Organized by Prof Georgios A. Drosopoulos in 2016, the Structural Engineering and Computational Mechanics Group (SECM) focuses on the development of methods, applied to several types of structures and materials. This research group belongs to the discipline of Civil Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
Among the particular research interests of the group, are problems related to composite materials, nanomaterials including graphene and CNT nanocomposites, masonry structures, non-smooth contact mechanics, concrete structures, multi-scale formulations and homogenization, xfem methods, steel structures and thermo-mechanical analyses, topology optimization approaches, design of cracks in concrete structures, deterministic and probabilistic approaches for the study of water retaining structures. Recent applications of the group include data-driven techniques, applied to structural engineering.