Manufacturing and Maintenance Processes

This line of research aims to solve problems in areas such as Manufacturing Engineering and Maintenance Management. Models of optimization and support for decision-making are developed and applied, using intelligent techniques such as: Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Metaheuristics and Evolutionary Algorithms.

This line is integrated with undergraduate teaching through the development of various theses of Mechanical Engineering students, who develop their jobs in mining and manufacturing companies in the country.

Engineering Materials

This research line has two aspects: a first focused on powder metallurgy, specifically in the mechanical alloying process; and a second in collaboration with the corrosion laboratory of the PUCV, focused on metal corrosion.

The research carried out in this line allows to carry out projects with governmental financing and thesis of degree in manufacturing processes, through powder metallurgical processes, characterization and modeling of behavior of materials, and the development of equipment for the measurement of mechanical properties.

Mechanical behavior of solids

In 2012 Ignacio de Arteaga joins our School, and in 2013 Rodrigo Lagos Cereceda and Miguel Aizpún Navarro, both Doctors in Industrial Engineering from the School of Engineers of the University of Navarra (TECNUN), Spain, also join our school.

Since the completion of their doctoral theses, Professors Lagos and Aizpún, specialists in railway dynamics, and more specifically in the study of vehicle-deviation interaction, are closely linked to the Technological Research Center of San Sebastián (Spain), and to the Spanish company of CAF railways. Thanks to the close collaboration between the different entities, a new line of research linked to the railway sector is being generated.

For his part, the professor of Arteaga made his doctoral thesis on masonry road bridges. At present, together with the Department of Structures of the School of Architecture, the University of Navarra (Spain), and the University of Montevideo (Uruguay), he is dedicated to the automation of structural calculation in factory structures, and to the study of new materials for the field of construction.