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.

Simulation of many practical problems requires to use non-linear formulations with large displacements, large strains and large rotations. The use of Trefftz functions leads to more efficient formulations than those obtained by classical methods.