My profound gratitude goes to God Almighty for the gift of life, good health and connecting me to be refined by renowned supervisors. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Ramachandran Venkatesan and Dr. Faisal Khan for their continuous support, insightful comments, and for sharpening my research skills from various perspectives. My sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Stephen Butt, who provided me the opportunity to join his team with access to the Drilling Technology Laboratory and research facilities. I would like to thank team member Nhat Minh for his excellent team play, Augustine Osarogiagbon, DTL team members Mohammed Said, Abdelsalam Abugharara, Jeronimo De Moura, Idris Sule, Olalere Oloruntobi and Justin Royce for assistance during the design, development of experimental setup and conducting the experiments. I would also like to thank Technical Services team Dennis Cramm, David Snook, Ken, Aaron and Shawn Organ of the Concrete laboratory. I would like to thank my family: my parents, siblings, godparents, and friends for supporting me throughout my research and my life in general. Special appreciation to Archbishop Martin Currie, Fr. Joe Mroz, SJ, Presentation Sisters and the Sisters of Mercy for immense spiritual support. I also appreciate the Public Service Alliance of Canada for rich extracurricular learning and volunteering experience which included an oversea trip as a delegate on a Social Justice mission to Guatemala and participation in conferences and convention. I thankfully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chair (Tier I) Program in Offshore Safety and Risk Engineering.

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