Patrick Brewick
& The Brewick Group

The Brewick Group’s research is located at the intersection of mechanics, modeling, and data:

a nexus to address problems concerned with transforming vast quantities of

    1.  Sensing data collected by traditional monitoring systems and smart structures into
    2.  Useful models that accurately reflect the behavior and characteristics of
    3.  Physical systems, incorporating material uncertainties, behavioral nonlinearities, and noisy or         incomplete measurements.

Tackling some of the most challenging problems in infrastructure:

• Uncovering the governing physics of friction-based seismic protective systems and base-isolation devices;
• Exploring techniques for improved estimation of energy dissipation phenomena that dampen potentially excessive responses for buildings, bridges, and aircraft;
• Rapidly identifying transitions of a structural response to a nonlinear regime as a possible indicator of damage; and identifying structures from signals and leveraging diverse data types and model fidelities to create more confident predictions.

These challenges require a fusion of data analytics, structural dynamics and mechanics, and computational or numerical models.

The team develops and implements

a variety of system identification tools, machine learning algorithms, and Bayesian techniques for uncertainty quantification.

These methods have been applied to diverse challenges that include:

• long-span bridges
• seismic protective systems and base isolation devices
• Naval hovercraft and other marine structures
• corrosion cells in stainless steel alloys

Prior to joining the Department

of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame, Prof. Brewick served as a research scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory where he worked in the Materials Science & Technology Division.  During his time at the Naval Research Laboratory, Dr. Brewick conducted research with a multifaceted focus on heterogeneous material and mechanical systems and computational modeling and simulation.  HIs projects at NRL included exploring the influence of microstructures from both traditionally and additively manufactured material systems on the pitting corrosion process in naval-relevant alloys and developing probabilistic methods for parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and reliability assessment to characterize the mechanical response of a variety of naval platforms with applications to both structural (marine craft) and biomechanical (brain tissue) systems.

Researchers’ expertise and impact:

Professor Brewick brings nearly two decades of scientific expertise and research leadership to his role as Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame. While previously serving the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, he conducted research on

     1.  heterogeneous material and mechanical systems and
     2.  computational modeling and simulation.

Projects explored the influence of microstructures from traditional and additive-manufactured material systems on the pitting corrosion process in naval-relevant alloys and probabilistic methods for parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and reliability assessment. This helped characterize the mechanical response of a variety of naval platforms with applications to both structural (marine craft) and biomechanical (brain tissue) systems.