Dr Stavros Syngellakis was born in Ayios Nikolaos, Greece, in 1946. He holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and a PhD from Princeton University, USA. After three years of postdoctoral research at University College London, UK, he joined University of Southampton in 1979, originally as a lecturer in Civil Engineering. He is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Engineering Sciences and a member of the Computational Engineering and Design research group within the School.
Dr Syngellakis has over thirty five years of teaching and research experience in solid and structural mechanics. He has published over 90 papers on advanced applications of analytical techniques to a wide range of structural engineering and material technology problems. He has supervised 20 PhD and 1 MPhil programmes to completion. He has participated in various industry-sponsored projects including a Fellowship of Engineering secondment and a Teaching Company Scheme.
Personal research has led to a new, validated and widely used theory for piezoelectric plate vibrations; the discovery of a new buckling mode for stiffened cylindrical shells and insight into their respective post-buckling behaviour; new, efficient formulations, based on the transfer matrix method (TMM), for analysing material non-linearity, stability and dynamics of high-rise structures incorporating shear walls; greater understanding of the intensity and criticality of thermal stresses arising during solid plug-forming by freezing in fluid-transporting pipes; new algorithms and codes, based on the boundary element method (BEM), for analysing linear and non-linear buckling of isotropic and anisotropic plates; a new BEM formulation for the coupled flexure-extension analysis of laminated plates; reliable assessment of the stiffness characteristics of ankle foot orthoses based on experimentally validated finite element (FE) modelling using a general purpose code; improved elasto-plastic characterisation methodology for steels and coatings based on indentation experiments; a new approach, based on metamodelling, to the mechanical characterisation of composites from dynamic test data; new BEM formulations for analysing the non-linear and fracture behaviour of polymers; in-depth investigation of fatigue crack growth in layered systems such as those encountered in plain bearings with outcomes of direct relevance to design practices; FE modelling and characterisation of indentation fracture.
He had a critical complementary role in investigating numerical solution issues and strategies for problems governed by the Laplace equation (ill-posed problems, conformal mapping); response of offshore and buried structures to impulsive loads; the ‘convolver’ effect in non-linear piezoelectric surface wave propagation; piezo-optical coupling in optical fibre pressure sensors; predictive models for the stiffness and strength of metal matrix composites; the stiffness and strength of welded joints.
His current externally funded research is on the damage tolerance of composites under high-rate loads. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements. He has been a member of the scientific advisory committee of and made invited contributions to many Boundary Elements conferences.
