrastructure
• Environmental sustainability
• Internal erosion modelling
• Geotechnical earthquake engineering (waterfront structures, liquefaction)
• Geomechanics problems using numerical and analytical modelling techniques such as FEM, FDM, DEM etc.

January 2025 was the warmest January on record. Where does it take us? Is climate change going to make it worse? Does climate change affect the infrastructure around us, structures such as the railway lines, tall buildings, airports, ports, etc? If so, in what way? As an engineer, what is my role? How can I capture and quantify the impact of climate change? There have been numerous discussions and debates about it, but the research around it remains scarce and is in a nascent stage. If left unattended and unresearched, climate change can have potentially damaging and catastrophic effects on the geotechnical infrastructure that is around us.

My research, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) of Sustainable Cities and Communities, Climate Action, and Life on Land, involves modeling and quantifying the impact of climate change on geotechnical infrastructure, developing resilient infrastructure, and environmental sustainability to reduce carbon emissions. I employ both numerical and experimental modeling techniques.

Key research areas are:

1) Modeling and quantifying the impact of climate change on geotechnical infrastructure

2) Resilient geotechnical infrastructure

3) Sustainable geotechnical infrastructure for a reduced carbon footprint

I am actively seeking PhD students in the abovementioned areas—please do contact me at [email protected]

My background: After reading Civil Engineering with a first class honours BTech degree, with a Gold Medal (in Surveying), I completed Master's and PhD degrees, from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India) 
and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India), respectively.  I have also worked in geotechnical consulting industry in: Consulting Engineering Services (I) Pvt. Ltd, Sargon Geosynthetics Ltd. (now a part of Maccaferri Environmental Soultions) and Dar Al-Handasah Consultants.

Key PhD projects:

Projects 1 and 2 Through my research, I have found that a key challenge faced by researchers in studying the effect of climate change on the integrity of geotechnical infrastructure is producing artificially weathered soil that mimics field conditions. I have led a project to create artificially weathered soil in a laboratory by exposing soil to acids of varying strengths (pH 2.5 and 4.0). Through a series of bench, XRD, and strength tests, the effect of weathering on soil strength was captured. Conducting strength tests was particularly challenging—to overcome this, the standard triaxial apparatus was meticulously modified by introducing a toxic chamber in between its flow and pressure lines so that the acid passing through them did not corrode its different components. I am leading on another project that includes creating artificially weathered soil using naturally occuring acidic environment. Results to follow soon.

Project 3: I recently led a project to develop a fully coupled methodology using SEEP/W, SLOPE/W, and PLAXIS software, considering future climate scenarios for Manchester, UK, and assessed the integrity of (high-speed rail and ordinary) embankments. It was found that future climate scenarios would result in significantly higher annual pore water pressures, embankment deformations, and strain softening, leading to unstable conditions and, in some cases, failure of embankments.

Projects 4, 5, 6: I have developed methodologies for assessing the integrity of retaining structures subject to the hazards of earthquake and tsunami, tunnels subject to blast loads, and co-supervised project for modeling the post-liquefaction behavior of piles. A PhD student whom I co-supervised developed a probabilistic seismic hazard framework for carrying out seismic risk analysis of dams in the West Africa region. Another project resulted in the development of a first-of-its-kind displacement-based S-curve for estimating seismic earth pressure.

Project 7: A PhD graduate successfully demonstrated that by using a polymer slurry as a support fluid during a bored pile construction, an enhanced pile capacity is achieved—thereby using less concrete;
and being sustainable.

Project 8: I am also very keen to exploring the use of agriculture waste (like sugar cane ash a.k.a. bagasse ash) in geotechnical infrastructure projects.

Key publications: 

Y Altowaijri, SM Ahmad, P Mandal (2025). “Effect of short- and long-term seasonal climate change variations on the stability of a vegetated slope in London clay”, International Journal of Geomechanics, https://doi.org/10.1061/IJGNAI/GMENG-10978

SM Ahmad (2013). “Pseudodynamic approach for computation of seismic passive earth resistance including seepage”, Ocean Engineering, 63, 63-71 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2013.01.020

SKC Osmi, SM Ahmad, A Adnan (2015). "Seismic fragility analysis of underground tunnel buried in rock", Proceedings international conference on earthquake engineering and seismology, Springer, Germany https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Siti-Khadijah-Che-Osmi/publication/311474474_Seismic_Fragility_Analysis_of_Underground_Tunnel_Buried_in_Rock/links/5848388608ae61f75de34ce1/Seismic-Fragility-Analysis-of-Underground-Tunnel-Buried-in-Rock.pdf  

B Ismael, D Lombardi, S Bhattacharya, SM Ahmad (2020). “Use of instability curves for the assessment of post-liquefaction stability and deformation of sloping grounds”, Engineering Geology, 265, 105347 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2019.105347

S Nimbalkar, A Pain, SM Ahmad, Q Chen (2019). “Stability assessment of earth retaining structures under static and seismic conditions”, Infrastructures, 4 (2), 15 https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures4020015

JA Mendoza-Ulloa, D Lombardi, SM Ahmad (2020). “Small-strain stiffness degradation of artificially cemented sands”, Géotechnique Letters, 10 (2), 284-289 https://doi.org/10.1680/jgele.19.00021

SA Irinyemi, D Lombardi, SM Ahmad (2022). “Seismic risk analysis for large dams in West Coast basin, southern Ghana”, Journal of Seismology, 1-16 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-021-10045-w

SA Irinyemi, D Lombardi, SM Ahmad (2022). “Seismic hazard assessment for Guinea, west Africa”, Scientific Reports, 12 (1), 2566 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06222-7

J Bakr, SM Ahmad (2018). “Effect of earthquake characteristics on permanent displacement of a cantilever retaining wall”, Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering IX, Volume 1, 849-854, see here

Scholarly tasks:

I am on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Geomechanics, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) USA; and Indian Geotechnical Journal, published by Springer.

I regularly examine PhD theses from other universities and institutes.

Teaching:

I am very passionate about teaching and keenly focus on finding innovative ways and methods.  I use a blend of modern technology and trditional approaches in teaching activities. I have developed two Android Apps entitled: Earth Pressure Coefficient; and Soil Stress Increment.