Andrew Palmer made significant contributions to the mechanics of solids. As a consulting engineer, he was distinguished for his numerous applications of classical mechanics to a wide range of problems in offshore engineering. His early work resolved crucial problems in plasticity theory, particularly concerning the localisation of flow. As a lecturer in Cambridge, he established for the first time the circumstances in which a buckle, once initiated, propagates indefinitely along a steel pipe on the sea bed. He was a leading authority on the incremental movement of pipes on the sea bed on account of cyclic pressure and temperature changes — an important and difficult area in which his knowledge of soil mechanics, stability theory and nonlinear analysis put him in a uniquely strong position. He was also a leading authority on ice mechanics and the design of offshore installations to withstand pressure from advancing ice sheets; he identified and analysed the phenomenon of scale-dependent ice strength.
Professor Andrew Palmer FREng FRS died on 21 December 2019.
Professional position
- Managing Director, Bold Island Engineering (Singapore) Pte Ltd
Subject groups
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Engineering and Materials Science
Engineering, civil
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Other
Science policy
