Dr. Sofia Teixeira de Freitas

Assistant Professor TU Delft

Sofia Teixeira de Freitas is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering in the Delft University of Technology.

She received her M.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal and her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. During her Ph.D., her research was focused on lightweight reinforcements for steel bridges using metal bonded structures and sandwich structures. After completing her Ph.D., she continued to develop lightweight joining solution using adhesive bonding technology, but now applied to the aircraft industry. She has been awarded with Young Talent innovation award by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research and a Delft Technology Fellowship which granted her a Tenure track position as Assistant Professor.

Her current research interest focus on the understanding of the failure mechanisms and degradation of adhesively bonded structures, using the principles of structural mechanics. In her research she applies the concept of design through understanding of the damage progress mechanisms, in short term and long term, to the benefit and optimization of adhesively bonded lightweight structures. She focuses on questions such as: How does a bonded structure fail under certain load/environmental conditions? Why does it fail in such conditions? How can we tailor the failure to the benefit of an enhanced performance?

Dr. Sofia Teixeira De Freitas