As it happened, I've been in the office in Tokyo when the big earthquake happened on Friday, March 11. From the intercom of the institute where I worked, we've got a warning like 10 seconds before, that it was coming. Now, that's really impressive. My colleague made a joke, he jumped under the table and we laughed.

From May 5, 2008 I am a part of the MYMOSA (MotorcYcle and MOtorcyclist SAfety) project. As its official web page says: ‘MYMOSA is a Research Training Network composed of a well-balanced group of 5 universities, 3 research centres and 6 companies.’

It is three months now after I have submitted my thesis and it's going to take much more to actually defend the thesis. I think the process lasts too long, since meantime I am without income, but at least I have time for doing things like creating the movie with the presentation of my PhD work.

Paper which has been presented at the Leuven Symposium on Applied Mechanics in Engineering, The Trefftz workshop, Leuven, Belgium, March 31 - April 2, 2008.

My PhD Thesis is complete. This article provides the abstract and the link to download the PDF file of the Thesis. It is the so called provisory version (documento provisório), since the jury might have some suggestions for improvements before the actual defence.

Set of films (done by OpenGL) with the evolutions of stress, pressure and displacement fields in time. Several different tests are presented, namely confined compression test and unconfined compression tests in axisymmetry.

Set of films (done by OpenGL) with the evolutions of stress, pressure and displacement fields in time. Several different tests are presented, confined compression test, unconfined compression tests and indentation tests.