Global leadership of Professor Stephen Foster continues
Congratulations to Professor Stephen Foster, Acting Dean of UNSW Engineering, former Director of CIES, and Head of School of Civil & Environmental Engineering 2012 – 2020, who has been elected as Vice President of the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib).
The fib, (Fédération internationale du béton), is a not-for-profit international association formed by more than 40 national member groups and approximately 1000 corporate and individual members.
Its mission is to develop at an international level the study of scientific and practical matters capable of advancing the technical, economic, aesthetic, and environmental performance of concrete construction. The role of Vice President reflects Stephen’s long-term contribution to community on research and education.
Throughout his career Stephen has been involved in many research projects involving the use of technology in the development of concrete structures and infrastructure.
His research on Strut-and-Tie Modelling ,on High Strength Concrete Columns and Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete, much of which was funded through ARC Discovery and Linkage project grants, now forms the basis of many of the design rules in the Australian Concrete Structures Standard, AS3600-2018. This has impact on many thousands of structures built throughout Australia each year. Similarly, his work has provided significant impact on the construction industry through incorporation in the fib Model Code 2010.
In addition to his experience in testing of high performance, high strength concrete, Professor Foster has developed a powerful non-linear finite element program for the modelling of concrete structures, which has assisted in the development of numerous experimental programmes and in the post analysis of the results. He has considerable research experience on strength and ductility in reinforced concrete structures and has published widely in the field.
In 2015 Stephen was awarded honorary membership of the Concrete Institute of Australia in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development and use of concrete in Australia; in 2018 he was awarded Honorary life member if the fib, “In recognition of significant personal contributions to the work of the fib”, and for which he was made a Fellow of fib.
