Serena Gambarelli Accepted into the Baden-Württemberg Foundation's Elite Programme

The focus of Serena Gambarelli’s research at the Materials Testing Institute at the University of Stuttgart (MPA) is on the computational mechanics of building materials and building methods, for which she is developing digital tools for the purpose of analyzing deterioration processes. One of these materials is wood, a complex organic material which isn’t only used in a number of engineering projects but also in objects of cultural interest such as sculptures or paintings. If wood is exposed to unsuitable environmental conditions such as changes in humidity and temperature or mechanical influences, this can lead to damage and impair its durability. As part of her project, Serena Gambarelli wants to understand and model the complex hygro-thermo-mechanical behavior of wood in order to preserve structures, historical buildings and artifacts. To do this, she builds on a 3D hygro-thermo-mechanical model for concrete, and develops it further within the framework of continuum mechanics and by using the finite element method for wood. The benchmarks here are the annual growth rings, the directional dependency of the properties of wood (anisotropy), as well as the firmness of the wood along its longitudinal axis. The transportation of water through the wooden fibers and pores is also taken into consideration.

Serena Gambarelli was born in 1984 and studied Civil Engineering in Rome, where she finished her doctorate in 2016 on modeling the interactions between fiber composite materials and concrete. She worked as a postdoc at the Institute of Construction Materials at the University of Stuttgart from 2016 to 2019 before moving to the Materials Testing Institute at the University of Stuttgart.