Statewide recognition for promising future water engineer

USQ final year civil engineering student Dirk Drysdale has been recognised as one of Queensland's most promising future water engineers after winning a prestigious Engineers Australia (EA) award.

Dirk received the Michael Woodhouse award following an EA Water Panel undergraduate presentation evening in Brisbane recently, beating out several other students from universities across Queensland including the University of Queensland and James Cook University.

'My research examined the phenomenon of vortex shedding that occurs behind a circular bridge pier and an aerofoil shaped pier,' Dirk said.

'I looked at the effects that piers have on downstream turbulence and vortex shedding, which is the swirling effect that can be witnessed around bridge piers under flowing conditions.

'The research found that the aerofoil pier produced a considerable reduction in down stream vortices and turbulence.  This is important because in floods this can cause erosion behind the pier and can lead to the bridge collapsing.'

USQ Faculty of Engineering Head of Discipline Associate Professor Mark Porter said that the award was a significant honour for Dirk.

'The Michael Woodhouse award has been going for a couple of decades now in memory of Michael Woodhouse who was a young engineer who died from cancer at an early age,' he said.

'EA now honour his memory with this annual prize for the best student research work in water engineering in the state.

'This year's presentation, as always, was a very interesting evening with a wide range of high quality student work presented.'

While Dirk was thrilled with the award he said that the experience of presenting in front of EA was just as important and the ideal way to kick start his career.

'Water engineering is a minority field in engineering so I didn't go into this expecting to win; my primary reason was actually to get the opportunity to do a presentation at an EA seminar.

'At the seminar perspective employers also attend so it was a good chance to talk to them and show them some of the research that I have been doing.'

As well as the award Dirk also received a $500 monetary prize.

Media Contact: Josh Ada, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 2559