Chandra Desai Speaks at Kent Lecture
Following Desai's lecture, the audience enjoyed a reception where they had the opportunity to meet Desai and ask additional questions about his research. ICT Director Imad Al-Qadi says, "Professor Desai has authored several books that our graduate students are familiar with; his visit and lecture were a chance for them to meet and interact with him."
A graduate student who appreciated this opportunity, Hasan Ozer, says, "It was a great honor and privilege to listen to a lecture from one of the pioneers of the mechanics field. We have been inspired by reading his ideas and theories, which have had a great impact on the current state of knowledge in the field of material modeling and computational mechanics."
The need for a unified constitutive model for pavement materials, bound and unbound, has long been recognized. To this end, Desai presented a unified constitutive model based on the Disturbed State Concept (DSC). This model provides, in a hierarchical manner, a general mathematical framework for modeling various behavioral features such as elastic, plastic, and creep deformations, microcracking leading to fracture and softening (degradation) and healing under mechanical and environmental (e.g. thermal) loadings. Its mathematical framework can be specialized for modeling interfaces and joints. Because of their generality, the DSC models have been applied successfully to a wide range of materials: clay, sand, glacial till, concrete, asphalt concrete, ceramic, metal alloys and silicon. Desai spoke on the basic theory and the required laboratory testing for parameter determination with validations of the model (a) at the specimen level, for laboratory tests used for finding the parameters and independent test, and (b) at the practical boundary value problem level. He briefly described the implementation of the model in computer (finite element) procedures with comparisons of computer (2- and 3-D) predictions and laboratory and/or field measurements for a few problems involving soils, asphalt concrete and concrete, such as dynamic soil-structure interaction, and pavements .
Dr. Chandrakant S. Desai is a Regents' Professor at the The University of Arizona, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, in Tucson, Arizona. Professor Desai received a BE in civil engineering from the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute, University of Bombay in 1959, a MS in civil engineering from Rice University in 1966, and a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Texas in 1968. From 1968-1974, he worked at the Waterways Experiment Station, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1974, he joined the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI), where he was engaged in teaching and research in the areas of geotechnical and structural engineering. He later joined the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Arizona as a Professor and the Director of Engineering Mechanics, Geomechanics and Structural Mechanics Program, and later as the Director of the Center of Material Modeling and Computational Mechanics. He served as the Head of the Department from 1987-1991. In 1989, he was awarded the Regents' Professorship by The University of Arizona.
This lecture series is sponsored by the Paul Fraser Kent Memorial Fund, which was established in 1977 to provide support for the UIUC transportation engineering area. Paul Fraser Kent (BS '20) was President of General Paving in Champaign and was the founder and first president of the Civil Engineering Alumni Association.
Click here to view Desai's presentation.
Photos: (above) Chandra Desai gives lecture; (below top) Sam Carpenter and Erol Tutumluer talk to Desai after the lecture; (below middle) Hasan Ozer meets Desai; (bottom) A group of CEE faculty enjoy dinner with Desai.
