CMI Engineer wins award for his doctoral thesis
March 18th 2014
In February, Thomas Gernay, a project engineer at CMI Energy, won an international award for his doctoral thesis. In this work, he developed a mathematical model to improve the fire resistance of concrete buildings. The prize was awarded by the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), the largest scientific organization in the area, during its triennial symposium at Christchurch (New Zealand).
The work is entitled A multiaxial constitutive model for concrete in the fire situation including transient creep and cooling down phases. Thomas Gernay defended the thesis at the University of Liège (ULg) in October, 2012 under the supervision of Professor Jean-Marc Franssen of the Architecture, Geology, Environment & Constructions (ArGEnCo) Department at ULg. After developing the model, Thomas Gernay implemented it in SAFIR software, to which he has contributed. SAFIR is now used worldwide by more than 140 specialists in fire safety.
Thomas Gernay joined some 600 engineers at CMI Group in April, 2013. Thanks to them, each day CMI expands the boundaries of technology to meet the increasing demands of its customers.
Featured here in video (in French), is a presentation by Thomas Gernay at the 2013 edition of the competition: “My Thesis in 180 seconds.”