Ivan vlahinich
Ivan Vlahinich is a Ph.D, candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. His studies and research focus on the behavior of cement-based and other heterogeneous materials. He works with Professors Hamlin Jennings and Jeffrey Thomas on the chemical and microstructural properties of cement sponsored by the Infrastructure Technology Institute (ITI), Northwestern’s USDOT-funded National University Transportation Center. Ivan earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering at Columbia University, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2003. During and after his undergraduate studies, Ivan worked as a civil engineer in design and construction in the U.S. and abroad. He was selected as ITI’s Student of the Year because of his research achievements. He has developed a new mathematical formulation to describe the dimensional changes of a porous body during drying, as the water or other fluid evaporates from the pores. This is important theoretical work in the field of poromechanics and geomechanics with practical implications to shrinkage of concrete. Ivan’s model has been verified using data from both cement paste and porous glass, and he is first author of a paper describing this work, recently accepted for the journal Mechanics of Materials. Ivan expects to complete his Ph.D. in 2010.
Title of Student’s Thesis:
Mechanical performance cement-based and other heterogeneous materials: approach based on granular microstructure
