News Release

Teams of Structural Engineering Alumni and Current Students Excel in International Blind Predictions

Nov. 21, 2022-- Blind predictions of large-scale structural components tested to failure are rare. These tests provide crucial data to validate predictive models. During the summer of ’22, researchers from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium conducted two tests on U-shaped structural concrete walls and organized an international blind prediction.

A team formed by three alums, Marios Mavros ’15, Juan Murcia-Delso ’13, and Marios Panagiotou ’08 won first place in both competitions. Ph.D. students Sergio Godinez and Andrés Rodriguez, whom Professor José Restrepo advises, achieved second place in one of the blind predictions. The two groups used the Beam Truss Model, a second-generation nonlinear truss model developed by Panagiotou and Restrepo in 2008. Panagiotou, Mavros, and Murcia used the version of the Beam Truss Model coded into the nonlinear finite element program FE-MultiPhys, developed by Assoc. Prof. Yannis Koutromanos at Virginia Tech. Koutromanos ’11 is also an UC San Diego alumni.
 
Panagiotou is a Senior Consultant with Nabih Youssef & Associates, a boutique structural engineering company in Los Angeles. Mavros is a Lecturer at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia and Murcia-Delso is an Assistant Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Media Contacts

Ioana Patringenaru
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-0899
ipatrin@ucsd.edu