“The road to success is always under construction”
Hello world...!! My name is Mario
Manosalvas Paredes and the easiest way to introduce myself is by
recognising that I feel passion for pavement engineering. I have to admit that
this is the first time that I am writing on a blog therefore be patient because
at the end of this journey, I assure you that both of us will have grown.
The best way to start
this blog, I think, is by writing a little bit of who am I, where I have been and,
what do I want to do in the future, so buckle up because this is my blog and it
has started.
I was born 29-years
ago in Quito – Ecuador, which for
those who do not know, it has been awarded as the top destination in South
America from 2013 to 2017 (World Travel Awards 2017). I did by bachelor’s in Civil Engineer at Escuela Politécnica
del Ejército (Army Polytechnic School) between 2007 and 2012. After those
years, I joined Promanvial Consulting where I started working on Non-Destructive
Testing (NDT) for road and airport pavements; I worked for nearly 3-years there
and the project that I will always remember is when I had to measure the
primary road network of Ecuador with approximately, 9200 kilometres in 45-days.
In 2015, I felt prepared for a new challenge and after being accepted at the Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid (Technical University of Madrid), I started of what has
become in the “beginning of a new life”. Many memories and professors come to
my mind but in order to keep it short I would describe it as the origin of
myself as a researcher, a side which until that time was not familiar to me. After
completing my studies in Spain, I brilliant opportunity came to me and once
again, I had to pack my bag and move norther, this time, I landed in Copenhagen
where I joined Dynatest Denmark to
work under the Consultancy Division. My first project was the Functional
Evaluation of an airport in Belgium which I remember as it were yesterday. During
2015 to 2017 I worked mostly on airports passing from Asia to South America and
had the opportunity to represent Dynatest around the world where I met
wonderful people. I have to say that I was searching for an opportunity to
complete my Doctoral studies and that opportunity came 8-months ago when I became
a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of
Nottingham where I work as a researcher for the Nottingham Transportation Research Centre under the Faculty of
Engineering. About the future, too many things could happen therefore I will be
open to the different opportunities whether continuing in academia or returning
to private sector.
Currently, as mentioned
before, I am a PhD student at the University of Nottingham and my project is
part of the SMARTI European Training Network under the Horizon 2020 EU project. The title of my project is ESR7 “Smart and
Sustainable Solutions for Road and Airport Pavements” and within this 3-years, our aim is to embed piezoelectric (PZT)
sensors in the surface of the pavement to predict damage at the earliest
possible time which follows the criteria of Structural Health Monitoring. This
project is a mixture of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Basically, our
project will use previous PZT developed by one of the partners and we will
compare the responses from accelerated test and laboratory test in order to
develop a relationship which can be used by road owners, private companies and,
everyone who wants to predict damage in an accurate way. The main aim of the
project is the development of a predictive damage model for pavement monitoring
based on wireless / batteryless Piezoelectric (PZT) sensors located at the
surface layer after maintenance work.
This is just an
introduction to the project. In the next post we will discuss about why
pavements deteriorate and how we can overcome those effects. Think about this
topic and feel free to share your ideas. Suggestion are more than welcome!
Stay tuned and see you soon!
Mario Manosalvas Paredes
For questions, observations or
suggestions feel free to contact me at:
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