Best Structures Final Year Project for David

David Zhu wins the Best Structures Final Year Project

David’s research contributed to our British Council–sponsored RESIBUILD Project, in collaboration with Bursa Technical University and Fibrobeton in Türkiye, and was motivated by the urgent need for resilient and rapidly manufacturable housing in the aftermath of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes.

David's project integrates stochastic architectural layout generation, static nonlinear finite element seismic simulations, and graph neural networks (GNN) to enable the automatic, rapid design of sustainable housing within a performance-based framework. Using hybrid Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Fibre-reinforced Precast Concrete panels, the framework simulates structural responses in Abaqus and trains GNNs to generate viable, earthquake-resilient layouts under minimal user-defined constraints.

This innovative methodology marks an important step toward data-informed, rapid post-disaster housing solutions, combining structural engineering, computational design, and AI (artificial intelligence). Design automation is particularly valuable in a post-disaster contexts where design and production chains are under severe pressure.

We warmly congratulate David, who now joins the growing list of prize-winners from Emerging Structural Technologies, on this well-deserved recognition, and thank the Robert Bird Group for supporting and celebrating excellence in structural engineering research at Imperial.