Research stay at University of Cape Town in South Africa

Atul Anantheswar, PhD candidate, Project A01

I was given the opportunity to have a research stay with the Continuum Mechanics Research Group led by Prof. Sebastian Skatulla at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. I was there for a period of one month from 24.02.2024 to 24.03.2024. During this time, I attended the Africomp 6 conference (international conference on computational mechanics), where I presented my work “Advection of Internal Variables in a Dynamic ALE Framework Enabling Fast and Accurate Predictions from a Digital Twin of the Pavement”, and enjoyed enlightening interactions with the scientific community. Subsequently, I continued on to my research stay with Prof. Sebastian Skatulla. His research interests cover a wide gamut of topics in continuum mechanics, including biomechanics of human heart tissue and modeling fracture in the Antarctic ice shelves. My research there was mainly focused on the implementation of a hypoplastic material model for cohesionless soils into a Finite Element framework. Prof. Skatulla's guidance was very helpful in this regard, and I have since been able to successfully implement the model. A collaborative publication highlighting the developments during and since my research stay is underway.

Apart from the scientific research, I was also able to enjoy some tourist activities in and around the city of Cape Town.