Falk Wittel: Catalogue data in Autumn Semester 2022

Award: The Golden Owl
Name Dr. Falk Wittel
Name variantsFalk K. Wittel
Address
Institut für Baustoffe (IfB)
ETH Zürich, HIF E 27
Laura-Hezner-Weg 7
8093 Zürich
SWITZERLAND
Telephone+41 44 633 28 71
E-mailfwittel@ethz.ch
DepartmentCivil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering
RelationshipLecturer

NumberTitleECTSHoursLecturers
101-0615-01LMaterials Lab Exercises Restricted registration - show details 4 credits4PR. J. Flatt, U. Angst, I. Burgert, D. Kammer, H. Richner, F. Wittel
AbstractIntroduction into the basic and practical knowledge of important building materials and testing methods.
Learning objectiveIntroduction into the basic and practical knowledge of important building materials and testing methods.
Contento Introduction of material testing equipment, with various examples of experiments on metals (tensile behaviour, hardness, bending and impact loading).
o Theoretical background and practical aspects of concrete technology: mixture design, casting and setting; determination of mechanical properties.
o Properties of bricks and mortar: individual materials and the composite brickwork. Parameters like strength, Young’s modulus, water absorption and thermal conductivity are determined.
o Understanding the characteristic properties of wood: anisotropy, hygroscopic behaviour, shrinkage and swelling, and effect of size on strength. Introduction to test-methods for wood and wood-products.
o Introduction into the basics of scanning electron microscopy: practical exercises with the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM).
o Introduction to fundamentals of Finite Element Methods and their application in examples.
o Introduction to durability of building materials and building structures: assessment of potentials for detecting and locating corrosion of steel reinforcement in concrete.
Lecture notesFor each topic a script will be provided, that can be downloaded under www.ifb.ethz.ch/education
101-0617-02LComputational Science Investigation for Material Mechanics4 credits2SD. Kammer, F. Wittel
AbstractIntroduction to computational sciences with focus on numerical modeling of the mechanics of materials. Simulation of material damage, fracture and failure with various material models.
Learning objectiveLearning from mistakes and failures is as old as the engineering discipline. Understanding why things went wrong is essential for improvement, but often impossible without the help of numerical modelling. Real world problems are often highly nonlinear, dependent on multiple physical fields, involve fundamental material behavior far from equilibrium and reversibility, and can often only be understood by addressing different relevant scales.

In this course, we will use real-life cases to learn how to deal with such problems. Starting from the problem description with governing equations, you will learn how to tackle non-linear and multi-field problems using numerical simulations. A particular focus will be on fracture. We will investigate the conditions and mechanisms that lead to material failure and analyze the contributions of plastic behavior, size effects, randomness in the underlying material micro-structure, and various other non-linear material behavior. You will learn various approaches to model the mechanics of complex heterogeneous materials and to implement your model in Python code to run numerical simulations.
Content1 Introduction to (numeric) forensic engineering
2 The nature of engineering problems (governing equations)
3 Numerical recipes for dealing with non-linear problems
4 Multi-field problems (HTM)
5 On the nature of failure - Physics of damage and fracture
6 Cracks and growth in structures (LEFM and beyond)
7 Introduction to metal plasticity
8 Damage and fracture in heterogeneous materials
9 Mechanics of fatigue
10 Visco-elastic failure
11 Student μ-Project presentation
Lecture notesWill be provided during the lecture via moodle.
LiteratureWill be provided during the lecture.
CompetenciesCompetencies
Subject-specific CompetenciesConcepts and Theoriesassessed
Techniques and Technologiesassessed
Method-specific CompetenciesAnalytical Competenciesassessed
Decision-makingassessed
Problem-solvingassessed
Social CompetenciesCommunicationassessed
Personal CompetenciesAdaptability and Flexibilityfostered
Creative Thinkingassessed
Critical Thinkingassessed
Integrity and Work Ethicsfostered
Self-direction and Self-management fostered