Hernán Chávez Thielemann is a doctoral candidate in the Polymer Technology unit in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His research interest is in thermo-mechanical simulations of polymeric materials, via coupling of different modelling scales. In the same line, the aim of his current project is to develop a computational micromechanical model capable to describe the real microstructure influence in the macroscopic response. Specifically, it will be used to characterize the structure-property relationship in isotactic semi-crystalline polypropylene (iPP). To achieve this, a key goal of this model is to properly characterize the plastic deformation, which has to consider different polymorphisms behaviour, each of which present a set of different crystallographic slip systems with a characteristic anisotropic elasto-viscoplastic response, as well as the isotropic elasto-viscoplastic behaviour of the amorphous constitutive phase. The final goal of the project, based on this model, is to develop a quantitative nontrivial structure–property relationship for flow-oriented iPP, in terms of the anisotropic yield kinetics and the underlying oriented macromolecular structure.

Hernán obtained his first Bachelor’s degree in Process Automation Engineering in 2007 at DuocUC (Santiago - Chile) and his second Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2015 at PUC (Santiago - Chile). At the end of the second Bachelor, he enrolled in a double degree program which leads him to PoliTo (Turin - Italy) and to the obtention of a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2017. After that, he spent some time working at the Multi-Scale Modeling Laboratory at PoliTo, which encourage him to go further. As a result, he enrolled as doctoral candidate at TU/e (Eindhoven-The Netherlands) in late 2018, under the supervision of Hans van Dommelen and Leon Govaert.

1. Polymer Technology, Mechanical Engineering, TU/e.
2. Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI).