Question: What are you currently working on?

Natalie Wride answered on 15 Jun 2016:

Hi Kaity 🙂

I’m currently researching what happens to the ground when high speed trains travel over it. At the moment I’m doing lots of different laboratory tests to see how the ground behaves. The pictures on my profile show a test which hammers the soil lots and lots of times and makes it gradually squish. I will also take x-ray pictures of my sample once it is squished to see what happens to the tiny tiny particles. These results will help me tell people how the soil behaves when the train drives over the ground – especially how much squashes by (we wouldn’t want a bumpy train ride because the soil has squashed beneath the track!!!)

All of these lab tests will be put into a computer model I’m making so that Engineers can type in what they know about the soil and the model will tell them how much the soil will squash by over time. Engineers can then design the ground to stop this happening and make our journeys comfier and safer 🙂