Research and People

Our research is focussed in two main research areas:

• Digital design, materials & manufacturing

New digital design and manufacturing techniques have the potential to transform the way assets such as buildings, bridges, and buried infrastructure are designed, constructed and managed, and the complex system of systems that these components create. However, major academic challenges have to be overcome before this can become a reality. Co-location of the ICAIR Centre with the AMRC’s Factory 2050 permits seamless transition of technologies developed up the TRL levels. Existing expertise in the Faculty in the areas of numerical modelling, optimisation, construction innovation, robotics, advanced manufacturing and data informatics are being leveraged.

• Resilient infrastructure

To ensure the UK’s ageing infrastructure remains resilient in the years ahead there is need to understand, predict and manage the performance, interactions and interdependencies of these systems better, as well as to understand how they interact with their surroundings, dominated by ground conditions. Greater use of automated and remote sensing, embedded sensors, autonomous repair systems and advanced data analytics techniques, facilitating more informed and intelligent asset management have the potential to deliver significant benefits. Co-location of the ICAIR Centre with AMRC and the Laboratory for Verification and Validation (LVV), together with linkages between laboratory and field through the UKCRIC supported Urban Flows Observatory, is designed to facilitate collaboration across the range of engineering disciplines, with for example personnel based in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering working closely with those based in the Departments of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (with expertise in systems identification, big data, network and systems engineering) and Mechanical Engineering (with expertise in dynamics and structural health monitoring).