Bernhard Schrefler

Bernhard Schrefler is professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Padua.

With Professor Zienkiewicz he contributed to the development of computational strategies in porous media mechanics. He was the first to apply Biot’s theory to surface subsidence due to withdrawal of water and gas, and to introduce the generalized Bishop’s stress, today the most used stress tensor in partially saturated soils mechanics.

He has developed this theory up to large application: seismic behaviour of earth dams, effect of tunnel fires on concrete, leaching in nuclear waste disposals and alkali aggregate reactions in dams.
In the field of technology for thermonuclear controlled fusion he contributed to the design of the reversed field pinch fusion device RFX in Padua and to the analysis of superconducting coils for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Fusion Reactor).

Awards

Professor Schrefler is member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (“dei XL”), received honorary doctorates from the St. Petersburg StateTechnical University, the University of Technology of Lodz, the Leibniz University of Hannover, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He has been awarded the Maurice A. Biot Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), received the Computational Mechanics Award and the IACM Award of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM).