Dr. Chandrasekhar Annavarapu
BSB 115, Building Sciences Block
Department of Civil Engineering
IIT Madras, Chennai, TN, 600036, India
Department of Civil Engineering
IIT Madras, Chennai, TN, 600036, India
Email ID :annavarapuc@iitm.ac.in
+91 44 2257 4325
Alternative Email ID :annavarapuc@civil.iitm.ac.in
Dr. Chandrasekhar Annavarapu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras.
Dr. Annavarapu earned his B.Tech. In Civil Engineering from IIT Madras in 2007. Subsequently, he pursued his graduate education at Duke University in Durham, NC, USA, and earned a doctoral degree in 2013. On graduation, he worked as a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) – a Department of Energy research facility in Livermore, CA, USA, until May 2018. Later, he worked at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in Houston, TX, USA as a computational scientist until October 2019, before joining IIT Madras as a faculty member.
Dr. Annavarapu’s research expertise is in computational mechanics – a subfield of engineering mechanics focused on developing computational methodologies and tools used by practicing engineers to analyze complex physical systems. His research focuses on addressing the limitations of finite element methods for complex and evolving interface problems in mechanics. For his doctoral research, he worked on advancing a special class of finite element methods known as the extended finite element methods -- these methods alleviate meshing constraints by allowing interfaces such as crack surfaces and material boundaries to be embedded in a background finite element mesh. His dissertation focused on developing stable techniques to enforce kinematic constraints on embedded interfaces and adaptation of these methods to explicit dynamics. At LLNL, and ExxonMobil his research focused on advancing numerical algorithms to model the process of hydraulic fracturing as a multi-physics process.
Dr. Annavarapu’s research is published in highly reputed archival computational journals such as the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. His research is also patented by the United States patent office. For his research, Dr. Annavarapu was awarded the prestigious Senol Utku award and the Mahato fellowship from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
Earned Degrees
Ph. D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2013
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States
B. Tech. in Civil Engineering, 2007
IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600036, India
Awards and Honours
Senol Utku Award, (highest distinction),Duke University, 2013
USACM Travel Award, United States Association for Computational Mechanics, 2013
USACM Travel Award, United States Association for Computational Mechanics, 2012
CIMNE Travel Award, International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, 2012
Research Areas
| Computational Mechanics |
| Scientific Computing |
| Geomechanics |
| Fracture Mechanics |
| Finite Element Method |
Professional Experiences
| 2019 – Present | : | Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600036, India |
| 2018 – 2019 | : | Computational Scientist, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, Houston, TX, USA |
| 2013 – 2018 | : | Research Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA |