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Dr James Maina is an expert in transport infrastructure engineering. He specialises in numerical modelling of pavement structural behaviour under vehicular loading; computer programming for pavement engineering applications; and parallel processing protocol, with the emphasis on solving large and detailed pavement analysis problems with available grid and/or cluster computers.
Current activities and research interests
Maina is the team leader of five projects relating to the revision of the South African mechanistic-empirical design method (SAMDM). The projects are:
- Improved ability to model complex non-uniform stress distribution of the tyre/pavement contact patch;
- Improved modelling of geometric non-linearity in the pavement system;
- Relationship between stiffness modulus of pavement materials using different test and analysis methods; and
- Documentation on material testing, the interpretation of results, the derivation of design inputs and the calibration of material models.
- Development of a finite element package for pavement applications with the capability to perform linear static and dynamic analyses as well as nonlinear static and dynamic analyses.
Formal education
BSc (Hons) Civil Engineering, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, 1992
MSc Civil Engineering, Miyazaki University, Japan, 1997
PhD, Miyazaki University, Japan, 2000
Experience
Before joining the CSIR in 2005, Dr Maina was chief research engineer at the Research Institute of the NIPPO Corporation, the biggest road construction company in Japan. He also spent two years as a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Denki University, where he collaborated with private and public research organisations in research related to the improvement of pavement design, evaluation and performance.
At the CSIR, Maina has been involved in developing a finite element package for pavement applications with the capability to perform linear static and dynamic analyses as well as nonlinear static and dynamic analyses. He has also assisted in the replacement of core software in the South African mechanistic empirical pavement design system (MePADS) with General Analysis for Multilayered Elastic Systems (GAMES) software, which he developed while in Japan and has been found to be more accurate and with added options. GAMES software is also used in Japan as a standard tool for pavement analysis.
Maina has collaborated with the Meraka Institute to introduce to the GAMES software parallel processing capability with the objective of solving large and detailed pavement analysis problems with available grid and/or cluster computers.
Organisational details
PO Box 395
Pretoria
0001
South Africa
Tel: +27 12 841 3956
Fax: +27 12 841 2690
Email: jmaina@csir.co.za
Publications
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