ProfessorRobert Vollum

Professor of Structural Concrete

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Faculty of Engineering

  • Professor of Structural Concrete
    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Faculty of Engineering
  • 020 7594 5992 (Work)
  • 440, Skempton Building, South Kensington Campus, United Kingdom

RESEARCH

Overview
Professor Vollum's research interests are wide, encompassing the following topics: long-term deflections of reinforced concrete slabs, beam-column joints, shear in beams, punching shear, strut and tie modelling, non-linear finite element analysis, the design of reinforced concrete slabs, control of cracking induced by early age thermal contraction and subsequent shrinkage, structural design. 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. He has led led several EPSRC projects including EP/D505488/1 which developed a design method for using concrete blinding as struts in cut and cover excavations and 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). Recent work has focused on punching shear in flat slabs, including transfer slabs, as well as shear enhancement near supports of beams.