James has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of transportation engineering. He has been working in Australia for NTRO for nearly 8 years. More specifically, he is a Materials Engineer with substantial pavement engineering, pavement materials, recycled materials and sustainability experience.
Since 2020 he has worked within the Sustainability and Materials Performance team, bringing with him his pavement engineering and materials expertise. He has delivered work to investigate the use of recycled and reclaimed plastic in safe, sustainable future road infrastructure. He has worked on a variety of projects to advise government on the best practice use of recycled materials in transport infrastructure. He has also worked on specification development such as for recycled crushed glass sand, plastic noise walls, plastic pipes and recycled organics. His initial work in Australia focused on Austroads projects TT2046 Improving the cost effectiveness of foamed bitumen-stabilised pavements and TT1897 Increasing the use of low-cost modified granular materials in new and rehabilitated pavements.
Prior to this, Dr Grenfell spent 13 years as a researcher at NTEC (Nottingham Transportation Engineering Centre) at the University of Nottingham in the UK. During this time, he worked on, and managed various projects related to pavement materials. These projects involved permanent deformation and fatigue properties of asphaltic materials, moisture damage in asphalt pavements, adhesion of bitumen to aggregate, warm mix asphalt technologies, the use of crumb rubber and recycled asphalt and alternative binders. His main research interests are the fundamentals of adhesion, moisture damage of asphaltic materials, recycling, and the use of secondary materials.
Dr Grenfell has published more than 100 journal papers and peer reviewed conference papers. He is a Director-at-large of the International Society of Asphalt Pavements, on the Editorial board for the Proceedings of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists and a member of the TRB Asphalt Pavement Design and Rehabilitation (AKP30) committee. He is involved in several RILEM Technical Committees looking at bituminous and asphaltic materials. He is member of the Standards Australia Committee CE-012 Aggregates and Rock for Engineering Purposes. Most recently he has been appointed Technical Committee Chair of the Road Engineering Association of Asia and Australasia (REAAA) and as a committee member of PIARC TC 3.5 Road Infrastructure for Road Transport Decarbonisation. Dr Grenfell won the Category 2: Industry Excellence in Consulting, Research or Education award for the National Design Procedures for Lightly Bound Cemented Materials in Flexible Pavements at the 9th AustStab Awards of Excellence in 2021.
Prior to working at NTEC, James undertook a PhD in Metallurgy and Materials. The title of his PhD was ‘The Effect of Macroalloying on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of γ-based Titanium Aluminides’. This piece of work focused on the relationships between microstructure and mechanical properties, the application being the replacement of heavier steel parts in aero-engines.
