Marialuigia Sangirardi

I have recently joined the Department of Engineering Science at University of Oxford. Before, I was a Research Associate at Università Roma Tre and, previously, at Sapienza Università di Roma, where I worked on several research topics under the over-arching scope of the structural preservation of cultural heritage.

I obtained a Laurea Specialistica in Structural Engineering from Politecnico di Bari in 2012 and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the same University and the Universidade do Minho (Portugal) in 2016.

 The focus of my research is the application of structural mechanics to civil engineering problems, with emphasis on, but not limited to, historic masonry structures. I have been involved in several national and international projects regarding, among others, experimental characterization of materials (MINT, EPSRC 2021-2024), real scale shaking-table testing and numerical modelling of rubblestone masonry structures and low impact seismic retrofitting design (SiSMI and SICURA, Regione Lazio 2018-2021), soil-structure interaction and tunnelling induced damage on masonry buildings (STAND, Regione Lazio 2020-2022), risk assessment and damage related to low-magnitude earthquakes correlated to gas extraction (NAM, 2017-2018).

Part of my research is also dedicated to more theoretical topics in fundamental structural mechanics, such as the formulation and implementation of constitutive models for masonry under both static and dynamic actions.

I am currently working in the research group coordinated by Prof. Sinan Acikgoz on innovative experimental strategies to characterize the in-situ mechanical properties of brick masonry. We aim at maximizing the wealth of information that can be retrieved from optimized experimental tests which combine traditional or slightly fitted setups with non-contact full field measurements and exploit energy principles to get unknown constitutive parameters governing the response of the material under known or measured external actions.

In Trinity College I am a Stipendiary Lecturer and I teach Structural Failure and Mechanics of Materials in tutorials and revision classes for the A3 (second year) undergraduate course in Engineering.

In the Department of Engineering Science, I am Tutor for the B9 Structures and Hydraulics (third year) course and Demonstrator for the Laboratory activities of the same course.

I am currently co-supervising a student in his fourth-year project focusing on soil structure interaction and tunnelling induced damage and a DPhil student working on experimental characterization of masonry in the framework of MINT project.

• modelling of masonry mechanical behaviour,
• computer vision-based structural monitoring,
• constitutive modelling formulation,
• numerical simulations of boundary value problems, with emphasis on historical constructions,
• retrofitting techniques for masonry structures,
• soil-structure interaction.

Amorosi, A., Rampello, S., Sangirardi, M., Mattucci, G., ‘Interaction Between Tunnel Excavations and Historical Structures in Rome: A Fully Coupled Structural and Geotechnical Approach’ (2023) Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, 288 LNCE, pp. 357-364.

Sangirardi, M., Altomare, V., De Santis, S., de Felice, G., ‘Detecting Damage Evolution of Masonry Structures through Computer-Vision-Based Monitoring Methods’ (2022) Buildings.

de Felice, G., Liberatore, D., De Santis, S., Gobbin, F., Roselli, I., Sangirardi, M., AlShawa, O., Sorrentino, L., ‘Seismic behaviour of rubble masonry: Shake table test and numerical modelling’ (2022) Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 51 (5), pp. 1245-1266.

Amorosi, A., Sangirardi, M., ‘Coupled three-dimensional analysis of the progressive tunnelling-induced damage to masonry buildings: is it always worth it?’ (2021) Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 118, art. no. 104173.

De Santis, S., AlShawa, O., de Felice, G., Gobbin, F., Roselli, I., Sangirardi, M., Sorrentino, L., Liberatore, D., ‘Low-impact techniques for seismic strengthening fair faced masonry walls’ (2021) Construction and Building Materials, 307, art. no. 124962.

Sangirardi, M., Amorosi, A., de Felice, G., ‘A coupled structural and geotechnical assessment of the effects of a landslide on an ancient monastery in Central Italy’ (2020) Engineering Structures, 225, art. no. 111249.

Pepe, M., Sangirardi, M., Reccia, E., Pingaro, M., Trovalusci, P., de Felice, G., ‘Discrete and Continuous Approaches for the Failure Analysis of Masonry Structures Subjected to Settlements’ (2020) Frontiers in Built Environment, 6, art. no. 43.

Nievas, C.I., Bommer, J.J., Crowley, H., van Elk, J., Ntinalexis, M., Sangirardi, M. ‘A database of damaging small-to-medium magnitude earthquakes’ (2020) Journal of Seismology, 24 (2), pp. 263-292.

Sangirardi, M., Liberatore, D., Addessi, D., ‘Equivalent Frame Modelling of Masonry Walls Based on Plasticity and Damage’ (2019) International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 13 (7), pp. 1098-1109.

Liberatore, D., Addessi, D., Sangirardi, M., ‘An enriched Bouc-Wen model with damage’ (2019) European Journal of  Mechanics, A/Solids, 77, art. no. 103771.