Calendar: 1971-1972 Page 430

Annual Report of the Delegacy lv served on the Working Party on Fire Resistance He was member of Committee 209 of the American Concrete Institute Dr England served as member of the Materials Technology Divisional Committee of the Concrete Society Dr Dixon continued to serve as Chief Examiner for the Council of Engineering Institutions Activity in research continued at high level In concrete technology four members of staff and five research students were engaged on project supported by the on the effects of temperature and time on concrete The first results are beginning to appear The work is directly relevant to industrial plants in which concrete is subjected to temperature in nuclear power stations In particular the creep of concrete under variable temperature and the damage occurring in concrete when heated under restraint were studied In more general terms the deformation and damage during progressive fracture of weakly bonded materials and the analysis of complex creeping structures are studied and new finite element and variational tech- niques employed With the helpful co-operation of Birkbeck College the structure of the cement paste in concrete at the fundamental level is being studied with the aid of the scanning electron microscope In the area of soil mechanics and foundation engineering studies were made of the field permeability of clay soils using piezometer under excess pressure the behaviour of bentonite fluid mud in aggre- gates of different gradings and the permeability of soil mixtures The consolidation of clays under time-dependent loading and consolida- tion of large specimens was also investigated Further theoretical studies were pursued into non-homogeneous elastic bodies and their application to problems of foundation engineering Work continued on variational methods in three-dimensional con- solidation problems and in mathematically similar problem arising in piezo-electricity An investigation into potential energy methods in large plane deformations of bars of arbitrary initial shape was under- taken and work on the instability problem of snap-buckling of skeletal structures continued Self-priming siphons were studied and work continued in the planning and control of water resources systems Eminent practising civil engineers continue to accept invitations to address the students and these lectures have become special occasions of absorbing interest to all members of the department The objective is not merely to instruct but also to convey something of the leaders