Floriana Anselmucci Ph.D. is a postdoctoral researcher within the Soil Micro Mechanics team of the Engineering Technology faculty.
Dr. Anselmucci holds a Ph.D. in Civil engineering (Geotechnics and Geomechanics), a M.Sc. in Geomechanics and Geomaterials from University Grenoble Alpes (France) and a M.Sc. in Geotechnical engineering and a B.Sc. in Civil and Environmental engineering from University of Calabria (Italy). In addition, she is a licensed engineer in Italy, with expertise in civil engineering and working in urban regeneration design.
Floriana's early research work focused on the development of a methodology to estimate and quantify the hydro-mechanical effects of vegetation on soil micromechanics.
In 2017, she was research assistant at The James Hutton Institute (UK) developing a methodology to replicate at lab scale, in-situ condition for vegetated granular soils.
Between 2017 and 2020, Floriana was a doctoral candidate in the Geomechanics group at the Laboratoire 3SR (France). Her research aimed to study the physical processes of the root-soil interaction through x-ray microtomography and digital image correlation (DIC). To this end, she developed different image processing tools to translate information given by the tomography into 4D measurements to quantity the plant roots growth in time and their effects on the soil microstructure. Additionally, she design and ran experimental studies using x-ray tomography investigating; - robotic locomotion of an earthworm inspired probe in granular media; - the effect of shallow cavities in granular soil; - the pore space evolution of sand under shearing loads.
In 2018, she became visiting researcher in the geosystems group at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), where she numerically investigated the behavior of living roots in granular soils.
Organisations
Dr. Anselmucci current research focuses on the bio-hydro-mechanical properties of the vadose zone: addressing the investigation on the effects on soil matrix induced by climate change and developing experimental and numerical tools to:
- Find a statistical correlation between age of plant, leaf index, and fluorescence spectral measurements to quantify the in-vivo root biomass.
- Link the effects of plant properties (e.g. age, root biomass) to the water retention properties of the soil.
- Quantify the hydro-mechanical strength of a root-reinforced soil.
She is currently working in collaboration with the department of Biomechanical Engineering to develop a burrowing robot capable of measuring the in-situ mechanical properties of the surrounding soil.
Research profiles
Lecturer of the Image Analysis module within the course Advanced Programming in Engineering (APiE)
Lecture of the Soil Mechanics module within the course Safety and Risk in Deltas.
Affiliated study programs
Courses academic year 2024/2025
Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.
Courses academic year 2023/2024
- Hydro-mechanical properties of vegetated soil under seasonal ground-water fluctuation.
- Bio-inspired burrowing robot for soil penetration in limited-access sites.
News on utwente.nl
https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/2022/12/396441/two-grants-for-groundbreaking-ut-research-projects-through-open-competition-enw-xs#solar-powered-autonomous-microrobot-with-a-self-oscillating-%E2%80%9Cheart%E2%80%9D
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University of Twente
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University of Twente
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Organisations
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