ABSTRACT

    Recent interests in developing bio-inspired structures necessitate a better understanding of the onset and evolution of failure in hierarchical structures. With the use of different constitutive models, analytical and numerical studies are performed to explore the size effect on the structural failure response of bar members in parallel arrangement. It is found from the analytical and numerical results that the shorter the member, the more likely for stable softening to occur if there is only one member in the system, and that the larger the member number in the system, the more energy dissipation is associated with the post-limit regime.

CV

Dr. Zhen Chen is C.W. LaPierre Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri (MU).  His research area is in Computation Mechanics with a recent focus on multi-scale model-based simulation of the multi-physical phenomena involved in structural failure subjected to extreme loading conditions.

Before joining MU in 1995, Dr. Chen was a design engineer in Shanghai Medical Electronics Factory, a professional staff member in the Applied Mechanics Division at New Mexico Engineering Research Institute as well as in the Department for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project/Performance Analysis Code Development at Sandia National Laboratories.

Dr. Chen has more than 150 publications based on funded research projects.  His recent honors and awards include the Fellow of ASME, the Yangtze Lecture Professor appointed by the Ministry of Education in China, the Faculty Research Award in the College of Engineering at MU, the Outstanding Youth Award (Oversea) from the Natural Science Foundation of China, and the NSF-CAREER Award.  He received his Ph.D. degree in solid and computational mechanics from the University of New Mexico in 1989."