Research project

Structures 2025: a high fidelity, data rich, paradigm for structural testing

Project overview

Structures 2025 is a facility for the testing and evaluating of large structures. The novel and unique feature of Structures 2025 is that it enables data-rich studies of the behaviour of large components and structures subjected to realistic loading scenarios mimicking the behaviour of a structure in service. The uniqueness of Structures 2025 is predicated on imaging, where large amounts of data can be collected to provide information about the structural response. The imaging is based on both visible light and infra-red camera systems which capture data from the loaded structure and used to evaluate strains and deformations. Structures 2025 provides what can be termed high-fidelity data-rich testing of structural components, to integrate with multi-scale computational modelling to provide better predictive models of structural failure to create safer and more efficient structures.

Structures 2025 was developed in close collaboration with 16 industry partners, representing the rail infrastructure, civil engineering, experimental technique development, energy systems, marine and offshore, and aerospace sectors, as well as several university partners.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Janice Barton

Professor of Experimental Mechanics
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Other researchers

Professor Mark Spearing

Vice-President (Research & Enterprise)
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Professor William Powrie

Professor of Geotechnical Engineering

Research interests

  • Railway track and trackbed behaviour and performance
  • Geotechnical transportation infrastructure (earthworks, retaining walls, tunnels)
  • Groundwater and groundwater control
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Professor Stephen Boyd BEng, MSc, PhD

Professor

Research interests

  • Maritime Composites
  • Experimental and Numerical mechanics
  • Non-contact full-field techniques for validation of numerical models
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Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

J.E. Thatcher, D.A. Crump, C. Devivier, P.B.S. Bailey & J.M. Dulieu-Barton, 2020, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 126
Type: article