Mohammad Sami Al Khazali had lost interest in working with concrete since his bachelor's studies. He therefore turned his attention to steel and devoted his master's thesis at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Brno University of Technology to steel. He was interested in how different types of steel suffer from material fatigue and how much damage they can withstand. He continued this topic in his doctoral studies and received the prestigious BUTalent Scholarship for his research.

When asked why he is researching steel, the doctoral student from FCE BUT, originally from Jordan, replies with a laugh: "It's personal. I haven't liked concrete since my bachelor's degree. I don't mind working with it marginally, but I didn't want it to become the central theme of my studies and research." Instead of concrete, steel caught his attention. That is why he devoted his master's thesis to it and worked on developing fatigue models for this material. He found the topic so appealing that he carried it over into his doctoral studies. "I focus on steel fatigue. Simply put, how much damage it can withstand when we deliberately wear it down. Specifically, I am working on three types of high-strength steel - S460, S690, and S960," explains Al Khazali, adding that his interest in the topic was also fueled by the strong support of his supervisor, Stanislav Seitl.

During the first months of his doctoral studies, he traveled to Wrocław, Poland, through the Erasmus program, where he expanded the focus of his work to include the study of the propagation speed of fatigue cracks in materials. "We again looked at the three types of steel mentioned above, but this time we focused on the speed at which the steel cracks and how fast the crack spreads in the steel," says the doctoral student, adding that this material is relatively new to the construction industry and its behavior has not yet been thoroughly researched. "We want to know how it behaves over time. In the future, it could be used, for example, in bridges, which would be much more subtle than those made of commonly used S235 steel. But it is not yet entirely clear how the material would behave under the influence of various external factors.

Together with colleagues from Ostrava, they therefore deliberately corroded the steel and tested how it behaved after three days, six days, nine days, and a year of corrosion. "We are primarily interested in the natural influence, which is why we had samples on the roof of a building rather than in a laboratory," adds Al Khazali.

The final phase of his research will be to combine some of the separate experiments. In particular, the combination of welding and corrosion. "I am interested in material fatigue in welded joints. Therefore, I will weld the samples, then apply corrosion, and then test how they behave. This combination makes a lot of sense to me because in practice, different parts of steel are often welded together, so we need to know what can happen over time," says Mohammad Sami Al Khazali.

With his work nearing completion, he was also accepted into the prestigious BUTalent Scholarship program this year. "This is a BUT scholarship program for talented international students studying in English programs. It is intended for master's and doctoral students, and its goal is not only to support talented students, but also to increase interest in studying at BUT among excellent applicants, increase diversity, and contribute to scientific research. The program is announced twice a year, and a recommendation from the dean or vice-dean of the respective faculty is required," explains Tereza Formáčková from the Department of Internationalization BUT.

For Mohammad Sami Al Khazali, the scholarship is not only a reward for his work and confirmation that he is on the right track, but it will also allow him to devote even more time to science. "It will help me pay my tuition fees, so I can spend more time doing science and less time earning money," he adds. As he is likely to complete his studies next year, the doctoral student is thinking about what to do next. "My dream is to become a professor and teach at a university. But it's a bit complicated because I don't know Czech well enough yet to teach in Czech, for example. But I would like to remain part of the university in some way. At the same time, I would like to continue my work at the Institute of Physics of Materials of the Czech Academy of Sciences. I would like to follow in the footsteps of my supervisor, who works both at the university and at the Academy of Sciences," concludes Mohammad Sami Al Khazali.