By Miriam Chillemi

Miriam vs German

Hallo world! It’s me again, Miriam! In this post I am going to talk about my second year as a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck. What an adventure this year!! I did really a lot and I am integrating more and more in this beautiful country getting the best of climate and language! Oh yes… believe me if the low temperatures were not already enough, German makes everything tougher! But... Übung macht den Meister (=practice makes perfect) and I keep studying it! Learning another language is one of the reasons why I decided to undertake the EC H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND doctoral programme in Dynamics of Complex Continua. Moreover, knowing the language definitely helps with the social activities and enrich my professional curriculum.
Having lived in Austria for almost 2 years I figured out I actually want to pursue living here or in one of the DACH countries. Working conditions are definitely better than my homeland (Italy) and I am so used to the lifestyle I really can imagine my life here! I would never say that from a study program abroad I would change so much my life!
Anyway, living here means working here and to work in one of the DACH-countries for sure German is useful but, what else?! How is it the world out of the University? Fortunately, my doctoral program allowed me to answer this question! It was possible, indeed, to suspend my PhD for a couple of months and carry out an internship in a company. Perfect!

Let me talk about my experiences at FCP in Vienna.

Miriam goes to Vienna

I always find deeply interesting talking with my intersectoral mentor, Dr. Lukas Moschen. He gives me different insights regarding leadership, emotional intelligence, psychology of negotiation, self-management and other topics useful for the PhD studies period and to keep in mind when pursuing the professional life. Lukas besides providing educational support with the aim of improving my soft skills in the aforementioned circumstances, has continuously kept me update regarding interesting work projects satisfying my ambition to build a bridge between the research and professional world.
And it was his idea to undertake a secondment at FCP Fritsch, Chiari & Partner in Vienna which was the company where he used to work in former time.
The area of application of FCP was an excellent match for my future aspiration career growth and this collaboration fulfilled my ambition to get in touch with the professional world and grow up as engineer.
The possibility to work and experience this different professional path beside my PhD studies gave me really a lot. I figured ot the difference between the university and company job and I feel for sure more prepared for my future after my studies.
My internship lasted two months, from February 14th to April 15th 2022 and living in Vienna in that period was simply wonderful! I am totally in love with the city and couldn’t find nicer friends there.
I spent all my weekends in museums or art galleries, enjoying the best classic concerts and trying the tastier coffees. I really can see myself living in Vienna one day and could never say that before starting this outstanding adventure!

Miriam writes her first journal paper

Back to Innsbruck after my internship at FCP I couldn’t be more productive and motivated. Before leaving I was working on some experimental testing I have performed on a small scale prototype of a fluid inerter that we constructed in our laboratory.
The pronounced non-linearities encountered in the results deterred me for few weeks. Finally, one day I figured out where the problem was: the friction!!! It was the friction’s model the problem! Contrary to the suggestions found in literature, we figured out that due to a pronounced stick-slip phenomenon that occurred during experimental tests, a rather simple friction model, such as the Coulomb one, is not suitable to model the system behavior. In particular, it was observed that friction at or near zero velocity (so when the system moves slowler) is greater than friction at higher velocities. This phenomenon is the so-called Stribeck effect, and it really was the game-changer for my research!
Further months of hard work led me finally to the drafting of my first paper: “Nonlinear mechanical model of a fluid inerter” in August 2022. Do you believe that the article has been already published in November?! That was absolutely crazy and totally uncommon. I feel very lucky and anyway it would never be possible without the help and collaboration of Professors Adam and Furtmüller.
As I’ve already explained to you in previous posts, dynamic vibration control devices have been shown in numerous numerical studies to have superior vibration mitigation performance when coupled with a device called inerter. One possible way to produce this inertance effect is by means of a moving fluid. In our paper, we analyzed experimentally the dynamic performance of such a fluid inerter by means of a small-scale prototype consists of a hydraulic cylinder, and the inertance is generated by the flow of the working fluid in an external channel attached to the cylinder itself. Once we retrieved the parameters of the mechanical model, we moved on performing comparative studies. These eventually show a remarkable agreement between numerical and experimental outcomes, thus enabling the mechanical model to be used in dynamic vibration control devices. Hence, our experimental testing allowed us to prove that it is actually possible to generate a fictitious mass (inertance) of about 160 kg with only 50 g of flowing fluid. This underlines the large potential of fluid inerters when applied to vibration control in civil structures.
I am so happy of our results! Writing a paper about this was a stunning experience and nothing could be more satisfying of reading now those pages that have been sweated over, loved, hated, written and re-written, read and re-read, corrected and re-corrected.

Picture of the small-scale prototype of a fluid inerter (by M. Chillemi)

Miriam goes to Vienna (again)

What better way to cap off this year if not with another special experience in Vienna?!

This year I had the honour and pleasure to present at the annual meeting of the Austrian national committee for theoretical and applied mechanics arranged on 1^st and 2^nd of December in Vienna. The Austrian National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics is affiliated with the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) through the Austrian Academy of Sciences. IUTAM provides insight into the worldwide activities in this field. The members of the National Committee are scientists from TU Wien, TU Graz, MU Leoben, JKU Linz and Universität Innsbruck. The National Committee meets once a year to coordinate national and international activities and to offer young researchers a platform for scientific exchange. That was really a great event to attend and a good opportunity to enrich my knowledge and my presentation skills.