The Engineer's Impact - Tim Newson

Your inside look at faculty’s research and its effect on society

In this new Q&A series, we’ll feature Western Engineering faculty members to gain a succinct overview of their research, understand its impact on society, and discover intriguing little-known facts.

Meet Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Tim Newson. 

newson2Can you describe your research?

I’m a geotechnical engineer and I study the response of soils and rocks to various loads and deformations related to civil engineering structures. I’m interested in various problems associated with soft soil engineering, offshore and energy geotechnics, buried structures and foundations, and biomechanics. More recently I have been involved with some of my colleagues in wind engineering as part of the Northern Tornadoes Project. We are focused on understanding wind-fields from tornado events using the blowdown of trees in forests. My expertise involves interpreting how tree soil-root systems resist extreme wind loads and using this knowledge to estimate the wind speeds required to overturn different trees.

How does your research impact society in everyday life?

Due to the large size of the industries supported by geotechnical engineering (the Canadian civil engineering industry accounts for 13% of GDP; approximately $80B/annum), optimization and development of geotechnical design and practice has great economic and social advantages, and reduces risks for people, business and property in Canada. The outcomes of my research saves money for owners and operators of this infrastructure, as well as the insurance industry and provides competitive advantages for consultants and contractors. It also aids stakeholders involved in the assessment of risk for Canada’s geotechnical assets and allows for effective decision-making, planning and targeted spending.

What’s an interesting, little-known fact related to your research?

There has been much recent interest in near-Earth carbonaceous asteroid Bennu, which was visited by the OSIRIS-REx mission. Samples of the asteroid surface were returned to Earth for further study in September of 2023. Asteroid mining has the potential to provide huge opportunities for access to extremely valuable resources in space. We have been working with a consortium of government organizations, industry and universities in North America to develop artificial regolith and low-gravity anchoring systems to enable new space mining techniques to be created.