- Posted on 27 Jun 2025
- 5 minutes read
UTS Distinguished Professor Daichao Sheng will use a prestigious national fellowship to build more accurate modelling for high-speed rail in Australia.
As any transport expert will tell you, planning for high-speed rail in Australia is a notoriously difficult task. The long distances, unique terrain and harsh climate make estimates of costs and possible routes hard to pin down.
Now Distinguished Professor Daichao Sheng is building new modelling tools to make the costing and feasibility of different railway design options more accurate under Australian conditions.
His ground-breaking research program has been awarded more than $3.7 million over a five-year Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of the most prestigious national grants awarded by the Australian Research Council.
“The climate, terrain and ground conditions in eastern Australia present unique challenges for building high-speed rail. For instance, tracks need to be flat, stable and straight which can be difficult in the soft soils common in corridor options,” Professor Sheng said.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lack of rigorous tools to analyse the key geo-technical properties and uncertainties that are unique to the Australian environment.”
His solution focuses on computational methods and analytic tools that predict displacement, vibration, mass transfer and soil erosion, and use artificial intelligence to perform risk analysis of the potential for failure in geostructures.
These next-generation analysis tools will help transport planners and construction companies solve geotechnical problems even before test stretches of track are laid.
Distinguished Professor Daichao Sheng
Australian Laureate Fellow
“Combined, these next-generation analysis tools will help transport planners and construction companies solve geotechnical problems even before test stretches of track are laid,” he said.
“While they are designed primarily for use on high-speed rail, we can see the tools could also be useful in the heavy-haul rail network particularly in helping reduce the more than $1 billion spent on their maintenance each year.”
Distinguished Professor Daichao Sheng is a world-leading expert in geotechnical engineering. He pioneered the understanding of unsaturated soils and how they behave under infrastructure such as railways and airports.
He is Head of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UTS and has been recognised with international awards including the RM Quigley Award and John Booker Medal.
The Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme supports world-class researchers to conduct innovative research in Australia, build capacity and mentor early career researchers.
Awarded annually by the Australian Research Council, the presitigious fellowships provide five years of funding for researcher salaries and project costs.
Professor Sheng is UTS' fifth Australian Laureate or Industry Laureate fellow, following Professors Jie Lu, Dayong Jin, Larissa Behrendt and Guoxiu Wang.
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