Technical University of Darmstadt (TUDa)
Germany
1 INSTALLATION
Since its foundation in 1877, TU Darmstadt has been characterized by a special pioneering spirit, and it is part of the university’s mission to continue this tradition of innovation.
Through outstanding achievements in research, teaching and transfer, we open up important scientific fields of the future as well as new opportunities for shaping society. This makes TU Darmstadt one of the leading technical universities in Germany with high international visibility and reputation.
TU Darmstadt enters into partnerships with universities, research institutes, and companies both in Germany and abroad in order to combine the outstanding expertise offered by all partners for the pursuit of a common goal. Our intensive transfer of knowledge is a decisive driver of industry and innovative strength in the Frankfurt-Rhine-Main metropolitan region.
Through strategic collaborations and close relationships with society, we promote this region as an internationally renowned research area. To support the aforementioned goals of the University, the Institute and Laboratory for Geotechnics engages itself in practice-oriented basic research as well as in R&D projects for the development of new technologies. The ultimate aim is to develop innovative, technical-scientific, and cost-optimized solutions to society’s most pressing engineering problems. The current focus of our research includes soil-structure interaction, geotechnical hazards, renewable energy, unsaturated soil mechanics, loess engineering behavior, and critical infrastructures. A comprehensive treatment of these topics is accomplished through combining theoretical, experimental, and numerical approaches.
Meet Our Team
Prof. Dr. Hauke Zachert
Head of the Institute of Geotechnics
Prof. Dr. Hauke Zachert is the head of the Institute of Geotechnics at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His specialization focuses on dynamic soil-structure interaction, particularly in relation to offshore wind foundation. He has strong background in performing scaled experiments and simulating them with numerical techniques. Apart from his academic position, he also has strong background in working in industry.
Dr.-Ing. Joaquín Liaudat
Senior Researcher
Joaquín leads the GEOLAB project from the TU Darmstadt side. He holds a doctorate in Geotechnical Engineering from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) and a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina). From 2020 to 2024, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft (Netherlands). In 2021, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission.
His research interests lie in the experimental study and computational modelling of complex coupled mechanistic processes in geomaterials (rocks, soils, cement-based materials). Particularly, he has worked on concrete durability problems, acid attack of oilwell cements, rate dependent fracturing of salt rocks, two-phase flow in porous media, gas migration in clays, and soil desiccation cracking.