Stepan Prokopovich Timoshenko, later known as Stephen Timoshenko, was a Russian and later an American engineer and academician.
Structural analysis is a branch of solid mechanics which uses simplified models for solids like bars, beams and shells for engineering decision making. Its main objective is to determine the effect of loads on physical structures and their components. In contrast to theory of elasticity, the models used in structural analysis are often differential equations in one spatial variable. Structures subject to this type of analysis include all that must withstand loads, such as buildings, bridges, aircraft and ships. Structural analysis uses ideas from applied mechanics, materials science and applied mathematics to compute a structure's deformations, internal forces, stresses, support reactions, velocity, accelerations, and stability. The results of the analysis are used to verify a structure's fitness for use, often precluding physical tests. Structural analysis is thus a key part of the engineering design of structures.
Solid mechanics is the branch of continuum mechanics that studies the behavior of solid materials, especially their motion and deformation under the action of forces, temperature changes, phase changes, and other external or internal agents.
In mathematics, in the area of numerical analysis, Galerkin methods are a family of methods for converting a continuous operator problem, such as a differential equation, commonly in a weak formulation, to a discrete problem by applying linear constraints determined by finite sets of basis functions. They are named after the Soviet mathematician Boris Galerkin.
Bernard Budiansky was an American scholar in the field of applied mechanics, and made seminal contributions to the mechanics of structures and mechanics of materials. He was a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal.
Warner Tjardus Koiter was an influential mechanical engineer and the Professor of Applied Mechanics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands from 1949 to 1979.
Applied mechanics is the branch of science concerned with the motion of any substance that can be experienced or perceived by humans without the help of instruments. In short, when mechanics concepts surpass being theoretical and are applied and executed, general mechanics becomes applied mechanics. It is this stark difference that makes applied mechanics an essential understanding for practical everyday life. It has numerous applications in a wide variety of fields and disciplines, including but not limited to structural engineering, astronomy, oceanography, meteorology, hydraulics, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, nanotechnology, structural design, earthquake engineering, fluid dynamics, planetary sciences, and other life sciences. Connecting research between numerous disciplines, applied mechanics plays an important role in both science and engineering.
A mechanician is an engineer or a scientist working in the field of mechanics, or in a related or sub-field: engineering or computational mechanics, applied mechanics, geomechanics, biomechanics, and mechanics of materials. Names other than mechanician have been used occasionally, such as mechaniker and mechanicist.
Paul Mansour Naghdi was a professor of mechanical engineering at University of California, Berkeley.
Probabilistic design is a discipline within engineering design. It deals primarily with the consideration and minimization of the effects of random variability upon the performance of an engineering system during the design phase. Typically, these effects studied and optimized are related to quality and reliability. It differs from the classical approach to design by assuming a small probability of failure instead of using the safety factor. Probabilistic design is used in a variety of different applications to assess the likelihood of failure. Disciplines which extensively use probabilistic design principles include product design, quality control, systems engineering, machine design, civil engineering and manufacturing.
Zdeněk Pavel Bažant is McCormick School Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Materials Science in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The Timoshenko–Ehrenfest beam theory was developed by Stephen Timoshenko and Paul Ehrenfest early in the 20th century. The model takes into account shear deformation and rotational bending effects, making it suitable for describing the behaviour of thick beams, sandwich composite beams, or beams subject to high-frequency excitation when the wavelength approaches the thickness of the beam. The resulting equation is of 4th order but, unlike Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, there is also a second-order partial derivative present. Physically, taking into account the added mechanisms of deformation effectively lowers the stiffness of the beam, while the result is a larger deflection under a static load and lower predicted eigenfrequencies for a given set of boundary conditions. The latter effect is more noticeable for higher frequencies as the wavelength becomes shorter, and thus the distance between opposing shear forces decreases.
Stephen Harry Crandall was a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. He earned his master's degree in engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey and his Ph.D. from MIT. He joined the MIT faculty in 1946 and taught dynamics and strength of materials until his retirement in 1991. He was a prolific author of texts in solid mechanics, numerical methods, and random vibration. His mentor at MIT was J. P. Den Hartog. He was awarded the Timoshenko Medal in 1990 "in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of applied mechanics." He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.
Junuthula N. Reddy is a Distinguished Professor, Regent's Professor, and inaugural holder of the Oscar S. Wyatt Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.[1] He is an authoritative figure in the broad area of mechanics and one of the researchers responsible for the development of the Finite Element Method (FEM). He has made significant seminal contributions in the areas of finite element method, plate theory, solid mechanics, variational methods, mechanics of composites, functionally graded materials, fracture mechanics, plasticity, biomechanics, classical and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, and applied functional analysis. Reddy has over 620 journal papers and 20 books and has given numerous national and international talks. He served as a member of the International Advisory Committee at ICTACEM, in 2001 and keynote addressing in 2014.[2][3]
Jan Drewes Achenbach was a professor emeritus at Northwestern University. Achenbach was born in the northern region of the Netherlands, in Leeuwarden. He studied aeronautics at Delft University of Technology, which he finished with a M.Sc. degree in 1959. Thereafter, he went to the United States, Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1962. After working for a year as a preceptor at Columbia University, he was then appointed as assistant professor at Northwestern University.
Gábor Stépán, Hungarian professor of applied mechanics, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP), fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), former dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Won the Széchenyi Prize in 2011, the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award in 2015, and the Delay Systems Lifetime Achievements Award in 2021. His research fields include nonlinear vibrations, delay-differential equations, and stability theory. He was elected as a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2017, "for contributions to the theory and analysis of delayed dynamical systems and their applications".
Marco Amabili is a chair professor in the School of Engineering at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China. He is also an Emeritus Distinguished James McGill professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
John Michael Tutill Thompson, born on 7 June 1937 in Cottingham, England, is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is married with two children.
Max Erich (Eric) Reissner was a German-American civil engineer and mathematician, and Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was recipient of the Theodore von Karman Medal in 1964, and the ASME Medal in 1988.
Variational Asymptotic Method (VAM) is a powerful mathematical approach to simplify the process of finding stationary points for a described functional by taking advantage of small parameters. VAM is the synergy of variational principles and asymptotic approaches. Variational principles are applied to the defined functional as well as the asymptotes are applied to the same functional instead of applying on differential equations which is more prone error. This methodology is applicable for a whole range of physics problems, where the problem has to be defined in a variational form and should be able to identify the small parameters within the problem definition. In other words, VAM can be applicable where the functional is so complex in determining the stationary points either by analytical or by computationally expensive numerical analysis with an advantage of small parameters. Thus, approximate stationary points in the functional can be utilized to obtain the original functional.
