Abstract

This month Cambridge University Press are publishing “The Geometry of Equilibrium: James Clerk Maxwell and 21st-Century Structural Mechanics”.

Edited by Bill Baker and Allan McRobie, the book is the result of around 10 years’ collaborative research with contributions from many others, including current and former members of the Structures Group; Petia Tzokova, Marina Konstantatou, Cameron Millar, Simon Guest and John Ochsendorf.

The talk will explain how a re-examination of the papers of James Clerk Maxwell can lead to a highly geometric perspective on structural engineering theory that is strikingly different to the one usually taught in this and other engineering departments. This ‘new’ perspective is of great relevance to modern, material-efficient structural design. The talk will also describe some of the more recent research into the foundations of structural mechanics that has since been built on Maxwell’s insights. This is founded on Legendre transforms and polarities in 3D and 4D projective geometry, with added elements from algebraic topology, homology and cohomology. Much of this material is too recent to have made it into the book.