Hume Fellowship

Recipients of Hume Fellowship in 1991

Peter Bourne-Webb

The first award was made in 1991 to Peter Bourne-Webb, a 26-year-old First Class Honours graduate from Canterbury University. Peter had completed a range of Civil Engineering projects for his employer Works Consultancy, with a period at their Central Laboratories immediately prior to leaving to study. He went to Imperial College, London in the 1992/93 academic year where he studied soil mechanics and environmental geotechnics, the latter subject module having been introduced to the course for the first time.

Peter's thesis, "Pile Group Interaction under Horizontal Loading" utilised both conventional two-dimensional and pseudo-3D continuous fourier series aided finite element analysis to investigate the horizontal load-displacement behaviour of piles and pile groups. Peter found that many empirical models employing superposition methods are oversimplified and could lead to an overestimation of load capacity. He proposed a ‘Virtual pile method’ which used the pseudo-3D FSAFE and demonstrated that it showed promise as an alternative approach to assessing group effects. As well as being taught by and interacting with some of the luminaries of the subject; Peter found that the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge with other colleagues on the course of great value.