Rock Mechanics, Rock Dynamics, Underground Construction, Geophysics, Mining engineering, Geothermal energy

Rock support and reinforcement, mine stability, rock fracture and damage mechanics, coal and gas outbursts, subsidence induced by underground mining and reservoir depletion, reservoir simulation, unconventional energy, CO2 sequestration, wellbore stability, sand production, fractured reservoirs, and the numerical modelling of multi-scale and multi-physics problems in civil, mining and petroleum geomechanics, and materials engineering.

Energy Geotechnology (Borehole heat exchangers, geothermal geostructures, CO2 sequestration)., Gas advective and diffusive flow in saturated and unsaturated porous media, Landfill design, Unsaturated behaviour of geomaterials., Thermo-hydro-mechanical/chemical behaviour of porous media., Contaminant transport through soils and geosynthetics., Geosynthetics in landfills, Geosynthetics in mining applications (heap leach pads, tailing dams, etc.)., Earth reinforced structures, Ground Improvement (Shallow and deep soil mixing, dynamic compaction, stone columns, rigid inclusions)., Biological applications to Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental engineering., Geotechnical properties of soft soils.

Geosequestration of carbon dioxide in coal beds, saline aquifers and depleted oil reservoirs, Enhanced coal bed methane recovery (ECBM) and oil recover processes, Permeability of rock mass with respect to oil and gas recovery, Modeling of multiphase flow through rocks.

Soil improvement using additives, Biochar sequestration in treated soils, XrayCT imaging of geomaterials, Railway track geotechnology, Laterally loaded piles in jointed rocks, Cyclic filtration behaviour of soils, Shear behaviour of jointed rocks, CO2 sequestration

Mohan Yellishetty’s current and future research interests are focused around the development and implementation of industrial ecological principles to mining and mining communities. He has a very strong interest in the area of environmental impacts and management due to mining in particular. He has been involved with many aspects of geotechnical & environmental engineering with a particular specialty in acid rock drainage and other environmental aspects of mining industry, besides the current research interests in industrial ecology applications to mining industry.

Computational mechanics, geomaterials constitutive modelling, large deformation and failure of geomaterials, soil cracking modelling, fracture and damage of geomaterials, slope stability and landslide, multiphase flow in porous media, soil-structure interactions, mesh-free approaches for computational geomechanics, granular flows, lunar soil mechanics, free-surface fluid flows, two-phase flow modeling.

X-ray imaging of materials, including concretes, Geo-mechanical and geo-technical aspects of swelling materials, Improving durability of concretes, Standards testing development/modification, Modification of clay minerals for applications in reactive barrier technologies.

Physical and numerical modelling of geotechnical problems involving heat, moisture and gas transfer, geothermal energy pile foundation, unsaturated clays and geosynthetic clay liner (GCL), nuclear waste repository, suction measurement techniques, thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) behavior of soils and geosynthetics, modification of bentonite to improve its retention capacity, gas/liquid permeability characteristic of cement bentonite used in cut-off walls and borehole walls, coal seam gas (CSG), wind farm collector system.

Mechanical behavior of rock at high strain rate using split Hopkinson pressure bar; Mechanical behavior of rock at high pressure using plate impact facility; High speed digital image correlation method; Field monitoring, numerical simulations and geomechanical model tests of underground caverns; Scientific drilling and modeling of earthquake; Induced seismicity in deep earth energy and resources extraction.

CO2 Geosequestration, Mechanical behaviour of reservoir rock (sandstone), Stress-strain behaviour of rocks and constitutive modelling.