Successful Doctoral Exam Jennifer Hrabowski
On November 30, 2018, Jennifer Hrabowski successfully passed her doctoral exam.
Her PhD thesis on the topic "Fatigue behavior of welded joints made of high-strength steel in the low cycle fatigue regime" attracted many interested parties to the faculty boardroom in the historic main building of Civil Engineering at KIT in Karlsruhe. After a 30-minute presentation and subsequent one-hour survey by the doctoral committee, which included the both supervisors Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Ummenhofer, KIT and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alain Nussbaumer, EPFL Lausanne, the chairman of the committee, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Jörg Blaß announced the successful passing of the exam.
In her dissertation, Jennifer Hrabowski investigates the low-cycle fatigue behavior of modern high and ultra-high-strength fine-grain structural steels with nominal strengths up to 1100 N/mm² in the weld state. An important role is played by the demarcation of the elastic to predominantly plastic material behavior and the limits of the applicability of purely elastic design. The thesis results in design recommendations based on the nominal stresses, structural stresses and notch stresses. Thus, fatigue-loaded weld details made of high-strength steels in the low-cycle fatigue domain can be more accurately dimensioned, which allows economical use of these modern fine-grained structural steels.
