My name is Josué Labaki; I am a professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering (FEM) at Unicamp, working with dynamic soil-structure interaction. A classic example of this type of problem is earthquakes, but in my work I am more interested in understanding and modeling ground propagating vibrations from artificial sources such as machinery and road and rail traffic. I develop computational models of structures and foundations and their interaction with the ground, to understand how we can design structures to vibrate as little as possible, and also how to design seismic vibration attenuating devices such as trenches, barriers, and walls. One example of application is the Sirius Project, the new Brazilian synchrotron light source, the subject of my work as a post-doctoral fellow at CCES. Particle accelerators like Sirius are classic examples of large structures sensitive to vibration. In that project, we developed models of plates and piles and their interaction with the ground, which are the main components of the accelerator foundation. Due to the large size of the accelerator, the large number of piles involved in its foundation, and the high computational cost intrinsic to the soil model, a significant part of the work was invested in high performance computing techniques. These topics make up the core of my current research work at FEM: high performance computing and numerical methods, foundation, structure, and soil model creation, seismic wave propagation, strategies for vibration attenuation, and applications to particle accelerators, nuclear power plants, concert halls, and other large vibration-sensitive structures.
