Professor Kim Rasmussen
Head of School of Civil Engineering
Chairman, Centre for Advanced Structural Engineering
J05 - J05 Civil Engineering Building
The University of Sydney
Biographical details
Professor Kim Rasmussen obtained his Masters of Science in Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1982 and his PhD from the University of Sydney in 1988. He was appointed Lecturer in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1989 and is now full Professor and Head in the same School. He is also head of the Structures Group and Chairman of the Centre for Advanced Structural Engineering which operates within the School and supports its research and consulting activities in the area of structural engineering. He is member the Engineering, Mathematics and Informatics (EMI) Panel of the College of the Australian Research Council, and an active consultant to industry, nationally and internationally.
Kim Rasmussen’s main research areas are theoretical and experimental structural mechanics with particular expertise in steel structural members and systems, cold-formed steel structures, stainless steel structures, aluminium structures, and structural stability and analysis. He teaches advanced structural steel design to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He is member or chairman of numerous Standards Australia committees and a member of the editorial boards of most of the leading journals in his field.
Research interests
A fascination with structures buckling under pressure has led to a distinguished career in the design, analysis and testing of metal structures for stability for Professor Kim Rasmussen. A world-leading researcher in the field, Professor Rasmussen's work is making the metal structures that surround us - from high-rise office buildings to houses to industrial shelving and scaffolding - safer, more efficient and more economical.
"I've always been fascinated by buckling. The notion that something can be geometrically perfect but then when you put a small additional load on it the whole thing suddenly buckles is just fascinating to me. And we can now analyse and predict this behaviour with a great degree of confidence.
"I research efficient ways of designing metal structures. These include the steel 'skeletons' of buildings, which need to carry the weight of the building as well as bearing the load of wind, earthquakes and so on. I also work with structures such as scaffolding and steel storage racks used in warehouses. Racks are challenging to design because they're built as lightly as possible but are very heavily loaded, and they can and do collapse for a range of reasons. My research aims to determine the forces leading to these collapses and better design these structures accordingly.
"I came to the University of Sydney in the early 1980s as a PhD student and joined the staff straight afterwards, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. There's a lot going on in buckling here, which is pretty exciting for me. My main challenge is finding the time to do it all!"
Teaching and supervision
CIVL4860 - Architectural to Structural Design
CIVL5266 - Steel Structures - Stability
CIVL5267 - Steel Structures - Advanced Analysis and Design
Associations
Standards Committees
- Standards Australia Committee BD/1 Steel Structures, Member
- Standards Australia Committee BD/50 Aluminium Structures, Chairman
- Standards Australia Committee BD/62 Steel Storage Racks, Chairman
- Standards Australia Committee BD/86 Stainless Steel Structures, Member
- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standards Committee on Stainless Steel Cold-formed Structural Members, Chairman
- Structural Stability Research Council Task Group 1
Recent Advisory Committees
- Member of the International Advisory Committee for the 6th European Conference on Steel and Composite Structures, EuroSteel 2011, Budapest, 31 August - 2 September, 2011.
- Member of the International Scientific Committee of International Conference on Thin-walled Structures (ICTWS6), Timisoara, 5-7 September 2011.
- Member of the International Scientific Committee for the Fifth International Conference on Steel and Composite Structures (ICSCS’2011), Seoul, Korea, 18-23 September 2011
- Member of the Scientific Committee of the Australasian Conference on Mechanics of Structures and Materials (ACMSM22), Sydney, December 2012.
- Member of the International Scientific Committee of the 7th International Conference on Advances in Steel Structures, ICASS’2012.
- Member of the International Advisory Board for SEMC 2013: The Fourth International Conference on Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation, 2-4 September 2013, Cape Town, South Africa.
- Member of the International Scientific Committee of the Pacific Structural Steel Conference PSSC2013, 8-11 October 2013, Singapore.
Editorial Board Memberships
- Thin-walled Structures
- Journal of Constructional Steel Research
- Steel Construction
- Steel and Composite Structures, an International Journal
- International Journal for Advanced Steel Construction
Board Memberships
- Member of Advisory Board for the Centre of Excellence Design in Light Alloys
Selected grants
2012
- Long-span cold-formed steel portal frames; Mysore K, Sharma S, Filonov A, Zhang H, Rasmussen K; Australian Research Council/Linkage Projects (LP).
- Long-span cold-formed steel portal frames; Rasmussen K, Zhang H, Filonov A, Mysore K, Sharma S; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Linkage Projects (LP).
- Strengthening merit-based access and support at the new NCI petascale supercomputing facility; Botten L, Leinweber D, Radom L, Gready J, England M, Mark A, Blackburn H, Hogg A, Jakob C, Pitman A, Powell B, Rasmussen K, Moresi L, Yu A, Knackstedt M, Bilek M, Ragan M, Schmidt B, Muller D, Pukala T, Soria J, Turney C, Hourigan K, Adelson D, Khanna R, Denier J, Pailthorpe B; Australian Research Council/Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF).
- Seismic behavior of drive-in steel storage racks; Rasmussen K, Clarke M, Zhang H, Clarke M, Yang D, Berry P; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Linkage Projects (LP).
2011
- System reliability-based criteria for designing steel structures by advanced analysis; Rasmussen K, Zhang H, Ellingwood B; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP).
2009
- Capital Markets CRC Limited Scholarships; Rasmussen K; Capital Markets CRC/Scholarship.
- Advanced analysis methods for locally unstable steel structures; Rasmussen K, Hancock G; Australian Research Council/Discovery Projects (DP).
2008
- High strength formwork systems; Rasmussen K, Pourbozorgi H; Australian Research Council/Linkage Projects (LP).
2005
- Behaviour and innovatice design of drive-in steel storage racks; Hancock G, Rasmussen K; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Project.
- Adhesive fasteners for wall and roofing systems; Rasmussen K; CRC Welded Structures/BLO Project.
- Welding procedures for stud welding; Rasmussen K; CRC Welded Structures/BLO Project.
- Innovative blast-resistant structural composite members; Rasmussen K; University of Sydney/Research & Development.
- Service performance of long run roof sheeting; Rasmussen K; CRC Welded Structures/BLO Project.
2003
- Design of cold-formed stainless steel structural members; Rasmussen K; University of Sydney (Sesqui)/Bridging Support.
2001
- CRC project 2000-91: Welding of rectangular hollow section members of equal width; Rasmussen K; CRC for Welded Structures/BLO Project.
- Strength and Ductibility of Single Point, Self-Drilling, Seft-Taping Fasterners.; Rasmussen K, Suntheraraj S; CRC for Welded Structures/BLO Project.
- Structural Stability and Design of Steel Formwork and Scaffolding Systems; Hancock G, Rasmussen K; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Earlier schemes: Large Grants.
2000
- Compression stability of high strength steel sections with low strain-hardening; Hancock G, Rasmussen K; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Large Research Grant.
- Thin-walled sections with unstiffened elements under stress gradients; Rasmussen K, Hancock G; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Earlier schemes: Large Grants.
- Strength and fracture in steel connections; Hancock G, Rasmussen K, Dagg H; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Spirt Grants.
Selected publications
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PhD and master's project opportunities
- Structural Engineering
- Local and distortional buckling of stainless steel sections
- Interaction buckling of stainless steel structural members
- Behaviour and design of steel storage racks
- Behaviour and design of scaffolding and formwork systems
- Structural behaviour and design of locally unstable angle sections
- Interaction buckling phenomena in thin-walled structures
- Spline finite strip analysis of perforated structural members


