Nadezhda Ostrovskaya: "Mechanics is boundless, multifaceted and beautiful"

Nadezhda Ostrovskaya – PhD of engineering sciences, associate professor at the department of construction mechanics of St Petersburg State University of Civil Engineering and a multiple winner of the St Petersburg Government Prize in the field of scientific and pedagogical activity. This year, she again received this award. Nadezhda received her basic higher education at another university, but continued her postgraduate studies and defended her thesis at SPbGASU. We spoke with her about the passion for science, the practical benefits of research on seismic resistance and seismic isolation, and why complex theoretical disciplines are of particular beauty.

– You studied at a different university in your undergraduate and graduate programs. Please tell us what brought you to SPbGASU? 

– My alma mater is Korabelka, now the St Petersburg Marine Technical University. There I graduated from the bachelor's, master's and postgraduate studies in the direction of "Mechanics of a deformable solid body", where I began teaching at the department of strength of materials. However, the dissertation council at the SMTU in this area was closed, and I decided to enroll in the SPbGASU postgraduate program in the specialty "Construction mechanics". After successfully defending my Ph.D., I was invited to the department of construction mechanics, which combined three areas of mechanics.

– This year, you and Professor at the Department of construction mechanics Yuri Lazarevich Rutman received an award from the Government of St Petersburg for the monograph “Dynamics of Structures: Seismic Resistance, Seismic Protection, Wind Loads”. Tell us about how you met him and how you started working together. 

–Yuri Lazarevich turned 90 this year – can you imagine that? but he is still full of ideas for new scientific achievements. The award we received is the proof.

We met 15 years ago thanks to my supervisor at the Marine University, Vitaly Radievich Skvortsov, when I started working under the guidance of Yuri Lazarevich in the calculation and analytical department of the Design Bureau of Special Machine Building (an enterprise of the rocket and space industry). Over the years, we have managed to create a scientific team that actively performs research, social and pedagogical work at the SPbGASU department of construction mechanics. Yuri Lazarevich is an amazing scientist, engineer, a man with a capital letter. I was incredibly lucky to get to know him and to work fruitfully together for so many years.

– Please tell us about the scientific research you are currently doing. Why is it relevant and how can the construction industry and ordinary people benefit from it? 

– The main scientific research conducted under the leadership of Yuri Lazarevich in recent years covered seismic resistance and seismic isolation, methods of elastic-plastic calculation of rod systems and computer simulation of aeroelastic oscillations under wind loads. Another modern direction is the calculations of structures for the impact of a tsunami.

In Russia, about 30 percent of the territories are seismically hazardous, so the first topic is very relevant for ensuring safety during construction in such areas. There were enthusiasts who worked on these issues – Yuri Davydovich Cherpinsky, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Kurzanov, but their work needs further development.

Plastic deformation of elements of building structures is common in practice, therefore, the analysis of the behavior of rod systems beyond the limits of elasticity also requires in-depth study due to the nonlinearity and complexity of such processes.

Natural phenomena: wind, earthquakes, tsunami as a sequence – all this affects and will affect various structures and building structures, so the problems of stability and dynamics of structures will never lose their significance.

– The department of construction mechanics where you work is not a graduating one, but the students of the Faculty of civil engineering remember the classes here for a long time and often say that the subjects taught by the teachers of the department are very complicated. Why do you think these disciplines should not be underestimated?

– Mechanics should never be underestimated: it is boundless, multifaceted and beautiful. The three horsemen of the apocalypse for any technical specialty – theoretical mechanics, strength of materials and construction mechanics – are incredibly difficult, but every future engineer must undergo them. And if he can fall in love with mechanics and feel the beauty and importance of this science, he will remain faithful to it forever, and it, in turn, will always help him become a highly qualified and highly paid specialist. Our department is still graduating graduate students who are in-demand specialists in the field of higher education and industry, in particular, students of Yuri Lazarevich Rutman. For example, Aldynay Aleksandrovna Chylbak is now acting head of the department of mining at Tuva State University, Vladimir Arkadyevich Meleshko and I are associate professors at the SPbGASU department of construction mechanics, most of the foreign graduate students also work in the field of education in their countries.

– What do you like and dislike about working with students and what has your teaching experience taught you? 

– Those who want to learn, to become experts in any field, will learn: the teacher only needs to be a guide, direct in the right way. And those who don’t want to, even stand on your head in front of them: there will be no point, everyone will take as much as they can. I try to rejoice in the first ones and smooth out sharp corners with the second ones. Finding an individual approach to everyone, which is quite difficult in a large stream of students, current affairs and concerns. Even if a person does not get a lot of new knowledge out of the subject, let him at least leave a good, kind impression of the lessons.

– There is a stereotype that scientific technical disciplines are not only difficult, but also boring. How should a teacher behave in order not to scare away, but to captivate students with them? And is it possible?

– What could be more interesting than science, technology, engineering? It's magic – to know how the world works, to at least slightly open the veil of secrecy: how does it happen, how does everything around work? I never cease to admire what is done by the mind and hands of a man. Mankind has conquered the earth, air, oceans, space, and what technical heights it has reached in construction – it's just breathtaking! Studying technical disciplines, we not only learn about it – we try to step even further, to imagine that in the future we ourselves will be able to change this world. It seems to me that one should love one's job, see the beauty, logic and significance even in the complex and boring and try to show it to the student. Every time, when I am in front of students for the first time, I say: “Look at me: since I succeeded in mastering the theoretical mechanics, strength of materials, construction mechanics, you will succeed too.”

– Please tell us about your research and scientific plans. 

– Now Yuri Lazarevich and I are working on the next monograph, in which we want to collect and summarize experience on the principles of creating and calculating plastic dampers – devices for damping vibrations. Any research activity, whether it is the release of an article, a monograph or work with graduate students, is a step towards a doctoral dissertation.

Text: Aleksandra Podolnikova
Photo: 1 – press-service of the Government of St Petersburg, 2–4 – presented by Nadezhda Ostrovskaya