Dr. Keerthana Kirupakaran

Dr. Keerthana Kirupakaran is an Assistant Professor in the Building Technology, Construction Materials, and Management (BTCM) Group, Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras. She completed her B. Tech in Civil Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli. Post her bachelor’s, she worked for two years as a design engineer at Larsen and Toubro Construction Limited where she was involved in the analysis and design of reinforced concrete structural elements of commercial buildings. Motivated to develop expertise and solve civil engineering problems related to materials and structural mechanics, she pursued her master’s and PhD in structural engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Her doctoral research was focused on understanding and modeling the fracture characteristics of concrete structures/materials under fatigue loading which are prominently observed in bridges, pavements, and offshore structures. Her expertise lies in conducting large-scale concrete testing, life-cycle modeling using damage and fracture mechanics framework, and characterization of fracture mechanisms using digital image correlation and acoustic emission techniques. The overarching theme of her research is to understand the behavior of the infrastructure materials through experimental mechanics and subsequently use this knowledge to develop models to predict the life and residual strength of the structure. At IIT Madras, she is developing further her research interests such as fatigue fracture of fiber-reinforced concrete, green concrete, corrosion fatigue, and acoustic emission-based data-driven models.