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Department of Mechanical Engineering
Student sits at workstation and looks at laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund

Prof. Sofi discusses about Structural Analysis under Hybrid Uncertainties at CRE event

© CRE
CRE in cooperation with TU Host Grant Program organizes an event where Prof. Alba Sofi from the University "Mediterranea" of Reggio Calabria, Italy, talks about Structural Analysis under Hybrid Uncertainties

The appropriate mathematical description and processing of uncertainties affecting model parameters and external excitations is critical to achieve an accurate and robust assessment of systems performance. Nowadays, uncertainty models are commonly cast within a generalized framework including probabilistic, non-probabilistic (interval model, fuzzy sets, etc.), and mixed or hybrid probabilistic/non-probabilistic approaches.

Prof. Alba Sofi from the University "Mediterranea" of Reggio Calabria, Italy, visited CRE for a week in Jul'24. During her visit, she gave an open lecutre on her work at an event jointly organized by the CRE and the TU Host Grant Program. In this talk, Prof. Alba Sofi focused on the analysis of structural systems involving hybrid uncertainties, which result from a mixture of interval and probabilistic models. Furthermore, Prof. Alba Sofi has presented efficient strategies able to decouple the propagation of interval and random uncertainties. It was mentioned that two-level propagation of imprecise random variables is performed by applying a Response Surface approach. Prof. Alba Sofi has also highlighted that structural safety assessment in the presence of stochastic excitation and interval (structural or spectral) parameters is efficiently carried out by interval extension of the classical first-passage problem. Based on the presented theoretical and computational developments, the capability of hybrid uncertainty models to provide a unified treatment of epistemic and aleatory uncertainties in engineering problems has been discussed as well.

About the speaker:

Prof. Alba Sofi holds the position of Associate Professor of Mechanics of Solids and Structures at the University of Reggio Calabria, Italy. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Structural Engineering from the University of Palermo, Italy. Following her doctoral studies, she continued her research as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Messina and later as a Research Assistant at the University of Reggio Calabria (Italy). Her international engagements include serving as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Additionally, she held visiting professorships at Guangzhou University and Xidian University in China. Prof. Sofi actively contributes to the academic community through editorial roles. She serves as Managing Editor for the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering. Notably, she received the Editor's Award for the best paper in 2020 in the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering. Her commitment to international collaboration is evident through her co-chairing of the 9th International Workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing (REC 2021). Additionally, she actively participates in various scientific committees for international conferences. Prof. Sofi's research interests encompass several areas, including stochastic dynamics, uncertainty quantification (UQ), computational mechanics, bridge-vehicle dynamic interaction, cable dynamics, fractional calculus, and non-local elasticity theory. With an extensive publication record (over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings) and involvement in research projects supported by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research, she is widely recognized for her contributions to the field of mechanics of solids and structures.

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