When the Ph.D. makes unreversible changes in you mind

January 2011 - Beginning of my Ph.D.
"The concrete is an homogeneous material"
(at that time I was defining my-self as a structural engineer)

Augustus 2014 - Almost the end of my Ph.D
"The concrete material presents an high heterogeneity"
(now I don't have any clue of how I am, but just of what I know)

Same person, different mind.

IF MULTISCALE --> THEN MULTIDISCIPLINARY?

It's almost two years that I decide how to model the phenomenon of ASR in concrete structures. My choice is a multiscale material model based on poromechanics theory developed by Coussy, Dormieux, Ulm and further applied by Lemarchand and Charpin.

I like a lot this approach because you can bridge scales, the equations can be solved analytically and it proved to describe properly the mechanical behavior of concrete.

But today while reading the book titled "Mechanics and Physics of Porous Solid", I was asking to myself if it is indeed necessary to have a multidisciplinary approach to model this problem.

Can ASR in concrete be explained considering only mechanics? or do we need physics and chemistry too?

I don't have any answer at the moment, if you find one just let me know :)

Apparently, by crossing multiple scales you need to learn multiple disciplines!

Modeling ASR in concrete structures, it looks like finishing a puzzle. (picture from biotuesdays.com)

PhD Life: Formulating ASR Expansion

I came across this fun application on the web. And put our research topic to test..

So it was not that complicated after all...

ASR as hot topic at EURO-C Conference

The PAT-ASR team attended the last International Conference on Computational Modelling of Concrete and Concrete Structures, better know as EURO-C (http://euro-c.tuwien.ac.at/).
Intense and lively discussions were provoked by our presentation, as a results ASR was a "hot topic" of the conference.
Luckily we had the time to explore also the amazing conference venue: St Anton am Albereg (Austria) and enjoying the sun with many friends!
We also want to send our best wishes to Prof. Jan Rots, who is now an organizing member of this conference!

The proceedings.

The venue: St. Anton am Albreg, Austria.

Prof. Jan Rots appointed as organizing member of EURO-C conference by Prof. Gunther Meschke.

Computational Modelling of ASR Workshop

PAT-ASR team will present their work in a workshop on 9th April, 2014. This workshop is organised by Ruhr University. You can find more information about this workshop here.

We hope there will be some productive and informative discussions ahead of us. Hope to see you there.