Poja Shams Hakimi

Biography

Poja is an industrial doctoral student at the Division of Structural Engineering, in the research group Steel and Timber structures at Chalmers. As an industry-employed doctoral student from ELU Konsult AB, his work focuses on post-weld treatment of bridge details as a measure of fatigue enhancement of steel and composite bridges. Fatigue occurs due to cyclic stresses from moving loads that lie far below the capacity of steel, and may therefore need more material than for static loading. The problem emerges at a few numbers of details and is often a decisive factor for the material use of the whole bridge. Thus, with a limited extent of post-weld treatment one can achieve substantial material savings and in addition enable the use of high strength steel. With stronger steel, less material is needed also for the static loads and in total, more resource efficient bridge solutions are achieved since also the construction methods become simpler, less transports are needed to the construction sites and cheaper substructures are necessary. These advantages are of great interest for many stakeholders, both in the private and public sectors. Therefore, the Swedish Road Administration (Trafikverket) which is responsible for the majority of the infrastructure in Sweden is a co-financier for this doctoral project together with Vinnova-LIGHTer, which is an organization that promotes cross-industrial cooperation for lighter steel structures. Moreover, also the Norwegian Road Administration (Staten Vegvesen) contributes to the project since large infrastructural projects are about to take place along the Norwegian coast.

Research Interest

Steel and Timber structures