Mr Jeferson Araujo de Oliveira

Principal development engineer for StressMap

StressMap is a business unit at the Open University, providing residual stress measurement and material characterisation services to industry and academia.
As the principal development engineer, I am responsible for developing new methods improving the accuracy, precision and productivity of residual stress measurements and material characterisation services that we provide, reporting the results back to the clients in a clear and concise manner.

Before that, I worked as a researcher at the OU under the supervision of Dr Foroogh Hosseinzadeh, proposing and testing novel hypotheses on how to measure multiple residual stress components using the contour method. I was already actively contributing to StressMap at the time. One of these hypothesis has already been applied in practice, but due to confidentiality agreements, the work could not be published.

During my PhD here at the Open University, I've developed a new method to measure residual stresses that simultaneously provided the first contour method measurement of three residual stress components and possibly the first experimental proof of Bueckner's superposition principle in 3-D. In addition, I studied the mechanical, fatigue and fracture properties of a newly developed aerospace-grade composite material made of an aluminium alloy reinforced with sub-micrometre silicon carbide particles.

Also during my PhD at the OU, I volunteered as an OUSA student representative, a post that I proudly held for 2 years. I had the opportunity to influence the decisions of the university in the scope of academic governance, which was a great experience. I represented the eyes, ears and voice of the students as a member of the three highest research-related committees in the university in this scope (i.e. Senate, Research Committee and Research Degrees Committee), helping the University deliver a better learning experience to undergraduate as well as graduate students.