Alessandro Tombari

My research interests are in geotechnical earthquake engineering and computational structural mechanics, with emphasis on seismic soil-structure interaction, dynamic cross-interaction, earthquake ground motion characterization, soil dynamics and analysis and design of bridges and bridge foundation.

My research has involved the devising of models for considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) and structure-soil-structure interaction (SSSI) effects, the characterization of the local site deposit for site response analysis, investigation of the effects of the soil nonlinearities on bridges through Nonlinear Winkler Foundation (BNWF) models as well as sensitivity, stochastic analysis and uncertainty analysis of SSI problems.

 Research studies have been undertaken by analytical analysis, numerical simulation and scaled-model experimental test.

I am Senior Lecturer in Computational Structural Mechanics teaching computational frameworks such as Finite Element Method.

My teaching aims to stimulate the student’s interest in this discipline by drawing upon examples from your my current research and previous professional experience. The goal is to build each student's confidence in order to make her/him ready for dealing with structural engineering projects.

I studied Civil Engineering at Università Politecnica Delle Marche, in Italy where I earned a  BEng (Hons) and then a MSc in  Civil Engineering – First Class (equivalent). Soon after I embarked on a PhD in Structure and Infrastructure Engineering working on “Seismic Response of Extended Pile Shafts Considering Nonlinear Soil-Pile Interaction”. During the doctoral period I have been Visiting PhD Student at The Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, supervised by Prof. M.H. El Naggar.

After completed my PhD, I was appointed for a position of Research Fellow at Brighton.

Research areas where project applications are welcomed included: seismic soil structure interaction, ground motion modelling in urban areas and reliability analysis and statistics in geotechnical earthquake engineering.

An ideal candidate would be a highly motivated university student recently graduated or graduating in civil engineering with strong analytical, computational and numerical skills.