ProfessorKim Rasmussen

A fascination with structures buckling under pressure has led to a distinguished career in the design, analysis and testing of metal structures for stability for Professor Kim Rasmussen. A world-leading researcher in the field, Professor Rasmussen's work is making the metal structures that surround us - from high-rise office buildings to houses to industrial shelving and scaffolding - safer, more efficient and more economical.

"I've always been fascinated by buckling. The notion that something can be geometrically perfect but then when you put a small additional load on it the whole thing suddenly buckles is just fascinating to me. And we can now analyse and predict this behaviour with a great degree of confidence".

"I research efficient ways of designing metal structures. These include the steel 'skeletons' of buildings, which need to carry the weight of the building as well as bearing the load of wind, earthquakes and so on. I also work with structures such as scaffolding and steel storage racks used in warehouses. Racks are challenging to design because they're built as lightly as possible but are very heavily loaded, and they can and do collapse for a range of reasons. My research aims to determine the forces leading to these collapses and better design these structures accordingly.

"In recent years, I've become interested in the mechanical properties and behaviour of 3D printed metal structures as well as the ductile fracture of metal structures. Fracture of metal structures is challenging to predict with confidence but significant advances have been made in recent years to create computational models that accurately predict the initiation and propagation of fracture in steel structures. My research group has a particular focus on fracture initiating in the heat-affected zone of welds.