W John Mccarter

Biography

WJMcC joined the Department of Civil and Offshore Engineering at Heriot Watt University as lecturer in 1981. This was followed by promotion to Senior lecturer in 1987 and then to Reader in 1993. In 1998 he was appointed to a personal Chair (Civil Engineering Materials). In 2002 he was awarded a DSc by Heriot Watt University for his collected papers on 'Characterisation and monitoring of cement-based systems using electrical property measurements'. WJMcC has served on the Editorial Board of 'Structural Engineering Review' (Elsevier Ltd.) and 'Cement and Concrete Composites'; e was also Associate Editor of Cement and Concrete Composites for the period 2005-2008. WJMcC also serves on the EPSRC Peer Review Panel. WJMcC is a member of the RILEM Technical Committee: Performance-based Specifications and Control of Concrete Durability

Research Interest

ohn McCarter's research has focussed on the development and application of electrical property measurements for monitoring and characterisation of Civil Engineering materials both at the micro- and macro- scale. Such work involves the determination of conductive and dielectric parameters over the frequency range 10-3Hz- 109Hz and his Group was the first to apply a.c. impedance spectroscopy techniques to study the microstructure of cementitious systems. Work has focussed, in the main, on application to hydraulic cementitious systems, although over the last several years work has extended to include soil fabric studies. He has a has a diverse research programmes utilising and developing electrical response techniques to study, for example, hydration of cementitious systems and reaction kinetics (including alkali-activated materials / geopolymers); pozzolanicity of waste materials; surface treatments for concrete, and the sorptivity and diffusivity of cementitious binders. Work on soil fabric has included sedimentation of clay; diffusion through clay barriers and evolution of particle anisotropy during consolidation. John also has research programmes relating to concrete durability and performance, comprising both laboratory and field studies. Work has also been initiated utilising the electrical properties of carbon fibre reinforced cement matrices as smart, multifunctional structural materials with rheological studies also forming part of this research