Dr. Attila Zsaki is an Associate Professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering. He obtained his B.Eng. degree from Ryerson University in 1996 and his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from the University of Toronto in 1999 and 2003, respectively. From 2003 to 2004 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow and from 2004 to 2005 a Research Associate at the University of Toronto's Lassonde Institute for Engineering Geoscience in the Computational Geomechanics Group.
Membership
CGS, SIAM, SIGGRAPH, ARMA, ISRM, ASCE
Research
Dr. Zsaki's research is focused on modeling and computational aspects of geosciences (rock & soil mechanics) with particular interest in multiphysics modeling of continuum and discontinuum and lately, railway geotechnics. His other areas of interest are scientific computing, parallel computing, computer graphics and mesh generation. He joined the faculty of Concordia in June 2005.
In addition to academia, Dr. Zsaki has worked in the industry as software developer and consultant on various projects ranging from 3D digital content creation, geomechanics analysis software, and lately on high-performance scientific computing applications for modeling continuum behaviour. His interests in scientific computing are performance optimization and parallel computing on scalable, shared-memory multiprocessor systems, graphics processing units (GPU) and FPGAs.
NOTICE TO PROSPECTIVE NEW STUDENTS
Until further notice I am not taking new Ph.D. students. If you seek a M.A.Sc. position, please read my research areas carefully and contact me if you have a significant background in the work I do. I will consider your email and contact you only if there is a position available that suits your background. Thus, please do not send me repeated reminder emails.
Research
Dr. Zsaki's current research interests are in the area of continuum and discontinuum modeling of geomaterials (rocks in particular) and generation of sythetic rock models for visualization and computer graphics applications. A few ongoing projects include;
- stability of railway embankments subjected to extreme weather due to climate change.
- simulation of mudflows impacting railway infrastructure.
- drainage of railway embankments.
- use of p-adaptivity in mesh optimization to reduce model sizes and accelarate solution times.
- use of GPUs and FPGAs to expedite solution of boundary element problems in geomechanics.
- development of a combined fluid-solid modeling and analysis framework using smoothed particle hydrodynamics and discrete elements to model failure of tailings dams.
- simulation of viscous deformation of near-molten rock masses.
- development of sythetic rock surface and fracture models using representative metrics from geology.
- deformation measurement using digital image capture of early age plastic shrinkage cracking in concrete.
- application of smoothed particle hydrodynamics in bridge hydraulics.
- efficient generation of discrete element model geometries.
Since Dr. Zsaki's research interests are mainly involve some aspect or another of developing numerical models, students with sound background in geomechanics or geophysics are encouraged to contact him. Note that in addition to geomechanics, prospective students should have good programming skills in C/C along with some experience using current graphics programming API. Background in OpenCL, CUDA, MPI or OpenMP would be a bonus.
Past research themes
- Parallel computation of stresses around underground excavations using boundary elements.
- Large-scale geometry and mesh optimization for underground excavations.
- Automatic mesh generation for application in numerical stress analysis.
Recent students supervised
S. Wang, M.A.Sc., Effect of clogged drainage pipes on the stability of railway embankments
L. Luo, M.A.Sc., Effect of ballast pockets on the stability of railway embankments
H. Sun, M.A.Sc., A Poisson-disk sampling based particle-packing generation algorithm for Discrete Element simulations
F. Gu, M.A.Sc., Modeling and simulation of mudflows impacting railway infrastructure using smoothed particle hydrodynamics
H. Su, M.A.Sc., Effect of soft ground tunneling-induced displacements on railway embankments
M. Bashkaron, M.A.Sc., Numerical modeling for shallow foundation near slope
S.S. Xu, M.A.Sc., Effect of rapid drawdown on the stability of railway embankments
C. Xu, M.A.Sc., Long-term seepage assessment using numerical modeling for upstream-type tailings dams
W. Zhang, M.A.Sc., The effect of piles and their loading on nearby retaining walls – An Artificial Neural Network Approach
S. Zhang, M.A.Sc., The effect of particle geometry and surface asperities on the result of discrete element simulations
P. Zhao, M.A.Sc., Digital image correlation to evaluate plastic shrinkage cracking in cement-based materials (co-supervised with Prof. Nokken)
X. Ai, M.A.Sc., Stability assessment of homogeneous slopes loaded with mobile tracked cranes – An Artificial Neural Network approach
J. Gu, M.A.Sc., GPU-Accelerated Boundary Element Method for stress analysis of underground excavations
R. Ibrahim, M.A.Sc., Three dimensional finite element mesh optimization using the partial p-adaptive method for stress analysis of underground excavations with prismatic cross-sections
M.N. Sakib, M.A.Sc., A comparison between mesh-based and mesh-free CFD techniques for bridge hydraulics application (co-supervised with Prof. Li)
D. F. Garcia Rosero, M.A.Sc., Finite element mesh optimization using the partial p-adaptive method for stress analysis of underground excavations
M. Hazegh Fetratjoo, Ph.D., A framework for automatic modeling of underground excavations and optimizing 3D boundary and finite element meshes associated with them
B. Vazhbakht, M.A.Sc., A Finite element mesh optimization method incorporating geologic features for stress analysis of underground excavation
P. Daneshvar, M.A.Sc., Modeling of tailings flow following a dam breach using smoothed particle hydrodynamics
M.N. Saravanakumar, M.Tech., Development of software for design of reinforced earth slopes and walls (co-supervised with with Prof. Ramasamy, IIT Roorkee)
A. Kundu, M.Tech., Strengthening of clay by geogrid reinforced granular pile (co-supervised with with Profs. Maheshwari and Samadhiya, IIT Roorkee)
H. Nejati, M.A.Sc., An investigation of contact models and application of 3D discrete element method to rockfall simulation
D. Bitar, Ph.D., Modeling and analysis of reinfroced granular layer overlaying very soft soil (co-supervised with Prof. Poorooshasb)
