Dr Mauro Overend received the Institution of Structural Engineers' Guthrie-Brown medal for his paper 'Recent developments in design methods for glass structures' published on 20th July 2010.  The Guthrie-Brown Award is conferred to papers published in The Structural Engineer by a member or members under 40 years of age. Awards come in different grades with the medal being the recognition of excellence.   The medal was presented to Dr Overend by the IStructE President Professor Roger Plank at this year's IStructE Awards Luncheon. 

The unique combination of transparency, durability and relatively low cost make glass a popular material in buildings. However, the increasing size of glazing panels and the emerging use of glass in areas other than windows (such as staircases, floors and canopies) presents several structural engineering challenges. In his paper Dr Overend presented an overview of the analytical and prototype testing methods for designing structural glass elements and he described a novel stress-history interaction approach for determining the strength of glass.

The paper draws from several on-going research projects in the Glass & Facade Research Group at the University of Cambridge.

Institution members and subsrcibers can find Dr Overend's paper here.