Carl Rappert Prize for Dr.-Ing. Claudia Fierenkothen
Photo: Johannes Stamm
Dr.-Ing. Claudia Fierenkothen, post-doc in the teaching and research field of geotechnics in the faculty of architecture and civil engineering at the University of Wuppertal, was awarded the Carl Rappert Foundation Prize, the highest award of the German Society for Geotechnics, as part of the digital lecture event at the 36th German Building Soil Conference e.V. (DGGT), honored.
The Carl Rappert Foundation Engineering Prize, donated by the Keller Grundbau company, has been awarded since 1986 for outstanding achievements by young scientists in the field of geotechnics in Germany. Miss Dr. Fierenkothen received first prize for her dissertation on "Numerical simulations and laboratory tests on the spread of fresh concrete in bored piles", which she did during her time as a research assistant at Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Pulsfort at the Bergische Universität and successfully completed it with the top mark "summa cum laude".
In her work, Dr. Fierenkothen using the method of numerical flow simulation to predict the propagation processes of fresh concrete in components of special civil engineering for the first time. Validated by physical model tests and large-scale test piles, she was able to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to understand the flow behavior of the fresh concrete during the concreting of suspension-supported bored piles and to understand a flow behavior of the fresh concrete that differed significantly from previous ideas - especially in the case of bored piles with reinforcement cages as a flow obstacle - to be proven.
In addition, with the numerical calculation method developed in the work, a tool is now available with which the concrete spreading behavior in reinforced and unreinforced bored piles can be predicted under a wide variety of boundary conditions and the mechanisms of the formation of defects in the concrete integrity of bored piles can be better understood. Concrete measures for the development of the appropriate concrete recipe can be derived from this with the aim of ensuring the production of defect-free bored piles.
