Computational Mechanics Medal Named after McCormick Professor

The US Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) has recognized Northwestern University engineering professor Ted Belytschko by renaming one of the association’s top medals in his honor.

The USACM’s Belytschko Computational Structural Mechanics Medal will recognize outstanding and sustained contributions to the field of computational structural mechanics, with a focus on important research results that advance theories and methods in the field.

Belytschko is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of mechanical engineering and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He was one of the founding directors of the USACM.

A member of Northwestern’s faculty since 1977, Belytschko’s interests lie in the development of computational methods for engineering problems. He has developed explicit finite element methods that are widely used in crashworthiness analysis and virtual prototyping. Recently, the methods he developed have been instrumental in enabling the auto industry to replace physical prototype testing with computer simulation in crashworthiness design. These methods also have replaced prototype testing in many other industries, thus shortening the design cycle.

One of the most cited researchers in engineering science, Belytschko is the recipient of numerous honors, including membership in the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the U. S. National Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and co-author of the books Nonlinear Finite Elements for Continua and Structures and A First Course in Finite Elements.

This is the second award named in Belytschko's honor. In 1997 the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers renamed the Applied Mechanics Award as the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award. A description of the award with a list of recipients can be found in Wikipedia, and include four former university presidents and a former secretary of the United States Air Force.

Sarah Ostman, content specialist at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, is the author of this story.