The Institute of Metals and Technology
Slovenia
Tijan Mede holds an undergraduate degree in non-linear mechanics from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In his postgraduate studies he pursued his interest in granular mechanics. He obtained his masters degree in Geomechanics, Civil Engineering & Risks program at the University of Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France and continued his post-graduate studies with a PhD in the field of computational geomechanics at Irstea institute in Grenoble, France. His doctoral work was focused on studying the relation between the microstructure and macroscopic mechanical response of weak snow layers in the context of snow avalanche release. Computational granular mechanics were utilized to simulate the response of different snow samples by accounting for actual snow microstructure obtained by X-ray tomography. His post-doctoral work revolves around applying the lesions learned in geomechanics to additive manufacturing. The granular character of the material powders used in additive manufacturing has a large influence on a variety of physical processes such as powder stream dynamics and heat transfer and requires a specialized approach often lacking in this field, but well established in geomechanics.