EMI News
Joint ASCE-ASME-SES Conference
Biot Conference on Poromechanics
Workshop: Deformation and Failure of Geomaterials
Mechanics Research Group Profile: Prof. Hellmich - TU Vienna
Walter L. Huber Civil Eng Research Prize
EMI launches a Member Referral Program
Technical Region Director's Report
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Joint ASCE- ASME- SES Conference on Mechanics and Materials June 24-27, 2009, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA ASCE, ASME and SES will hold their Joint Conference on Mechanics and Materials on June 24-27, 2009 in Blacksburg, VA. The conference will be chaired by Dr. Ishwar K. Puri, Department Head, Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Tech. Over 500 presentations on the latest advances in mechanics will be given. Keynote lectures will be given during five plenary sessions by some of the foremost experts in mechanics. A large number of symposia will be held on the occasion of the joint conference, and a banquet will provide an opportunity for the presentation of honors and awards of the three societies. The conference web site provides details, key dates and registration information. Early registration deadline is May 15, 2009!
Fourth Biot Conference on Poromechanics to be held June 8-10, 2009 at Columbia University The Fourth Biot Conference on Poromechanics will be held at Columbia University on June 8-10, 2009. The Conference is to honor Prof. Maurice Anthony Biot, a world renowned engineer, physicist, and applied mathematician, who was a professor of mechanics at Columbia University from 1937-1945. The Conference will emphasize the theories and applications of poromechanics to new and emerging fields, including life science, earth science, and new materials, in addition to the traditional areas of poromechanics such as geotechnical engineering, petroleum engineering, acoustics, etc. The plenary lectures will be given by Zdenek Bazant of Northwestern University (Modeling of Creep and Hygrothermal Deformations of Concrete: Intriguing Consequences of Nano-Porosity) and James Rice of Harvard University (Some Fluid-Solid Interactions in Earthquake and Glacier Dynamics). In addition, several keynotes lectures by Zhigang Suo, Franz-Josef Ulm, Jerry Harris, Shaul Sorek, Fumio Tatsuoka, and Ronaldo Borja will be included. Over 230 abstracts have been received and the full papers are currently under review. Additional information on the Conference is available at http://www.civil.columbia.edu/biot
Workshop: Deformation and Failure of Geomaterials
DATE: June 14-19, 2009 LOCATION: Masseria Salamina, Brindisi (Italy) ORGANIZERS : Angelo Amorosi, Luigi La Ragione, Federica Cotecchia (Technical University of Bari, Italy), James Thomas Jenkins (Cornell University, USA) Funding is available for participation at the Workshop on Deformation and Failure of Geomaterials A Multidisciplinary Scientific Workshop June 14-19, 2009. Registration process by May 15, 2009 It is anticipated that some support for international travel and local expenses will be available for US citizens and permanent residents who are in the early stages of their careers - graduate students, post-doctoral associates, and assistant professors. Interested individuals should send a 2-page CV in NSF format and brief statements about how the workshop relates to their research Interests and activities and how it will benefit their professional development, by the registration deadline, to Professor Jim Jenkins at jtj2@cornell.edu.
The joint 9th World Congress on Computational Mechanics and the 4th Asian Pacific Congress on Computational Mechanics to be held - Location: Sydney, Australia Dates: 19-23 July 2010 URL: www.wccm2010.com The success of WCCM/APCOM 2010 will be strongly influenced by the program of minisymposia. Members of the ASCE are invited to contribute to the program by proposing a minisymposium and submitting an abstract. The deadline for receipt of minisymposia proposals is 30 June 2009.
Mechanics Research Group Profile: Professor Hellmich Engineering Mechanics Research Group at TU Vienna The Profile of Professor Christian Hellmich Engineering Mechanics Research Group at TU Vienna, presents the work of his group on multiscale continuum micromechanics: elasticity, strength, and creep of bone, wood, concrete, and bioreplacement materials; ultrasonic and poro-mechanical testing; and applications in image-based biomedical diagnosis, implant design, and in civil engineering structures (e.g. tunnels). It also lists current collaborations and recent publications.
The ASCE Board of Direction recently announced the Society Awards winners recognizing major contributions in the area of mechanics.
Maurice A. Biot Medal The Maurice A. Biot Medal was established to recognize the lifetime achievement of Dr. Maurice A. Biot and is awarded to an individual who has made outstanding research contributions to the mechanics of porous materials.
The recipient of the 2009 Maurice A. Biot Medal is Bernhard A. Schrefler, Ph.D., University of Padua, for his outstanding contributions in the constitutive modeling and numerical implementation of multi-phase, thermo-hydro-chemo-mechanical coupling in porous media, with applications to land subsidence, concrete subject to high temperature, and other geo-environmental problems.
Nathan M. Newmark Medal The Nathan M. Newmark Medal is bestowed upon a member of the Society who, through contributions in structural mechanics, has substantially strengthened the scientific base of structural engineering, these contributions having been made in the form of papers or other written presentations.
