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Publications

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Applied Sciences Vol 16 (2026)

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Applied Sciences Vol 16 (2025)

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Procedia Structural Integrity Vol 75, pp. 419-425 (2025)

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Procedia Structural Integrity Vol 75, pp. 650-659 (2025)

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Procedia Structural Integrity Vol 68, pp. 1223-1229 (2025)

, Xirouchakis Paul, Pearson Alastair, Brownlie Frazer,

Sustainability Vol 17 (2025)

Research Interests

• Ultrasonic Fatigue Testing;
• Residual Life Assessments (based on fatigue and creep);
• Finite Element Analysis (CAE/FEA);
• Continuum Damage Mechanics (CDM);
• Rigid (Multi-)Body Dynamics.

Current research interests comprise study and modelling of non-linear material behaviour: Plasticity and Viscoplasticity, Creep, Fatigue, Hyperelasticity, Unified material models. These non-linear material effects are applied to the residual life assessments of engineering structures subject to severe loading conditions using FEA and concepts of Continuum Damage Mechanics.

Projects

Comlekci, Tugrul (Principal Investigator) Gorash, Yevgen (Co-investigator) MacKenzie, Donald (Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2026

MacKenzie, Donald (Principal Investigator) Gorash, Yevgen (Co-investigator) Connolly, Stephen (Research Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2016 - 22-Jan-2020

Gorash, Yevgen (Principal Investigator) Bickley, Alan (Administrator) Gozalo, Francisco (Co-investigator)

Swellable elastomeric seals (packers) have been widely employed in various oil-&-gas and minerals applications. Examples include slimming of well design, zonal isolation, water shut-off, and multi-stage fracturing. Important characteristics of packers required for these applications are how fast the packer can seal the borehole as well as how fast a certain amount of contact pressure can build up. These characteristics, which are generally measured from full-scale packer tests, can be predicted through numerical FEM simulations (using ABAQUS, ANSYS, MSC.Marc etc.) based on material data obtained from basic experiments. The key component of numerical prediction is an availability of advanced material models for swellable elastomers, which would be capable of accurate simulation of packers’ non-linear mechanical behaviour under various downhole conditions. The numerical simulation of packers can be incorporated into optimisation procedure finding an optimal shape of packers with the goals to minimise the time to seal the borehole and maximise the contact pressure between the seal and borehole. Such an optimisation procedure would allow the Weir Group to produce the packer with various designs optimised for different downhole conditions considering the borehole type, i.e., permeable or non-permeable borehole, and downhole uncertainties, i.e., variations of borehole size and borehole temperature. Through this research project, we hope to develop an optimisation procedure based on advanced FEM simulation to provide us an improved design of packers produced by Weir Minerals USA and design recommendations for various downhole conditions.

01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2018

Anwar, Ali (Post Grad Student) Gorash, Yevgen (Research Co-investigator) Dempster, William (Principal Investigator) Hamilton, Robert (Academic) Nash, David (Academic)

Pressure Relief Valves (PRV) tend to leak at high pressures. Customers demand a guarantee of leak tightness as a percentage of the set pressure. WEIR competitors can guarantee a higher leak tightness and therefore in certain circumstance we lose orders to our competitors. This work program is intended to understand why PRV's leak and how to reduce or mitigate against the leakage. Improving WEIR design will support the sale of more product. The main purpose of this research is to deliver prediction methods for sealing design with specific emphasis on Weir Group Sarasin-RSBD valve products.
The main objective of this problem is to be able to re-create this leakage issue using computational tools. This will be done using a combination of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The complexities of this research lie with the deformation and surface effects of the "sealing faces" of the valves at a micron and macro scale including load cycling and creep behaviour analysis. This has to be analysed and reproduced at corresponding pressures and temperatures with compressible or incompressible fluid flow using combined FEA and CFD tools.

24-Jan-2014 - 24-Jan-2017

Gorash, Yevgen (Researcher) Comlekci, Tugrul (Principal Investigator) MacKenzie, Donald (Academic)

The design for the POTF is currently being completed by Weir SPM and based on
the discussions on the new design, a set of numerical analysis studies are now proposed for the powerframe of the POTF:
• Kinematic analysis,
• Structural analysis,
• Fatigue analysis,
• Design variations and optimisation analysis.

01-Jan-2014 - 31-Jan-2014

Gorash, Yevgen (Researcher) Comlekci, Tugrul (Principal Investigator) Hamilton, Robert (Academic)

Objectives include:
1. Develop an FEA based methodology and procedure that local Weir Group engineering sites can use to better analyse and predict the behaviour of elastomeric components.
2. Develop an understanding into the behaviour of elastomeric materials in Weir Group products, components and manufacturing issues.
3. Develop a training program on elastomer modelling for Weir Group Engineers.

01-Jan-2013 - 31-Jan-2014