A year or so after graduating from my undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Engineering), I felt it was about time I got back into studying. At the time, I was working for an engineering consulting company, Aurecon, in their ‘Advanced Analysis’ group. We were predominantly using ANSYS as our general purpose Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool for our structural analyses. Whilst I felt relatively comfortable using ANSYS, and using the Finite Element Method (FEM) in general, I hadn’t done any formal training in the area (apart from one undergraduate course on the theory of the FEM) and so I felt like I was missing out on the deeper understanding behind what I was doing.
When I saw the advertisements for the online “Master’s Degree in Numerical Simulation in Engineering with ANSYS”, run by the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) in collaboration with ANSYS, I decided it would be a great choice for my continued education. The Master’s Degree is completely online, and so allows me to continue working full time and study in the free time I have left.
The Master’s Degree is modular, and comprises of three levels of courses, basic modules, advanced modules, and Master’s Thesis. It also has two available streams, Solid Mechanics and Fluid Mechanics. I chose the Solid Mechanics stream, which meant taking the basic module “Fundamentals and Application of Finite Element Method in Mechanical Analysis”, and my choice of at least three advanced modules. I took the “Advanced Non-Linearities”, “Fracture and Fatigue”, and “Dynamic Analysis” modules. For each of the basic and advanced modules, the content is made up of a theory component and a practical (using ANSYS) component. You can read more about the Master’s degree on the ANSYS website.
The final requirement is the Master’s Thesis course. Professors from UPM put forward a list of potential topics for the Thesis, and the students are able to chose from that list, alternatively they can propose a new topic. The majority of the work I do with Quest Integrity relates to Fracture Mechanics, and so I wanted to do my thesis on something in this field. As none of the proposed topics were relating to Fracture Mechanics, I got in contact with the Professor for Fracture and Fatigue to discuss potential topics. He introduced me to Gustavo Guinea, a Professor in the Materials Science department, who was interested in studying viscoplastic (creep) fracture. In a large portion of the projects I work on creep crack growth is the predominant failure mechanism, and so working with Gustavo on viscoplastic fracture would be a great opportunity to learn more about this complex topic.
Gustavo proposed I undertake a study of the different methods of evaluating viscoplascity (creep) in a fractured specimen, using the Finite Element Method (FEM) as a comparison. My working title for the Thesis is “Comparison of methods for evaluating the creep zone at a crack tip using FEA”, however as the study progresses, and the scope becomes more clearly defined, the title will no doubt change.
For a more detailed explanation into the scope of the thesis, I’ve set up a Thesis page. I’ll also be posting regular updates to the blog under the Thesis category.