16 Abr New PhD in the Group: Joan Ninyerola Gavaldà successfully defends his Doctoral Thesis
On March 27, 2026, Joan Ninyerola Gavaldà successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Validated High-Fidelity Simulation Framework for Design Allowables in Composite Damage Modeling under Uncertainty.” The defense took place at the Sala de Graus of the Faculty of Economics (University of Girona).
The thesis was supervised by Dr. Albert Turon Travesa and Dr. Aravind Sasikumar and focuses on improving the reliability of simulation-based approaches for the design and analysis of composite structures.
The research develops a methodology based on Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification (VV&UQ) to validate composite structural models under uncertainty. By comparing experimental and numerical results at the distribution level using quantitative metrics, the proposed framework allows high-fidelity simulations to reproduce the statistical variability observed in structural testing, providing more robust support for engineering design decisions.
Among the main contributions of the thesis are:
– A systematic VV&UQ methodology for high-fidelity composite models
– A non-deterministic validation framework using quantitative comparison metrics
– Uncertainty-aware calibration of bilinear translaminar softening laws
– A sensitivity-guided dimensionality reduction strategy for high-fidelity models
During his doctoral research, Joan also contributed to the publication “A validated simulation methodology for determining single lap shear allowable strength in thermoplastic polymer composites” in Composite Structures Part B.
