Digital

Digital design techniques are enabling us to:

• Consider and reduce environmental impacts of designs at the outset, embedding this in the design process.
• Manage buildings and infrastructure throughout their lifespan, utilising ideas such as materials passports to hold key information that enable effective building maintenance and maximise the chances for material reuse at end of life.
• Optimise structures to improve resilience, durability, and efficiency and reduce resource consumption.

Data-driven technologies that we are exploiting include urban sensing to understand everything from air pollution to what our cities are made of. We’re using techniques such as photogrammetry and multi-spectral imaging to build a digital twin of Sheffield and building in live sensing so that we can develop a dynamic understanding of city systems. From this, we are developing new models to understand the interventions that would make our cities better places to live for both humanity and the planet.

By introducing the first design-for-manufacture digital tools for 3D-printed concrete-based structural composites, we also aim to establish the University of Sheffield as a world leader in manufacturing know-how and design capability that will serve the emerging global additive manufacturing industry.

Disciplines

Our department has been research-led for over 100 years and our academic staff are organised into four overarching disciplines, the main ones being Water Engineering and Structural Engineering and Materials.

Water Engineering

Structural Engineering & Materials

Geotechnical Engineering

Resources, Infrastructure Systems and Built Environments

Current Research

INTEGRADDE (Horizon 2020)

Structural performance of 3D concrete printed composites (EPSRC)

Previous Research - last 5 years

CORONA (EPSRC)

UKCRIC - Urban Flows Observatories (EPSRC)

Academics Involved