Chandrakant S. Desai, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, University of Arizona, is the recipient of the 2009 Nathan M. Newmark Medal for outstanding and seminal contributions for development and application of new constitutive models, laboratory test devices, and computational methods in geomechanics, structural mechanics, and in other areas in engineering.” Dr. Desai’s main area of interest has been geomechanics with emphasis on constitutive modeling for complex geomaterials (soils and rocks) and interfaces and joints, laboratory testing and computational mechanics. His contributions in constitutive modeling based on the fundamental mechanics principles have led to innovative and generalized models. Consequently, in addition to mechanics of geomaterials, such unified models have found applications for other materials such as asphalt concrete in pavement engineering, alloys (leaded and lead-free) and silicon with impurities in electronic packaging, and glacial till for motion of ice sheets and glaciers. Dr. Desai has worked actively and achieved a high level of success in the area of computational mechanics, with emphasis on the finite element and finite difference methods, and material modeling. He has developed a number of new procedures, which have found application in geomechanics, structural mechanics with static and dynamic soil-structure interaction, flow through deformable media, and pavement engineering within civil engineering.
Raymond D. Mindlin Medal The Raymond D. Mindlin Award recognizes outstanding research contributions to applied solid mechanics. ASCE membership is not a requirement. The Raymond D. Mindlin Medal is being awarded for the first time to Prof. Jan D. Achenbach, Ph.D, Northwestern University, for his novel ultrasonic techniques for quantitative non-destructive evaluation to measure elastic properties of thin films by acoustic microscopy, and to detect cracks and corrosion for safety of aging aircraft.
Robert H. Scanlan Medal The Robert H. Scanlan Medal is awarded to an individual in recognition of distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics based upon scholarly contributions to both theory and practice. The areas of achievement will generally be structural mechanics, wind engineering and aerodynamics. The 2009 Robert H. Scanlan Medal is presented to Prof. Ing. Giorgio Diana Ph.D. for his fundamental contributions to experimental analysis, modeling and simulation of dynamic load effects and their applications to structures under wind and other loads.
Theodore von Karman Medal The Theodore von Karman Medal is presented to an individual in recognition of distinguished achievements in engineering mechanics that are applicable to any branch of civil engineering. The winner of the 2009 Theodore von Karman Medal is Thomas J.R. Hughes, Ph.D., F.ASCE, University of Texas at Austin, for his outstanding contributions to computational solid mechanics, particularly in computational plasticity and finite element methods. Professor Hughes has been selected to receive the 2009 Theodore von Karman Medal in recognition of a number of outstanding contributions to theoretical and applied mechanics over his distinguished career as a university professor, author, and researcher. The many articles written by Professor Hughes have been cited extensively in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences, and he has had a profound impact on the way engineering is applied in a number of industries. His work on new theories and algorithms for computational fluid dynamics and turbulence is being used extensively in airframe design both in the U.S. and Europe. His work on modeling high-speed flows was a major contribution to the redesign of bullet trains in Japan. His books have had a significant impact on graduate education in engineering and span the gamut from monographs on inelastic materials to elasticity, structural dynamics, and finite elements. He has also been among the pioneers in the application of mechanics to cardiovascular surgery. His work on modeling human blood flow and in predicting the effects of various by-pass surgical procedures is transforming the way physicians approach heart surgery. Professor Hughes is given this high recognition for outstanding theoretical and applied contributions during a long and continuing scholarly career.
2009 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize awarded to Lori Graham-Brady The Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prizes are awarded to members of the Society, in any grade, for notable achievements in research related to Civil Engineering. Preference is given to younger members (generally under 40 years of age) of early accomplishment who can be expected to continue fruitful careers in research. Lori Graham-Brady, Ph.D., M.ASCE, John Hopkins University, is recognized for her advances in computational stochastic mechanics, in particular related to the development of models for random meso-scale constitutive properties, stochastic simulation of material microstructure, and buckling/post-buckling analysis of structures with random material properties. She has become on the top researches in the field of stochastic mechanics. She was one of the first to develop tools for micromechanics of materials with random microstructure. This focus on materials has been a new and very fruitful direction for probabilistic mechanics. She recognized that the accuracy of material properties. The rigorous research on this issue was initiated by her when she began to delve into micromechanics and realized that the microstructure can be modeled for better understanding of the nature of random variations that occur naturally in many material properties. Micromechanics of random media is a new and highly important area in the field of stochastic mechanics. She co-founded and now serves as Vice-Chair of a new committee on Uncertainty and Probabilistics in the Applied Mechanics division of ASME; she is active in the Probabilistic Methods committee of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute, and she participates in the activities of the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability.
The award is made by the ASCE Board Committee on Publications to a Journal editor whose contributions are considered outstanding. No more than one award will be made in a single year, and it is not required that an award be made every year. This years Richard R. Torrens Award is being presented to Prof. Firdaus E. Udwadia, Ph.D., Editor of the Journal of Aerospace Engineering, who is currently at the
University of Southern California,
Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.
NEW!EMI Launches a Member Referral Program Pursuing its membership development effort, EMI has launched a member referral program. The “Member Get a Member” initiative makes it easy for current EMI members to refer friends or colleagues for potential membership in EMI. The process is extremely simple. Once the name and e-mail address of someone who may be interested in joining EMI are entered on-line, an e-mail message is sent automatically to the prospective member inviting him/her to consider joining EMI and providing information on EMI and EMI membership. Each quarter, a drawing will be made among the members who referred colleagues who actually joined EMI. The winner will receive an Apple iPod. Refer your colleagues and help EMI become a strong and vibrant organization!
Technical Region Director's Report The Technical Region Director's meeting took place on April 22, 2009 in Reston, VA, and the report may be viewed here. The next meeting takes place October 1, 2009.
EMI Members wishing to publish announcements of interest in the EMI newsletter should send a draft of the proposed text to Professor Boris Jeremic, Editor of the EMI newsletter, at jeremic@ucdavis.edu.
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