Rate My Professor David Richards

Professor David Richards, BEng MSt PhD CEng FICE, is Professor in Ground Engineering at the University of Southampton. He served as Head of the School of Engineering from 2018 to 2023. His research focuses on ground engineering topics including undermining infrastructure to avoid scarcity traps, screw piles for offshore wind energy foundation systems, long-term performance of geotechnical transport infrastructure, and coastal landfill and shoreline management with implications for coastal adaptation infrastructure. Richards has contributed to multiple EPSRC-funded projects such as 'Undermining Infrastructure: Avoiding the Scarcity Trap', 'Screw piles for wind energy foundation systems', 'Long-term performance of geotechnical transport infrastructure' with Professor William Powrie, 'International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF)' with Professors AbuBakr Bahaj and Gopal Ramchurn, and 'Coastal landfill and shoreline management: implications for coastal adaptation infrastructure' with Professors Robert Nicholls and William Powrie, and Doctor Richard Beaven. Additional projects include 'W Powrie - UKCRIC Co-ordination node', 'Platform Grants', and 'W Powrie - PLEXUS'.

Richards has over 100 publications, including 'Full-scale tests on laterally loaded railway overhead line equipment mast foundations' (Géotechnique, 2023, with William Powrie and Anthony P. Blake), 'CPT-based design method for helical piles in sand' (Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 2023, with Eduardo Bittar et al.), 'Physical and numerical investigation of integral bridge abutment stiffness due to seasonal thermal loading' (Transportation Geotechnics, 2023, with Sha Luo et al.), 'Development of a monitoring system to reduce uncertainties in assessing the wind loading of pile foundations for railway overhead line electrification structures' (2025, with Oliver Anthony John et al.), and 'Cavity expansion analysis of pile installation in chalk using synchrotron X-ray computed tomography' (2022, with Fernando Alvarez-Borges et al.). He received a prize for the winning paper 'Uplift of shallow foundations with cement-stabilised backfill' in 2008. Richards has been a member of the editorial board of Géotechnique since 2012 and Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Waste and Resource Management from 2009 to 2012. He delivered an invited talk on 'Recent research on the hydrogeological and settlement characteristics of landfilled MSW' in 2009 and holds memberships in the British Geotechnical Association (since 2010), Scottish Geotechnical Group (2012), and CIGRE (since 2005).