Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and maintain mechanical systems. It is one of the oldest and broadest of the engineering branches.
Biomechanics is the study of the structure, function and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems, at any level from whole organisms to organs, cells and cell organelles, using the methods of mechanics. Biomechanics is a branch of biophysics.
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.
Romesh C. Batra is a University Distinguished Professor and Clifton C. Garvin Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia. He was born in Village Dherowal, Punjab, India. His family migrated from Dherowal to Shahabad Markanda, Haryana, India after India became an independent country. Dr. Batra has authored the book, Elements of Continuum Mechanics, AIAA Educational Series. His research group has published in reputable refereed and widely read journals more than 460 papers of which about 40 are single-authored and nearly 320 have two authors; these are documented on the website: http://www.beam.vt.edu/batra.
Energy principles in structural mechanics express the relationships between stresses, strains or deformations, displacements, material properties, and external effects in the form of energy or work done by internal and external forces. Since energy is a scalar quantity, these relationships provide convenient and alternative means for formulating the governing equations of deformable bodies in solid mechanics. They can also be used for obtaining approximate solutions of fairly complex systems, bypassing the difficult task of solving the set of governing partial differential equations.
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.
Olgierd Cecil Zienkiewicz was a British academic of Polish descent, mathematician, and civil engineer. He was born in Caterham, England. He was one of the early pioneers of the finite element method. Since his first paper in 1947 dealing with numerical approximation to the stress analysis of dams, he published nearly 600 papers and wrote or edited more than 25 books.
Johann Hadji Argyris FRS was a Greek pioneer of computer applications in science and engineering, among the creators of the finite element method (FEM), and lately Professor at the University of Stuttgart and Director of the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Dynamics in Aerospace Engineering.
J. Tinsley Oden is the Associate Vice President for Research, the Cockrell Family Regents' Chair in Engineering #2, the Peter O'Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Systems, a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, a Professor of Mathematics, and a Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. Oden has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.
Thomas Joseph Robert Hughes is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and currently holds the Computational and Applied Mathematics Chair (III) at the Oden Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. Hughes has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.
Satya Atluri is an American engineer, educator, researcher and scientist in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering and computational sciences, who is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Since 1966, he made fundamental contributions to the development of finite element methods, boundary element methods, Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) methods, Fragile Points Methods (FPM), Local Variational Iteration Methods, for general problems of engineering, solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, flexoelectricity, ferromagnetics, gradient and nonlocal theories, nonlinear dynamics, shell theories, micromechanics of materials, structural integrity and damage tolerance, Orbital mechanics, Astrodynamics, digital Twins of Aerospace Systems, etc.
Mohammad Reza Eslami is an Iranian scientist and professor of Mechanical Engineering at Tehran Polytechnic, Tehran, Iran.
Klaus-Jürgen Bathe is a civil engineer, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founder of ADINA R&D, who specializes in computational mechanics. Bathe is considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of finite element analysis and its applications.
João Arménio Correia Martins was born on November 11, 1951, at the southern town of Olhão in Portugal. He attended high school at the Liceu Nacional de Faro which he completed in 1969. Afterwards João Martins moved to Lisbon where he was graduate student of Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) until 1976. He was a research assistant and assistant instructor at IST until 1981. Subsequently, he entered the graduate school in the College of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics of The University of Texas at Austin, USA. There he obtained a MSc in 1983 with a thesis titled A Numerical Analysis of a Class of Problems in Elastodynamics with Friction Effects and a PhD in 1986 with a thesis titled Dynamic Frictional Contact Problems Involving Metallic Bodies, both supervised by Prof. John Tinsley Oden. He returned to Portugal in 1986 and became assistant professor at IST. In 1989 he became associate professor and in 1996 he earned the academic degree of “agregado” from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Later, in 2005, he became full professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of IST.
Wiesław Kazimierz Binienda is a Polish-American scientist, researcher, PhD, and professor and chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Akron.
Isaac Elishakoff is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Ocean and Mechanical Engineering Department in the Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. He is a figure in the area of mechanics. He has made several contributions in the areas of random vibrations, solid mechanics of composite material, semi-inverse problems of vibrations and stability, functionally graded material structures, and nanotechnology.
Yongjie Jessica Zhang is an American mechanical engineer. She is the George Tallman Ladd and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor of mechanical engineering and, by courtesy, of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Engineering with Computers.
Somnath Ghosh is the Michael G. Callas Chair Professor in the Department of Civil & Systems Engineering and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). He is the founding director of the JHU Center for Integrated Structure-Materials Modeling and Simulation (CISMMS) and was the director of an Air Force Center of Excellence in Integrated Materials Modeling (CEIMM). Prior to his appointment at JHU, Ghosh was the John B. Nordholt Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at Ohio State University. He is a fellow of several professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
N. K. Anand is a regents professor and the holder of James J. Cain '51 Professor III in the College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Texas A&M University. He served as the interim dean of the College of Engineering after his appointment on September 1, 2011. His term as interim Dean ended on January 10, 2012, upon the succession of M. Katherine Banks. He was the Executive Associate Dean for the College of Engineering at Texas A&M, from 2009 to 2022, and the Associate Director of Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, from 2007 to 2022. In February 2022, Professor Anand was appointed as the Vice President for Faculty Affairs at Texas A&M University.
Richard H. Gallagher was an American civil and aerospace engineer, researcher and president of Clarkson University from 1988 to 1995.
