University of Strathclyde

Overview
Based in the heart of Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, the University of Strathclyde is winner of the Times Higher Education UK University of the Year 2019 and The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2020. The University continues to take bold steps in transforming its approach to working with business, industry and government to make a positive impact on the local and global community it serves.
Strathclyde is a socially progressive, leading international technological University, inspired by its Age of Enlightenment founder’s vision of a ‘place of useful learning’. Together with its partners, it has developed shared clusters of research capability in high-growth areas, including Health Technology, Quantum, Space, 5G, Industrial Informatics and FinTech. Strathclyde is the anchor university for the National Manufacturing Institute of Scotland, a centre of expertise to help position the UK as a global leader in advanced manufacturing.
Research
Strathclyde is home to world-class researchers who address local, societal and global challenges.
Research is of central importance to everything the University does. It informs teaching and helps make a difference to business, industry and society as a whole. Strathclyde is in the UK’s top 20 universities for research intensity, according to the Times Higher Education’s analysis of REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2014. 
Strathclyde’s leading-edge research and close links with business, industry and public sector organisations make it the university of choice for a growing number of doctoral researchers. Collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches and the desire to create an impact are key drivers at the core of Strathclyde’s research strategy, which is embedded in all its doctoral programmes. Strathclyde’s research programmes showcase its focus on relevance and usefulness, through impact on industry, science and society.
Glasgow City Innovation District
Strathclyde, in partnership with Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurial Scotland has established Scotland’s first innovation district as a hub for entrepreneurship, innovation and collaboration, bringing together ambitious, forward-thinking people to tackle societal and global challenges and drive inclusive economic growth.
Technology &amp; Innovation Centre Zone
At the core of the Glasgow City Innovation District, the Technology &amp; Innovation Centre (TIC) zone, sited within the University of Strathclyde, has a high concentration of innovative organisations, including UK Catapult Centres, Scottish Funding Council Innovation Centres and the UK’s first Fraunhofer Institute.
In the TIC Zone, Strathclyde is transforming the way academics, business, industry and the public sector work in partnership. They are working together to find solutions to significant challenges in areas of economic importance.
The Innovation and Industry Engagement Directorate is at the centre of Strathclyde’s strategic commitment to delivering global economic and societal impact. Working with entrepreneurs, academics and external business partners, the aim is to support the formation and growth of commercial opportunities and to facilitate new partnerships between these communities.

<h1 id="background">Background</h1>
In 2013- Strathclyde university academics started a project that developed a system comprising specialised grout additives, a grout detection system and interpretation tools, the combination of which will allow grouting practitioners to visualise injected grout bodies in 3D. Current approaches to grouted barrier construction are limited by an inability to determine the precise distribution of grout post-injection, in turn making verification of barrier geometry highly complex.
<h1 id="technology-overview">Technology Overview</h1>
The construction and mining industries spends multi-millions of pounds on grouting rocks and soils each year via borehole injection. For example, £5M was spent grouting the ground for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. One of the greatest difficulties with grouting is an inability to detect where the grout has gone – companies just pump grout in blind, essentially only stopping when they can get simply no more in. A detectible grout could result in reduced costs by reducing the density of injection holes and allowing for iterative grouting campaign design. The new detectible grout is designed to be detectible once injected from the ground surface (or from within a tunnel) (<img src="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.in-part.com/figures/9SY2Z9TtQ96nEWFaX318_Screen%20Shot%202020-11-04%20at%2009.59.03.png" alt="Figure 1" />).
<h1 id="benefits">Benefits</h1>
There is a major opportunity to change industry practise. This is currently cited by industry as one of their biggest problems as they essentially pump it in ‘blind’ with no idea where it has gone and hence no idea as to the volume and location of ‘sealed’ soil/rock.
Contaminated material to be hydraulically isolated in-situ so that radionuclide activity can decay to acceptable levels in-situ, displacing excavation-based techniques during site decommissioning. This would have economic and environmental benefits through a reduction in waste disposal volumes and this will also help to minimise worker radioactive dose rate, enabling more effective workforce management.