David Muir Wood

David Muir Wood read Mechanical Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1970. He received his PhD there in 1974 for research on the true triaxial behaviour of clays, followed by a lectureship from 1975-1987, moving to Glasgow University where he was the Cormack Chair of Civil Engineering.

In 1995 he was elected Chair of Civil Engineering at Bristol University, becoming Dean of the Faculty of Engineering in 2003. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1998. David Muir Wood's current research explores themes concerned with the particle-continuum duality of soils. He is developing constitutive models for soils with breakable particles, for soils whose finer particles are being transported away by internal flow of water, and for soils whose mechanical response is improved by the addition of short flexible fibres. The ongoing challenge for each of these is to obtain appropriate experimental data to support the modelling hypotheses. He has written three books: Soil behaviour and critical state soil mechanics (1990), Geotechnical modelling (2004), Soil mechanics: a one-dimensional introduction (2009).