research fellows
ESR 1 Alessandro Comitti (UCL)
Alessandro Comitti obtained both Bachelor (2016) and Master (2019) Degree in Building Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. After the graduation, he worked for a company as a Product Engineer, developing new structural connectors for the timber construction, consulting engineers, collaborating with research and certification bodies across Europe. During his LIGHTEN PhD he will experimentally characterise ETFE films in a wide spectrum of environmental conditions to design a thermoviscoelastic model of the material. The aim is to make the numerical model available to commercial FEM packages, test it on some real design projects and finally prepare new guidelines for lightweight tensioned structured.
PhD focus: Nonlinear thermomechanical response and constitutive modelling of viscoelastic sustainable building skins
Supervisors: Dr. Federico Bosi (UCL and SUPSI) and Dr. Massimo Penasa (CAEmate srl)
ESR 2 Luis Seixas (CAEmate)
In 2019, Luís completed his integrated cycle of studies, leading to a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, specialising in Structural Engineering and Machine Design at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto. During his master’s thesis at Efacec, he developed routines to perform automated FE analysis of structures using open-source software. After graduating, Luís worked as a Structural Engineer at Vestas, in the Tower Module, where his primary responsibility was the design of structural components for wind turbines. During his LIGHTEN PhD, he will develop a reliable method to evaluate the onset plasticity in low-carbon ultra-lightweight structural membranes. he aims to obtain a numerical constitutive model capable of characterising the yield strength of materials in membrane state (in particular, ETFE material) depending on the temperature, strain rate and mechanical loading conditions.
PhD focus: A novel method to determine the time and temperature-dependent onset of plasticity in structural membranes
Supervisors: Dr. Massimo Penasa (CAEmate srl) and Prof. Federico Bosi (UCL and SUPSI)
ESR 3 Harikrishnan Vijayakumaran (Tensys)
Hari graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering. He then received a master’s in Computational Mechanics from the University of Stuttgart, where he was associated with the Institute of Applied Mechanics and the collaborative research centre SFB1313. In his master’s thesis and subsequent research activities, he focused on constitutive modelling of coupled and dissipative materials – particularly the elasto-viscoplastic fracture modelling of frictional materials using the phase-field approach. During his LIGHTEN PhD, Hari aims to capture the thermo-mechanical behaviour of novel fully recyclable low-carbon ultra-lightweight structural membranes by developing constitutive models that cover the entire viscoplastic regime of structural membranes. Hari’s research interests lie at the intersection of classical physics-based material modelling and machine learning – and their integration to realise hybrid models that incorporate the advantages of both domains.
PhD focus: Thermo-viscoplastic models of thin films for lightweight tensioned structures
Supervisors: Eng. Adam Bown (Tensys Ltd) and Prof. Miguel Bessa (Brown University)
ESR 4 Mohammad Hosein Nejabatmeimandi (UNITN)
Hosein received his master’s degree in 2018 in Applied Design of Solid Mechanics from the University of Yazd, Iran. His thesis was in the field of nonlinear vibration of thermo-elasticity and the wave propagation in structures under thermal shocks. Previously, Hosein worked on crack initiation and low cycle fatigue in materials under cyclic loadings for industrial projects. During his LIGHTEN PhD, he will investigate nonlinear structural instabilities in building skins and the critical conditions that trigger them, with a focus on short and long-term wrinkling and ponding in pre-stretch membranes. The numerical and analytical modelling will be coupled with experimental validation developed at the UNITN Lab and Tensys
PhD focus: Instabilities in structural membranes under extreme conditions
Supervisors: Profs. Francesco Dal Corso and Diego Misseroni (UNITN) and Eng. Adam Bown (Tensys Ltd)
ESR 5 Igor Kuszczak (SUPSI)
Igor Kuszczak holds a MEng in Mechanical Engineering from University College London and an MSc in Applied Computational Science and Engineering from Imperial College London. Currently pursuing a LIGHTEN PhD, Igor focuses on enhancing topology optimisation through machine learning, specifically neural reparameterisation methods and knowledge transfer/accumulation. His research aims to refine these techniques, positioning them as viable alternatives to conventional topology optimisation. The increased expressivity of these methods has the potential to address real-life challenges like topology optimisation with plasticity and fracture.
PhD focus: Neural reparameterisation for topology optimisation
Supervisors: Prof. Federico Bosi (UCL and SUPSI) and Prof. Miguel Bessa (Brown University)
ESR 5 Shushu Qin (TU Delft)
Shushu did her bachelor at Harbin Institute of Technology, majoring in Civil Engineering. She then received a MSc in Computational Mechanics from Swansea University and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya through the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master programme. She developed her master’s thesis within the LaCàN team, proposing a novel finite volume paradigm for steady-state incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations: the Face-Centered Finite Volume method (FCFV). During her LIGHTEN PhD, Shushu will focus on topology optimisation of membrane structures. The goal is to complement traditional topology optimisation with a data-driven approach as a way to accelerate the search for the optimised structure
PhD focus: Data-driven design and optimisation of building skins and lightweight structures
Supervisors: Prof. Miguel Bessa (Brown University) and Dr. Massimo Penasa (CAEmate srl)
Shushu terminated her participation in the project on 2nd October 2022.