Diego Dell'Erba

Dual Boundary Element Formulation for Three Dimensional Thermoelastic Fracture Mechanics 

Diego Dell'Erba has recently passed his PhD viva at the Institute. The title of his thesis was "Dual Boundary Element Formulation for Three Dimensional Thermoelastic Fracture Mechanics.

Diego is a graduate from the National University of Mar del Plata in Argentine where he obtained his degree in Mechanical Engineering. The external examiner was Dr Rod Smith from the Royal College of Military Science at Cranfield University.

During his stay at WIT he also worked on a European Union project entitled High Performance Simulation for Structural Integrity Analysis. This project which has now been successfully completed aimed to develop an interactive simulation based engineering design environment for the assessment of the structural integrity of mechanical components with particular reference to welds.

The dissemination of the results has been achieved through the media of several courses and seminars, including a large meeting in Buenos Aires. Major advances have been made in developing a major high performance simulation capability by another partner in the project, i.e. the Supercomputing Centre of Galicia (CESGA).

The experimental data required for welds and the validation of the theoretical results using prototypes was the responsibility of another partner, the National Institute of Material Technologies (INTEMA) of the University of Mar del Plata in Argentina.