Emeritus Dr Chris Morley
- Senior Lecturer in Concrete
- Structures
Contact
About
Born in Scotland and educated on Tees-side, Chris Morley was an undergraduate in Cambridge from 1959-62, when the engineering course here was called Mechanical Sciences. He continued in Cambridge as a Graduate Student, pursuing research on concrete slabs under the supervision of Roger P. Johnson, and took his PhD in 1966. From midsummer 1965 he worked as an engineer with Freeman Fox and Partners; briefly on site at the M4/M5 interchange near Bristol, then for almost eighteen months in Northern Ireland involved with bridges for the M1 in County Armagh, and finally in their London offices designing reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges for the M5. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Since October 1968 he has been a member of the academic staff of CUED, initially as an Assistant Director of Research, then as a Lecturer, and latterly as a Senior Lecturer. Since January 2003 he has been Deputy Head (Teaching) in the Department. During periods of sabbatical leave, he spent fifteen months in 1976-7 with Det Norske Veritas in Oslo doing checking and research on offshore concrete platforms for the North Sea; and shorter periods collaborating in research at ETH in Zurich and NTU in Singapore. Also since 1968 he has been a Fellow of Trinity College, where he was Senior Tutor in the early 1980's and then Assistant Bursar, from 1992-2001 was Tutor for Advanced Students concerned with the admission and welfare of graduate students, and since 1999 has been Vice-Master. He has been a non-executive director of Cambridge Water plc since 1995.
Research
He has always been interested in plasticity theory, and especially in its application to reinforced concrete structures, either to predict the collapse load of a given structure or to design reinforcement against a given ultimate load. He has considered beams, slabs, deep beams, bridge decks etc, under shear forces as well as bending moments. A particular interest is the design of slabs; the Hillerborg strip method, and optimum layout of reinforcement. Recent research students here worked on flat slabs with irregular column layout; on design against earthquake damage; and on flat slabs with steel fibre reinforcement.
Of course, plasticity theory has to be modified to cope with the special features of reinforced concrete; and so his research interests also extend to such phenomena as limited rotation capacity and compressive membrane action in slabs, and to non-linear FE analysis of RC structures and methods of allowing for materials which strain-soften. Stemming from his time in Oslo is an intermittent interest in water in hardened concrete, pore pressure, and water absorption - and recently he has been interested in enforced carbonation using supercritical carbon dioxide.
Teaching and supervision
Over the years, Chris has been involved in teaching a wide range of aspects of civil and structural engineering, from basic structural mechanics, through surveying, to thin-walled structures and stability. In recent times, he has concentrated mainly on teaching in the third and fourth years of the Engineering Tripos, to students specialising on civil engineering subjects; lectures on plastic theory and ultimate strength of structures, laboratory work on model structures and on concrete specimens and reinforced concrete beams, and on structural materials and design, and a final-year module on Concrete and Masonry Structures (with coursework on deep-beam testing and reinforcement design). Every year he offers several design and research projects for final year M.Eng. students. He is also involved in organising a final-year module on Building Physics (heating, light, acoustics) and another in alternate years on Construction and Management, and a little in the post-experience course on Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment which is offered jointly with the Department of Architecture. He also does a full stint of supervision of engineering undergraduates in structures, mechanics and materials in the first two years, structural engineering in year three.