Prof Stéphane BORDAS

Stéphane Bordas is full professor in Computational mechanics at the University of Luxembourg. He leads the Computational Mechanics (Legato) research group within the Department of Engineering.

His research area is known as Computational Mechanics. He focuses on free boundary problems, i.e. problems where part of or the whole boundary is unknown. For example, he has worked on problems involving topological changes or relatively complex geometries, such as crack propagation, delamination, biofilm growth, cutting in soft tissue. Within this field, he concentrates particularly on:

• Method development (enriched/extended finite elements, meshfree methods, smooth strain finite elements) to reduce the mesh generation burden when treating complex or evolving geometries/topologies
• A posteriori error estimation, aiming at controlling the approximation error during simulations and thus focusing the computational effort where it is really required
• Isogeometric analysis with boundary elements, aiming at simplifying the link between Computer Aided Design and Numerical Analysis (idea from the paper of TJR Hughes in 2005)
• Academic research/industrial applications: bridging the gap (porting novel methods to industrial codes, real-world applications of computational mechanics and novel method development)

Between 2003 and 2006, he was at the Laboratory of Structural and Continuum Mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, working under the support of Professor Thomas Zimmermann on meshfree point collocation methods and partition of unity enrichment (extended finite elements) with applications to geomechanics. In 2013, Stéphane Bordas joined the University of Luxembourg.

In 2003, he graduated in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University under the guidance of Professor Brian Moran. His thesis, funded by the Federal Aviation Administration, concentrated on applications of the extended finite element method (XFEM) to damage tolerance analysis of complex structures, casting design and biofilm growth processes. In addition to the unique support of Professor Moran, this work would never have been possible without Professor James Conley and Professor David Chopp as well as the instruction of Professor Ted Belytschko.

In 1999, through a joint graduate programme of the French Institute of Technology (Ecole Spéciale des Travaux Publics) and the American Northwestern University he completed a dual M.Sc. after a thesis work on Time Domain Reflectometry simulation to assess ground movements with Professor Charles H. Dowding.