Dr Alessandro Tombari
Senior Lecturer in Digital Design in Civil Engineering (E&R)
Location: Harrison 288
Dr Alessandro Tombari is Senior Lecturer in Digital Design in Civil Engineering (E&R).
His research interests are in geotechnical earthquake engineering and computational structural mechanics, with emphasis on seismic soil-structure interaction (SSI) and Structure-Soil-Structure Interaction (SSSI).
Research Interests
His research has involved the seismic protection of Wind Turbines, calibrating of models for considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) and structure-soil-structure interaction (SSSI) effects, simulation of the cyclic softening of soils through the Discrete Element Method, the characterization of the local site deposit for site response analysis, the investigation of the effects of the soil nonlinearities on bridges through Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) models as well as the sensitivity, stochastic analysis and uncertainty analysis of SSI problems.
He gained substantial research experience through the following research :
- Principal Investigator for ESPRC New Investigator Award (Grant Ref: EP/W001071/1): “Structural Life-Cycle Enhancement of Next-Generation Onshore And Offshore Wind Farms”
- Co-investigator for STDF/AHRC Call for Research Grants with Cairo University, City - University of London, University of Brighton. Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage from Earthquake Damage through Vibrating Barriers (ViBa) ;
- CNRS Postdoctoral Fellow at IMSIA - UMR EDF/CNRS/CEA/ENSTA 9219, Clamart, France (2015-2016): Research Project: “LOSSVAR: Assessing effect of LOcal SubSoil VARiability and Uncertainty in SSI”.
- Research Fellow in Civil Engineering, School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, UK (2013-2015).Research Project: VIBA: "Vibrating Barriers for the control of seismic waves (ViBa)".
- Visiting Researcher (February 2014 - May 2014) – LaMSID/EDF, Paris, France, Research Activity: Application of the Vibrating Barrier for the seismic protection of Nuclear Power Plants
- Visiting PhD Student (June 2011 - March 2012) – The Western University, London, Ontario, Canada – supervisor: Prof. M.H. El Naggar.
Research Funding
(2021) £220,947 - ESPRC New Investigator Award (Grant Ref: EP/W001071/1): “Structural Life-Cycle Enhancement of Next-Generation Onshore And Offshore Wind Farms”
(2019) £1,950 – Univesity of Brighton Research Investment Fund. A novel monopile transition device for Offshore Wind Turbines. Numerical and experimental testing.
(2019) £9,900 – Univesity of Brighton Rising Stars. A novel monopile transition device for Offshore Wind Turbines. Numerical and experimental testing.
(2019) £ 19,964 - Univesity of BrightonResearch Investment Fund. Portable Digital Laser Vibrometer.
(2018) £206,929 - STDF/AHRC Call for Research Grants with Cairo University, City - University of London, University of Brighton. Role: Co-Investigator: Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage from Earthquake Damage through Vibrating Barriers (ViBa) ;
(2018) £800 – The Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) MSc RESEARCH GRANT 2017/18 for developing an MSc student project on the following topic: “Numerical and experimental study of the impact of the plastic hinge formation in extended pile-shaft supported bridge”
(2017) £9,644.18 - Univesity of Brighton Research Investment Fund. High-spec workstation has been purchased for performing simulations of large numerical models. The computer is an HP Z840 Workstation, with 32 cores, 128GB RAM, and 7TB SSD – disk storage.
(2016) £1500 - British Council and CONACYT (Mexican National Council on Science and Technology) for participation in the 1st International Workshop on 'Seismic Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategies for Existing Buildings and Structures’.
Teaching Experience
Dr Tombari is currently delivering ENGM038 - Digital Analysis and ENGM037- Digital Design for the MSc Construction Design Management.
At the University of Brighton, he was module leader for undergraduate modules for BEng/MEng Civil Engineering courses such as Computational Structural Mechanics, Computational Mechanics, Dynamics of Structures and Mathematics for Civil Engineering.
He also delivered seminar classes for Random Vibrations of Structures in the MSc Civil Engineering course.
Supervisory Interests
- Research areas where applications are welcomed included:
- dynamic simulation and design of wind turbines
- seismic soil-structure interaction
- nonlinear modelling of cyclic soil degradation
- ground motion modelling in urban areas
- reliability analysis and statistics in geotechnical earthquake engineering
An ideal candidate would be a highly motivated university student, who graduated or is graduating in civil engineering or similar, with strong analytical, computational and numerical skills.