The general research objectives of the project were to establish fundamentals by which models at a lower scale of observation can feed into models at a higher scale of observation and to quantify how randomness affects material behaviour across the scales. The project also intended to develop a modelling framework informed by knowledge of multiple scales and system randomness, assess needs and develop model effectiveness across a range of potential applications and finally to experimentally validate the developed multiscale modelling tool.
Despite of COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war resulting to FRAMED suspension period and cancelled plans for secondments to the 3 partners in Russia and 2 in China, the FRAMED project attended career perspectives and prerogatives, emphasising variable career progression opportunities for the senior and junior members of staff, including seconding PhD students and postdoctoral fellows to the best that the aforementioned pandemic and war conditions allowed.
Over the project’s duration, grossly interrupted by COVID enforced movement (i.e. secondment) restrictions, the extensive and inherent cross-disciplinary collaboration initiated through FRAMED has led to a holistic modelling framework that not only addresses the low energy carbon footprint as mentioned above, but also a probabilistically modelled framework that can predict low carbon stature and footprint across a wide range of industrial consortia, focusing on the remits outlined by our partners.
In addition, economical and safe design depends on our understanding of construction failures, which is often a progressive process. Our research shows that failure can be regarded as a localized bifurcation problem (loss of stability). The traditional design approach based on limit state analysis tends to give either too conservative design by using the residual strength parameters or too risky design by using the peak strength parameters. The bifurcation analysis can provide rational design by striking a fair balance between economy and safety. Given the fact that geomaterials (rock, gravel, sand and clay) are the most widely used construction materials in the world, our research outcome shall have high potential to reduce the construction energy footprint and to contribute to the sustainable development.
