|
GECOMPL: Generalised Continuum Models and Plasticity |
Dr Stefanos Papanicolopulos
|
The GECOMPL project aims to enable wider adoption of generalised plasticity models in practical applications. More specifically, the project proposes a detailed study of the formulation of both existing and new elastoplastic constitutive laws in the framework of generalised continua, leading to a better understanding of the different possible constitutive models and providing both the necessary theoretical basis and the appropriate numerical tools needed to use generalised continuum models in describing elastoplastic behaviour.
|
|
Engineering the Byzantine water supply: procurement, construction and operation |
Dr Simon Smith
|
This innovative research combines construction process modelling and contemporary network software to gain new insights to conceptualise the construction and distribution of the city’s hydraulic networks.
|
|
Behaviour, attitutde and perception of safety risk in a nationally and culturally diverse workforce |
Dr Simon Smith
|
Considering the cultural and national backgrounds of construction workers and management to understand attitudes and perception of construction safety risk.
|
|
Multi-scale analyses of wildland fire combustion processes |
Dr Rory Hadden
|
Low intensity prescribed fires are often employed in forests and wildland in order to manage hazardous fuels, restore ecological function and historic fire regimes, and encourage the recovery of threatened and endangered species. Current predictive models used to simulate fire behavior during low-intensity prescribed fires (and wildfires) are empirically-based, simplistic, and fail to adequately predict fire outcomes because they do not account for variability in fuel characteristics and interactions with important meteorological variables. Experiments are being carried out at scales ranging from the fuel particle, to fuel bed, to field plot and stand scales, with an aim of better understanding how fuel consumption is related to the processes driving heat transfer, ignition and flame spread, and thermal degradation through flaming and smouldering combustion, at the scale of individual fuel particles and fuel layers. Focus is placed on how these processes, and thus fuel consumption, are affected by spatial variability in fuel particle type, fuel moisture status, bulk density, and horizontal and vertical arrangement of fuel components, as well as multi-scale atmospheric dynamics.
|
|
Fire Safety of Modern Timber Infrastructure |
Dr Rory Hadden
|
Exposed structural timber elements within a compartment creates an additional fuel load which must be considered in design. This research focuses on quantifying this additional fuel load, and understanding conditions where after burnout of the compartment contents, the additional exposed timber may stop burning (auto-extinguish).
|
|
Fire-fighting underventilated fires |
Dr Ricky Carvel
|
Working with the fire brigades, and using a small-scale experimental apparatus to define appropriate fire-fighting responses to underventilated fires in sealed or partially sealed compartments.
|
|
Geobag Revetments for river bank reinforcement in Bangladesh |
Dr Martin Crapper
|
This project aims at the production of guidelines for the safe design of revetments, which are often constructed manually by local farmers, with little engineering input.
|
|
Community-Based Waste-Water Treatment in International Development |
Dr Martin Crapper
|
A project, funded by PhD scholarships from the Islamic Development Bank and EPSRC (via the Doctoral Training Grants) is underway looking at the efficiency of meso-scale waste stabilization ponds to treat municipal waste water, with resource recovery from fish farming and selling sludge for fertilizer. The ultimate aim is to demonstrate systems that can be adpoted and run by communities, particularly in urban West Africa. The pilot project is based in Cotonou, Benin.
|
|
Health and Safety in Voluntary Sector Construction |
Dr Martin Crapper
|
This research, conducted using sociological methods, investigates how these volunteer workers of railway sector construct safety in their volunteering environment.
|
|
Efficient DEM simulation of large systems of non-spherical particles |
Dr. Kevin Hanley
|
To enlarge the scale of discrete element modelled particulate system from spherical to nonspherical; to increase the computational efficiency of simulating the nonspherical system; to provide more insights of particulate solid mechanics in engineering applications.
|
