Professor Martin Ostoja-StarzewskiCornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering hosted Illinois professor Martin Ostoja-Starzewski as guest lecturer on September 26.
Ostoja-Starzewski’s lecture, “Randomness and Fractals in Mechanics of Materials,” was part of Cornell’s Peter Gergely Lecture Series.
Written by By William Bowman
Professor Martin Ostoja-Starzewski
Cornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering hosted Illinois professor Martin Ostoja-Starzewski as guest lecturer on September 26.
Ostoja-Starzewski’s lecture, “Randomness and Fractals in Mechanics of Materials,” was part of Cornell’s Peter Gergely Lecture Series.
“Microstructural randomness is present in just about all solid materials,” reads the beginning of Ostoja-Starzewski’s abstract for the lecture. “When dominant (macroscopic) length scales are large relative to microscale ones, we can safely work within classical, deterministic solid mechanics. However, when the separation of scales does not hold (e.g. in FGM, geological, or biological materials) various concepts of continuum solid mechanics need to be reexamined and new methods developed. In this talk we focus on scaling from a Statistical Volume Element (SVE) to a Representative Volume Element (RVE).”
An expert in the mechanics of random media and thermomechanics, Ostoja-Starzewski has been a professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering since 2006.