I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Richard Scott for his expert help and guidance over the last three years.

I would like to thank Dr. Paul Baglin for his experimental work on the specimens investigating tie positioning and the specimens investigating the influence of joint shear plates. I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Baglin for his support with the finite element modelling.

I am grateful to Cervenka Consulting, in particular Dr. Jana Margoldova, for their support and assistance with the finite element package, SBETA.

I would like to thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for funding the work.

The project required considerable technical assistance. Special thanks must go to Neil Clarey for his work on strain gauge installation.

Thanks also go to Steve Richardson and Bernie McEleavey in the Civils Laboratory; Brian Blackburn, Brian Wallace and Ian Glassford in the Mechanical Workshop; and Trevor Nancarrow and Michael Wilson in I.T.

I would like to thank the four undergraduate students who worked on the investigation as part of their 4H projects, Paul Brayshaw, Richard Nixon, Graham Lunn and Brian Leach.

Finally I would like to thank my girlfriend, Dionne Martens, and my family for their support over the last three years.

(Extract from the PhD thesis Reinforced Concrete Beam-Column Connection Behaviour - Dr Stephen Hamil)

Taken from the webpage www.webgeordie.co.uk/stephenhamil/