Sahand Tadbiri

I am a full time PhD candidate in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science. I have done two masters degrees in Azad University (IAU) in Iran and University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, both in Structural Geology. My research interests and expertise are in structural geology and tectonics, engineering geology and petrology.

Project: The relationship between basaltic dykes, joints/fractures and faults within the Sydney Basin

Supervised by: Dr Ian Graham and Professor Martin Van Kranendonk

Project Description: The ever-growing population of Sydney has put stress on public demand for development of public-transport infrastructure, particularly the railways and underground metro network. This requires large scale deep excavations in Sydney CBD and greater Sydney region. The existing geological features such as joints/faults and basaltic dykes and the extent, degree and alteration types of them have considerable impact on the cost, methods and duration of construction projects. Therefore, a broad-ranging study on the relationships between basaltic dykes, joints/fractures and faults within the Sydney Basin as a whole is inevitably needed for the sustainable future planning and development of this region which is home to over five million people.
Although the geology of the Sydney Basin is a widely researched topic, not enough studies have been focused on the basaltic dykes, their geometry, geochemistry and their relationships with other geological structures such as faults and fractures within the greater Sydney region. Therefore, to fill this knowledge gaps this study is going to focus on the relationships between basaltic dykes and adjacent localized structures such as joints and faults to understand the mechanism of dyke emplacement and relate these back to the overall tectonic framework of the Sydney Basin. Also, this study will investigate the basalts themselves in terms of their mineralogy, geochemistry alteration and age to understand their genesis in relation to the overall eastern Australian intraplate basaltic volcanics.