Between September and November 2018 I completed a secondment at the Montantuniversität Leoben, in Austria. My main goal was to learn how to perform tensile creep tests at high temperatures in refractory materials. The results I’ve obtained will be very useful for my thesis, because I’ll be able to compare this characterization methodology with the one I’m developing (Integrated Digital Image Correlation technique coupled with Brazilian tests).

During my stay I had great help from the University’s staff to achieve my goals, especially from my secondment supervisor, Dr. Dietmar Gruber. Also, I had the opportunity to spend time with my colleagues Soheil Samadi (ESR 14) and Thanh Hung Nguyen (ESR 8), and their colleagues in Leoben, which was really good fun.

During my free time, I had the chance to visit some cities in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia. I also enjoyed hiking in the great mountains of Austria!