Am 17.08.2026 hat Jishnu V. Gopi (Promovierender des Graduiertenkollegs GRK 2802 und Bearbeiter des Promotionsprojektes P6, Kohorte I) seine Doktorarbeit mit dem Titel "Mesostructure-Resolved Modeling and Evaluation of Thermal Shock in MgO-C Refractories Using a Virtual Laboratory Framework" erfolgreich verteidigt und seine Promotion mit magna cum laude abgeschlossen.
Herr Gopi hat sich mit der simulationsbasierten Untersuchung von Struktureigenschaftsbeziehungen feuerfester Werkstoffe auf Basis von MgO-C auseinandergesetzt, insbesondere des Zusammenhangs zwischen der Mesostruktur dieser Materialien und ihrer Thermoschockbeständigkeit. Ein zentraler Aspekt war dabei die Modellierung des Wärmeübergangs an den Grenzflächen zwischen Rezyklatkorn und Matrixmaterial sowie dessen Einfluss auf das Versagen dieser Grenzflächen.
Wir freuen uns sehr und gratulieren ganz herzlich!
Kurzfassung der Dissertation von M.Sc. Jishnu Vinayak Gopi
Thermal shock resistance is a key property controlling the performance and service life of refractory materials subjected to rapid temperature variations in high-temperature applications. In MgO-C refractories, this behavior is governed not only by bulk material properties but also by mesostructural characteristics such as aggregate size distribution, graphite morphology and orientation, and interfacial interactions between constituent phases. Since conventional experimental and analytical methods provide only limited access to these coupled mesostructural effects, this thesis develops a mesostructure-resolved computational framework for the thermo-mechanical evaluation of thermal shock resistance in MgO-C refractories. The framework combines synthetic mesostructure generation, phase-resolved thermoelastic material modeling, coupled thermo-mechanical cohesive interface debonding, and fracture-based thermal shock characterization within a virtual laboratory concept. A preprocessing tool is developed to generate idealized two-dimensional mesostructures, while a user-defined cohesive zone formulation implemented in Abaqus represents interfacial debonding and associated heat transfer. In addition, a modified Hasselman-type thermal shock resistance (TSR) parameter is proposed for direct numerical evaluation from finite element simulations. The results demonstrate that mesostructural parameters such as graphite volume fraction, aggregate particle size distribution, and graphite orientation systematically influence the evaluated thermal shock response, and that the proposed mesostructure-sensitive TSR parameter enables comparison across different configurations. The work establishes a computational basis for systematic mesostructure-informed investigation of thermal shock behavior in refractory materials.
