Engineering: Fully Funded M2A MSc by Research Scholarship: Evidence-based Assessment for Functional Construction Materials
Start date: October 2022
Expected interview date: June 2022
Academic supervisors: Professor C Li and Professor E de Souza Neto
Industrial supervisor: Mr Bill Hewlett
Sponsoring company: British Board of Agrément
Background:
Founded in 1966 by the Government, the British Board of Agrément (BBA) is the UK’s major authority for providing reassurance in the construction industry. Its premium product is the Agrément Certificate, a fitness-for-purpose attestation covering all sections of the Building Regulations and a range of other performance requirements including durability.
As a not-for-profit organisation, BBA reinvests in the industry as a whole, making it the ideal industrial partner to work with in addressing climate change and sustainability targets requiring the UK building stock to become more efficient and resilient, supporting the whole supply chain in becoming more innovative.
Project Aims:
This project aims to deliver more-comprehensive innovation assurances for manufacturers and higher-degree of reassurance for consumers. This will be achieved by integrating computer modelling into BBA’s day-to-day Agrément (Approval) practices. By building on the success of computer modelling in manufacturing and IT sectors, this project can boost construction product innovation with introspective performance assessments, greatly enhancing the testing and certification efficiency, and enabling evidence-based assessment for existing buildings.
The project student will work as part of a large research team and collaborate closely with the industrial partner BBA. The nature of the research will be largely on material characterization using the advanced material analysis suites at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, from which the student will be able to build digital models, ready for conducting the subsequent computer simulations.