Prof. Pedro Camanho

Pedro Camanho (MSc in Mechanical Engineering, UPorto, 1995) received his PhD in Composite Materials from the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London, UK, in 1999. In the same year he joined the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management (INEGI – www.inegi.up.pt) as Director of the Structural Integrity Unit and the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Porto as Assistant Professor. Since 2014 he has been Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Porto. Pedro Camanho is currently the President of the Associated Laboratory in Energy, Transportation and Aeronautics (LAETA), and the Vice-President of INEGI.

The main research interests of Pedro Camanho are the mechanics of deformation and fracture of advanced polymer composite materials, and new concepts for lightweight composite materials and structures for aerospace applications such as hybrid, nano-structured, multi-functional, variable-stiffness, energy-storage and ultra-thin composites.

Pedro Camanho is member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Solids and Structures (Elsevier), Composites Part A (Elsevier), European Journal of Computational Mechanics (Taylor & Francis), and Computers, Materials and Continua (Tech Science Press). He was invited to give several plenary lectures: 7th EUROMECH Solid Mechanics Conference (2009), International Conference of Composite Structures – ICCS (2009, 2011 and 2013), Composites Testing and Model Identification Conference – CompTest (2013), Conference on Numerical Methods in Engineering – CMN (2007 and 2013), Spanish Conference on Fracture Mechanics (2012), Spanish Conference on Composite Materials (2011), 5th ECCOMAS International Conference on Computational Modeling of Fracture and Failure of Materials and Structures (2017), 5th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on the Mechanical Response of Composites (2017). Pedro Camanho also presented a plenary lecture at the 2013 EADS Composite/Metallic Days Conference in France.

Pedro Camanho was the chairman of the 3rd Composites Testing and Model Identification Conference – CompTest (2006) and of the 1st ECCOMAS Conference on the Mechanical Response of Composites (2007).

Between 2000-2011 Pedro Camanho was a Visiting Scientist at NASA-Langley Research Center, and in 1999 was a Visiting Scientist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. He was a Royal Society Visiting Professor at Imperial College London (2005) and a Visiting Professor at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan – Université Paris-Saclay (2014).

Pedro Camanho coordinated several research projects funded by the European Space Agency, Airbus, NASA, Embraer, Daimler AG, Aernnova, European Union, FCT, and US Air Force. He presented invited seminars at several Universities, including Stanford University, MIT, Imperial College London, University of Bristol, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, TU Delft, TU Munich, University of Limerick, Oxford University, EPF Lausanne, Monash University, Université Catholique de Louvain, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, TU Eindhoven, ENS-LMT Cachan, Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi, Chalmers University, KU Leuven, and Cambridge University.

Pedro Camanho is the recipient of the 2006 NASA H.J.E. Reid Award for Outstanding Scientific Paper, of the 2005 Young Researcher in Applied and Computational Mechanics Award from the Portuguese Association of Theoretical, Applied and Computational Mechanics, the 2005-2009 Engineering Fracture Mechanics Most Cited Articles Award, and the 2016 Mechanics of Materials Highly Cited Research Award. He also received the 2020 Excellence in Research Award of the University of Porto.

Pedro Camanho has published over 140 papers in international peer reviewed journals that received over 12,500 independent citations (Scopus h-index of 55, independent citations). His work has been successfully transferred to the industry and services: finite elements implemented by ABAQUS (Dassault Systèmes), materials models implemented in LS-DYNA and MSC-NASTRAN (Digimat), failure criteria in HYPERSIZER, ESACOMP and ANSYS, and test methods that are used by both the automotive and aeronautical industries.

Pedro Camanho is member of the Advisory Board of the European Mechanics Society (EUROMECH), of the Council of the European Society for Composite Materials (ESCM), and of the Engineering Panel of the European Research Council (ERC). In 2020 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (https://www.aerosociety.com/).

Pedro Camanho was Director of the MIT-Portugal Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing (EDAM) focus area doctoral program in Leaders for Technological Industries. He is currently Director of the Space-Earth Interactions area of the UT Austin-Portugal Program.

Pedro Camanho is External Examiner of the MSc in Composite Materials course from the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London. He is the chairman of the Independent Advisory Board of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites of the University of Bristol. Pedro Camanho is member of the Programme Committee of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS).