Field of activity

During his stay at KIT, Prof. Crempien will be working with the Institute of Mechanics to study the behavior of wine storage tanks. These types of tanks suffered heavy damage in Chile’s February 2010, 8.8 Richter magnitude earthquake. Also, he will interact with CEDIM (Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology) seeking for a way of reducing the losses that usually arise in these big catastrophes like earthquakes. Dr. Crempien is specialist in probabilistic methods applied to earthquake engineering, and part of his work will consist in implementing models of earthquake ground motion based on random process models.

Professor Crempien was born in Santiago, Chile, and he earned his Civil Engineer degree at the University of Chile, and a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1988. Since then he has been involved in research in earthquake engineering and structural dynamics. Up to September 2010 he was the dean of the college of engineering at the University of los Andes in Santiago, and consultant for the National Electric Company, the National Direction of Water Resources, and the Chilean Commission on Nuclear Energy in the areas of Earthquake Risk Estimation and Dynamic Behavior of Dams.

Lecture in summer semester 2011: On Random Vibrations for Earthquake Engineering (pdf)

Topic for diploma thesis: Earthquake Safety of Large Wine Tanks in Seismic Regions (Chile) (pdf)