Dr. Andreas Schiffer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Khalifa University (KU) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He obtained his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the Graz University of Technology (Austria) in 2009 and his DPhil in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford (UK) in 2013. He also held a post-doctoral position in the Department of Aeronautics at the Imperial College London (UK), prior to joining KU in 2014.
Dr. Schiffer’s research interests cover multiple themes in the broad area of Mechanics of Materials and are currently focused on multifunctional composites and architected materials processed via additive manufacturing. In addition, he has a long-standing interest in studying the response of materials and structures subject to blast, shock and impact loading, and he also conducts research in the area of solitary wave-based non-destructive testing. Dr. Schiffer’s research has led to several publications in prestigious international journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. He has spent several research visits at the Imperial College in London and delivered invited presentations and seminars at highly-ranked universities, including the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London and RMIT Melbourne. Dr. Schiffer is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the European Mechanics Society (EUROMECH) and serves on the Editorial Boards of Frontiers in Materials and Frontiers in Aerospace Engineering.
“Bend-dominated mechanical metamaterials with high specific strength and stiffness enabled by additive manufacturing” (Sponsor: Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK), Principal/Co-Investigator: Dr. A. Schiffer / Dr. S. Kumar, 2020-2023)
Summary: Mechanical metamaterials are synthetic materials whose mechanical properties are governed primarily by the architecture of their intricate cellular or porous microstructure. This project aims at developing novel strategies for the design and fabrication of geometrically tailored mechanical metamaterials with enhanced specific strength, stiffness and energy absorption capacity.
“Evaluation of Using Accident Tolerant Fuel Concepts in APR1400” (Sponsor: Abu Dhabi Ministry of Education (MoE), Principal Investigator: Dr. S. Alameri, 2021-2023)
Summary: Following the disastrous events at Fukushima, Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATFs) became a focus within the nuclear fuel R&D community. ATFs would endure loss of active cooling in the reactor core for a considerably longer period of time, and therefore would be safer than the current fuel system while maintaining or improving performance during normal operations. Dr. Schiffer’s work on this project is focused on thermo-mechanical modelling of ATF systems, examining their deformation response and burst behaviour during loss-of-coolant accidents using finite element code.
