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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/R53159/01
Title: Modelling the Whole Structure Behaviour of the Cardington In-Situ Concrete Building
Principal Investigator: Vollum, Professor R
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
BRE Group (Building Res Establishment)
Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 20 May 2001 Ends: 19 May 2003 Value (£): 61,812
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Civil Engineering Materials
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Construction
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The proposal is concerned with developing a more holistic approach to the design and construction of buildings and foundations and is an extension of previous work carried out by B RE. The aim is to develop improved analysis methods for the assessment of damaged buildings and means for evaluating the robustness of structures. Load tests will be carried out to determine the settlement/ heave characteristics of a corner of the concrete building at Cardington when loaded to near failure (previous subsidence/heave tests at ECBP have been done under self weight only). Global and local structural responses will be modelled using the commercially available finite element code DIANA. The global analysis will be carried out using a model previously developed by BRE. The existing global model does not accurately model behaviour at slab-column connections where, according to work carried out so far, failures are expected to occur. Therefore, there is a need to develop more refined finite element models to predict the strength of the most severely loaded slab-column connections. Such detailed local modelling will be carried out using the discrete reinforcement concept that allows the consideration of phenomena such as bond slip. The work is timely since this is the final opportunity to load test the ECBP to near failure, to obtain data for comparison with analytical models, before the Cardington test facility is closed in September 2001. The testing represents good value since it utilises existing instrumentation and the test rig used in previous tests.
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Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk