Arghya Deb

Biography

Bachelor of Technology, Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India (1985-1989). Master of Science in Engineering, Civil Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1989-1991). PhD, Civil Engineering and Operations Research, Princeton University (1991-1995) Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Program in Applied Mechanics, Ohio State University, 1995-1996.

Research Interest

My research is mainly on understanding concrete behaviour. Concrete, probably the most widely used structural material, can be studied at several scales. At the structural scale (meters) concrete can be regarded as an isotropic homogeneous material with material properties that represent the average properties of the heterogeneous medium. At the meso (mm) or micro (scales) however the properties are highly heterogeneous because the constituents of concrete such as sand, cement and aggregate are not uniform at these scales. How does this heterogeneity influence the strength of concrete structures, their modes of damage and failure, and their short term and long term (creep) response to loading? How does heterogeneity affect the “size effect” in concrete: the fact that a cylinder of diameter 0.15 m and height 0.3 m has considerably higher compressive strength than a concrete column of diameter 1.5 m and height 3.0 m, even when the composition of the concrete used is identical in both specimens? We try to use a variety of numerical and analytical tools to try to answer these questions. My research interests also include fatigue behaviour of concrete and steel, the impact response of structures and developing efficient computer programs to model multi-scale behaviour.