ProfessorDerek Warner

At the University of Canterbury, Derek is creating a Canterbury Fracture Group ( https://cfg.nz/ ) that conducts both scientific and engineering research aimed at understanding and predicting the deformation and failure of structures. A primary scientific goal of the Group is to illuminate and model the underlying physical mechanisms that control failure. Effort in this area supports the Group’s engineering objective to advance the capability to predict the deformation and failure of structures through the utilization of new knowledge and modelling techniques, considering the entire life cycle from manufacturing through end-of-life. With its research, the Fracture Group strives to increase the standard of living across the globe by enabling better performing, lower cost, and more sustainable infrastructure and technology.

The phenomenon of fatigue and environmental degradation have long been at the core of Derek’s research program, which has a sustained history of work in marine and aerospace applications with the US Navy. Related topics of adhesion, friction, and wear have also been of continued interest. Looking forward, Derek envisions the Canterbury Fracture Group exploring these phenomena in the context of in-situ robotic repair, novel chemo-mechanical designs, and high throughput characterization.

The Group’s experience entails: long timescale atomistic techniques (FTS, TIS), atomistic to continuum concurrent multiscale techniques (QM-CADD), the utilization of machine learning interatomic potentials, micromechanical modelling (large deformations, remeshing, microstructural modelling), and component scale fabrication, post processing, and failure modelling with probabilistic frameworks and FRANC3D crack growth software. Since 2013, additive manufacturing has been a pervasive topic of Derek’s research, where he has directed and analysed X-ray CT, EBSD, confocal laser microscopy, and fatigue testing efforts.