MechSE Professor Martin Ostoja-Starzewski is the 2018 recipient of the Worcester Reed Warner Medal from ASME for his book, “Microstructural Randomness and Scaling in Mechanics of Materials.”
The Worcester Reed Warner Medal is awarded to an individual for outstanding contribution to the permanent literature of engineering. Contributions may be single papers, treatises or books, or a series of papers that promote progressive ideas relating to research in mechanical engineering.
The book, published in 2008 by Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, introduces a wide range of stochastic models and methods used in the mechanics (both statics and dynamics) of random media and illustrates these in a variety of applications. The first half of the publication is a textbook on stochastic solid mechanics, while the second half is a monograph on advanced topics in that area. More specifically, the first two chapters offer a refresher in probability theory (especially, random geometry) and random fields, followed by two chapters that outline periodic and disordered planar lattice (spring) networks. The subsequent two chapters discuss stress invariance in classical as well as micropolar planar elasticity and cover several topics not yet collected in book form, including the passage from a microstructure to an effective generalized continuum.
In the second half, the book focuses on problems of microstructural randomness and scaling by first developing scale-dependent hierarchies of bounds on responses at the representative volume element (RVE) level. Overall, it is the first book treating the issues of scaling to RVE as well as the size of RVE in elastic and inelastic materials, also introducing the statistical volume element (SVE). The latter concept is then used to systematically develop micromechanically based stochastic finite elements. The book also studies nonlinear elastic and inelastic random materials, the stochastic formulation of thermomechanics with internal variables (conductivity, thermoelasticity, permeability, damage mechanics), as well as wave and wavefront propagation in random media.
Ostoja-Starzewski’s research interests are in the mechanics and physics of random and fractal media, continuum physics theories, helices, electromagnetic shielding, nanoscale spontaneous violations of the second law of thermodynamics, and various applications beyond mechanical engineering: in aerospace, biomechanics, and geophysics. Since 2014, he has been site co-director of an NSF IUCRC, the Center for Novel High Voltage/Temperature Materials and Structures.
He will be formally honored at ASME’s International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) in November.