Elisha Harris puts safety first

Forget the house of cards and fiddlesticks ... PhD student Elisha Harris prefers stacking steel, then breaking it with hydraulic actuators capable of exerting a force of up to 500 kN (50 tonnes).

Elisha's civil engineering expertise stems from her enjoyment of maths and sciences in high school, her choice of engineering for undergraduate study, then a series of work placements in the field of structures.

Aware that current safety standards are inadequate, she decided to explore the swaying and strength of steel racks used in warehouses and factories around the world.

Collapses of steel racks up to 30 metres high, equivalent to a 10-storey building, rarely make headlines, but they occur frequently enough and cause enough costly damage to stock to warrant investigation.

Elisha is focussing particularly on the rigidity of the beam-to-column connections of the racks. A crucial factor is how far off vertical the steel towers may deviate before gravity and height render each structure dangerous. Her findings are expected to be applied to standardised safety tests used by manufacturers of a range of steel racks.

Elisha is among a number of University of Sydney civil engineering specialists who will speak at a major International Conference at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, from June 23 to 25.