Jan Winkler, structural engineer at Atkins in Denmark, is one of four winners of the prestigious International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) Hangai Prize. The award will be presented for his paper entitled "A Preliminary Bending Fatigue Spectrum for Steel Monostrand Cables" at the joint IABSE-IASS Symposium Taller, Longer, Lighter in London on 20 September 2011. The award is made to the winners of the international contest for the best papers on research or design projects related to the field of shell and spatial structures.

Reviews on Jan’s paper commented on the clarification it gave on several unresolved issues around cable bending fatigue, such as the fatigue performance of a monostrand cable under flexural load reversals. Jan’s work was praised for addressing the service life of high-strength steel monostrand cables, structural elements often used and applied by the design and construction of shells and spatial structures.

The IABSE-IASS Symposium, Taller, Longer, Lighter, is this year being held in London to take advantage of the opportunity to explore the exciting structures under construction for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The conference will welcome around a thousand international delegates. Atkins is a sponsor of the conference and, in addition to Jan’s paper, will be presenting six technical papers covering a number of key topics including work on the Olympics, the Dubai Metro and the Forth Road Bridge.

The winners will be awarded the Hangai Prize medals at a special plenary session during which the paper will be presented. In addition, the winning Hangai Prize papers are published in the December issue of the Journal of the IASS.

Commenting on Jan’s success, Chris Hendy, Atkins’ head of bridge design and technology, said: "As acknowledged by the panel, Jan’s paper addresses as yet unresolved issues around the estimation of service life of high-strength steel monostrand cables which are so critical to modern construction. In being awarded the distinguished Hangai Prize, Jan has demonstrated the continued importance that Atkins places on encouraging innovation in engineering through intellectual rigour."

Jan joined Atkins in January 2011 as a structural engineer and enrolled at the Technical University of Denmark as an Industrial PhD student at the same time. He graduated with a BSc in civil engineering from the Silesian University of Technology, Poland in 2008 and in December 2010 he received a Master of Science in civil engineering from the Technical University of Denmark.

Atkins is the official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.