Professor Simon Tait
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Professor of Water Engineering
+44 114 222 5771
Full contact details
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Room MezC6a
Sir Frederick Mappin Building (Broad Lane Building)
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
- Profile
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My research results in improved measurement and management methodologies to allow urban water infrastructure systems to cope better with pressures caused by climate change, changing patterns of use and physical deterioration.
Professor Simon Tait
Some of Simon’s research focuses on how sediments and pollutants get into water networks and environments; specifically, the processes associated with erosion, transportation and deposition of sediment in river and urban drainage systems. This has evolved to the study of near-bed turbulence and how this interacts with water surfaces waves, offering the potential for the measurement of river and in-pipe turbulence from observations of the water surface.
When sewers fail due to the system filling up or blockages, they can overflow into rivers and urban environments which is biologically damaging and can be detrimental to the aquatic ecology. By working to ensure better management of sewer and drainage networks, Simon aims to prevents this and minimise the resources spent on maintaining sewers and clean-up. He uses lab experiments and surrogate or real sediments as well as numerical modelling to discover how sediments and pollutants move within networks and rivers. By understanding how sediments and networks perform, better decisions can be made to ensure the safety of the urban drainage systems that serve large sections of the population.
Simon is involved in the development of novel inspection techniques to allow the large sewer and drainage networks to be better managed as they face increased pressures from climate change and deterioration. He helped form a spin-out instrumentation company with Professor Kirill Horoshenkov, which uses acoustic-based instruments to search for defects in pipes.
Research Themes
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Water surface response to turbulent flow over a backward-facing step. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 966, a18.
- Using noncontact measurement of water surface dynamics to estimate river discharge. Water Resources Research, 58(9). View this article in WRRO
- Future inspection and deterioration prediction capabilities for buried distributed water infrastructure. Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice, 13(3). View this article in WRRO
- Spatial and temporal considerations of implementing local renewable energy sources and decentralised heat recovery for domestic heat. Journal of Cleaner Production, 358. View this article in WRRO
- The potential for heat recovery and thermal energy storage in the UK using buried infrastructure. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Smart Infrastructure and Construction. View this article in WRRO
- Thermal energy transfer around buried pipe infrastructure. Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, 29. View this article in WRRO
- Simulation of railway drainage asset service condition degradation in the UK using a Markov chain–based approach. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 27(3). View this article in WRRO
- Large-eddy simulation of turbulent free surface flow over a gravel bed. Journal of Hydraulic Research. View this article in WRRO
- Implications of model uncertainty for investment decisions to manage intermittent sewer overflows. Water Research, 194. View this article in WRRO
- Free-surface behaviour of shallow turbulent flows. Journal of Hydraulic Research, 59(1), 1-20. View this article in WRRO
- Reducing carbon emissions by integrating urban water systems and renewable energy sources at a community scale. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 123. View this article in WRRO
- SPH modelling of turbulent open channel flow over and within natural gravel beds with rough interfacial boundaries. Advances in Water Resources. View this article in WRRO
- Optimisation of a fuzzy logic-based local real-time control system for mitigation of sewer flooding using genetic algorithms. Journal of Hydroinformatics. View this article in WRRO
- SPH based numerical treatment of the interfacial interaction of flow with porous media. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids. View this article in WRRO
- Reflexive adaptation for resilient water services: lessons for theory and practice. Global Environmental Change, 57. View this article in WRRO
- Recent insights on uncertainties present in integrated catchment water quality modelling. Water Research, 150, 368-379. View this article in WRRO
- Modelling the potential for multi-location in-sewer heat recovery at a city scale under different seasonal scenarios. Water Research, 145, 618-630. View this article in WRRO
- Diffusive Regimes of the Motion of Bed Load Particles in Open Channel Flows at Low Transport Stages. Water Resources Research, 54(11), 8674-8691. View this article in WRRO
- Accounting for variation in rainfall intensity and surface slope in wash-off model calibration and prediction within the Bayesian framework. Water Research, 143, 561-569. View this article in WRRO
- Quantifying Uncertainty in Simulation of Sewer Overflow Volume. Journal of Environmental Engineering, 144(7), ---. View this article in WRRO
- Geostatistical upscaling of rain gauge data to support uncertainty analysis of lumped urban hydrological models. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(2), 1077-1091. View this article in WRRO
- SPH modelling of depth-limited turbulent open channel flows over rough boundaries. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, 83(1), 3-27. View this article in WRRO
- Frequency-wavenumber spectrum of the free surface of shallow turbulent flows over a rough boundary. Physics of Fluids, 28(10), ---. View this article in WRRO
- Statistical Description on the Role of Turbulence and Grain Interference on Particle Entrainment from Gravel Beds. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering. View this article in WRRO
- A model of the free surface dynamics of shallow turbulent flows. Journal of Hydraulic Research, 54(5), 516-526. View this article in WRRO
- Effects of coolant flow rate, groundwater table fluctuations and infiltration of rainwater on the efficiency of heat recovery from near surface soil layers. Geothermics, 53, 171-182.
- Aquatic interfaces: a hydrodynamic and ecological perspective. Journal of Hydraulic Research, 52(6), 744-758.
- The pattern of surface waves in a shallow free surface flow. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 118(3), 1864-1876. View this article in WRRO
- Influence of relative submergence on spatial variance and form-induced stress of gravel-bed flows. Water Resources Research, 49(9), 5765-5777.
- Stochastic determination of entrainment risk in uniformly sized sediment beds at low transport stages: 2. Experiments. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 117(4).
- Stochastic determination of entrainment risk in uniformly sized sediment beds at low transport stages: 1 Theory. Journal of Geophysical Research, 117.
- Wall-wake flows downstream of a sphere placed on a plane rough wall. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 137, 1173-1189.
- Examining the physical components of boundary shear stress for water-worked gravel deposits. EARTH SURF PROC LAND, 35(10), 1240-1246.
- Towards quantification of uncertainty in predicting water quality failures in integrated catchment model studies. Water Research, 44(13), 3893-3904.
- Water-worked gravel beds in laboratory flumes - a natural analogue?. EARTH SURF PROC LAND, 34(3), 384-397.
- Probabilistic description of grain resistance from simultaneous flow field and grain motion measurements. Water Resource Research, 44.
- Quantifying the role of bed surface topography in controlling sediment stability in water-worked gravel deposits. Water Resources Research, 44(4).
- Determining hydraulic resistance in gravel-bed rivers from the dynamics of their water surfaces. EARTH SURF PROC LAND, 31(14), 1839-1848.
- Sediment supply and local scouring at bed sills in high-gradient streams. WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, 42(6).
- The erosion behaviour of biologically active sewer sediment deposits: Observations from a laboratory study. WATER RESEARCH, 39(20), 5221-5231.
- Analysis of small-scale gravel bed topography during armoring. WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, 39(12).
- Water surface response to turbulent flow over a backward-facing step. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 966, a18.
- Research group
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SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) and Urban Drainage
Environmental Fluid Mechanics
- Grants
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The EPSRC-funded Grand Challenge Centre for Water, comprising 6 UK universities and 100+ industrial partners working in collaboration to develop the sustainable water solutions of the future and to accelerate innovation uptake across the water sector.
- Potential PhD offerings
Unfortunately I am not seeking any PhD Students at this time, however please contact me if you are interested in doing a project in my research area.