Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Location: Dept. Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada
Starting date: February 1, 2012 (or sooner)
Salary: approx. Can $40,000/yr (taxable)
Contact: Prof. S. Pietruszczak , tel. 905 5259140 ext. 24007

Requirements for the position: the candidate is expected to have a sound knowledge of fundamentals of plasticity (including the basic background in modeling of chemomechanical interaction) and non-linear numerical techniques

Project description: The project is related to the analysis of aging effects in reinforced concrete structures within nuclear facilities and the assessment of the corresponding safety-related margins. It involves three main aspects, viz. formulation of constitutive relations for the description of reinforced concrete suffering from chemical/physical degradation, implementation of these relations in a finite element code and extensive numerical applications pertaining to assessment of integrity of various structural elements of a nuclear generating station and examination of different refurbishing strategies. The main aspects of the age-related degradation examined within this project will include the continuing alkali-aggregate reaction in concrete and the corrosion of the steel reinforcement. Both meso- and macroscale approaches will be developed.