Dr Romain Clerc, currently Associate Professor at Nantes University and member of the GeM, received on September 23, 2022, at the Spanish Embassy in Paris, the 11th prize of the Sanef Abertis – Ecole des Ponts ParisTech Chair in the category “Management of transport infrastructures” for his thesis work on “the assessment of corrosion parameters spatial variability and its need for maintenance planning of maritime concrete structures“.
This prize is accompanied by a €7,000 grant.
Romain prepared his thesis at GeM under the supervision of Franck Schoefs and Charbel-Pierre El Soueidy and defended it on January 13, 2021.
He is interested in the problems raised by the implementation of the optimization of the value of information (VoI) in the perspective of structural health monitoring (SHM) of existing reinforced concrete marine structures.
This probabilistic method allows structure managers to define, within the framework of a maintenance plan, measurement strategies based on a return on investment criterion. It is however cumbersome and complex to implement at the structural scale as a large number of random parameters affects the failure probability.
In this context, Romain works to (i) reduce the dimensionality of the problem by characterizing the impact degradation parameters’ spatial variability on failure probability, and to (ii) limit errors via the rigorous geostatistical characterization of degradation parameters.
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Created in 2011, the Sanef Abertis France – École des Ponts ParisTech Chair aims to develop training and research activities in transport infrastructure management, carried out in a French university or engineering school.
In order to stimulate innovation and interest among researchers and students in transportation infrastructure management in France, the Abertis Chair awards two national prizes. The 11th edition of this competition rewarded thesis work defended in 2021. Consult the press release.