List of the Amendments and Clarification

1. All the experiments that use MIP apparatus will be carried out next year, tentatively around November 2015 for a period of one to two weeks depending on the development of physical model. It is not possible to confirm the availability of the instrument (MIP Apparatus) for now but the availability of the MIP Apparatus will be checked before scheduling the testing program to be carried out in the University of Newcastle. As the student will be attending a workshop organised by The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering (CGSE) in Sydney early of December this year, student will be organising a health and safety lab induction and introductory training of MIP apparatus concurrently with the soil lab of the University of Newcastle.

2. Optional tasks mentioned in the schedule will provide additional data but are not necessary to achieve the main goal of the testing program. Current proposed facilities, equipment and resources mentioned in the report can be used to carry out the experiment according to the schedule.

3. Details of two conferences are mentioned on page 11. The two conferences are 25 th

International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference, 2015 in Hawaii and 35 th

International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OMAE, 2016) in Busan, Korea.

4. The training course for “Microscopic, Characterisation and Analysis” is included in the Research Training Plan (page 15 and16). In addition, health and safety lab induction and introductory training for MIP apparatus are also included in the training program. The milestone “Writing an Annual Research Project” has been deleted, as the goal is to produce a substantial piece of writing in the first year, which will be the conference paper.

5. Face to face meeting with Dr Jubert Pineda will be planned regularly during the visits to the University of Newcastle.

6. All mentioned references have been checked and corrected.