On January 29, 2020, after two years in the graduate program, Juan Castiglione defended his M.Sc. thesis entitled “Calibration of nonlinear dynamic models using the unscented Kalman filter”. He graduated with maximum distinction (maximum grade 7.0).

Juan’s work focused on two different problems:

1) The first one dealt with updating nonlinear finite element (FE) models of civil structures subjected to unmeasured seismic excitation. He proposed and validated a novel approach to estimate the FE model parameters and also identify the unmeasured seismic excitation.

2) The second part of his thesis proposed parameter-only and joint state-paremeter estimation schemes for the calibration of thermal resistance-capacitance (RC) models. These methods allow to estimate temperatures and model parameters of RC models, making possible to characterize the thermal dynamics of buildings in an online fashion.

More information (in Spanish) can be found here.

Juan during his presentation.