Simon Mühlbauer joined the TUM Landslide Research Group as a PhD student working on alpine permafrost bedrock. He completed his BEng in Civil Engineering at the OTH Regensburg and his MSc in Civil Enginnering at the TUM.
As a PhD student, his research interest lies in expanding and refining existing rock-ice mechanical models to better understand their applicability. Specifically, he aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of how ice-filled cracks behave under high normal stresses. This involves a detailed investigation into existing theories surrounding the shift from brittle failure to primarily creeping deformations of ice, and the practical implications stemming from this transition. These implications extend to refining numerical models to predict the destabilization of bedrock permafrost and developing adaptive design methodologies for foundations and anchoring systems in alpine infrastructure.