ProfessorRobert Vollum

Professor Robert Vollum joined Imperial College as a Lecturer in 1991 following almost a decade of working in industry. Prof Vollum's research interests are wide, encompassing topics including long-term deflections of reinforced concrete slabs, beam-column joints, shear in beams, punching shear, numerical modelling of reinforced concrete structures, strut and tie modelling, and control of early age thermal cracking. He has developed a method for predicting the deflection of slabs that takes construction loading into account. The numerical work was calibrated with data from the in-situ concrete building at BRE Cardington with which he was closely involved. More recently, he led an EPSRC project (EP/D505488/1) which developed a design method for using concrete blinding as struts in cut and cover excavations. Recent work has focused on punching shear in flat slabs, including transfer slabs, as well as shear enhancement near supports of beams. He recently co-lead an EPSRC project (EP/T004142/1) into the cracking behaviour of reinforced concrete elements subjected to the restraint of imposed strains. This was a joint project with the University of Leeds (EP/T004185/1).

Professor Vollum also represents Concrete Society on BSI Committee for EC2 B/525/2 Structural Use of Concrete. He is a member of the subgroup of B/525/2 which is responsible for developing and maintaining the UK National Annex to EC2. He was the UK technical expert on TG4 of the European committee WG1/CEN/TC 250/SC 2 which developed the design provisions for shear, punching and torsion in the next generation of EC2 which was published in 2023. He is also a member of fib Task Group 4.2 which evaluates and develops models for ultimate limit states of concrete structures.