Dr. Robert Vollum

Biography

Professor Robert Vollum joined Imperial College London as a Lecturer in 1991 after a decade of working in the industry. His research interests are broad, covering topics such as long-term deflections of reinforced concrete slabs, beam-column joints, shear beams, punching shear, and numerical modeling of reinforced concrete structures. He developed a method to predict deflection of slabs taking construction loading into account. His numerical work has been calibrated with data from in-situ concrete buildings including the BRE Cardington project, where he was closely involved. He led an EPSRC project aimed at developing a design method using concrete blinding struts for cut cover excavations. More recent work has focused on punching shear in flat slabs and transfer slabs, as well as shear enhancement near supports of beams. He is currently co-leading an EPSRC project on the cracking behavior of reinforced concrete elements subjected to restraint imposed strains in collaboration with the University of Leeds. Professor Vollum is representative for the Concrete Society on the BSI Committee EC2 B/525/2 for the Structural Use of Concrete, and is a member of subgroup B/525/2 responsible for developing and maintaining the UK National Annex EC2. He also serves as a UK technical expert in TG4 on the European committee WG1/CEN/TC 250/SC 2, which developed the design provisions for shear, punching, and torsion generation in EC2, published in 2023. Furthermore, he is a member of the fib Task Group 4.2, which evaluates and develops models for the ultimate limit states of concrete structures.

Research Interests

Experience