Reception in honor of Prof. Daniel's retirement to follow.

Abstract: To facilitate and accelerate the process of introducing, evaluating and adopting new material systems, it is important to develop/establish comprehensive and effective procedures of characterization, modeling and failure prediction of composite structures based on the properties of the constituent materials, e. g., fibers, matrix, and the single ply or lamina. A new yield/failure theory is proposed for predicting lamina yielding and failure under multi-axial states of stress including strain rate effects. It is based on the equivalent stress concept derived from energy principles and is expressed in terms of a single criterion. It is presented in the form of master yield and failure envelopes incorporating strain rate effects. The theory can be further adapted and extended to the prediction of in situ first ply yielding and failure (FPY and FPF) and progressive damage of multi-directional laminates under static and dynamic loadings. The significance of this theory is that it allows for rapid screening of new composite materials without extensive testing and offers easily implemented design tools.

Biography: Professor Daniel started his college education at the National Technical University of Athens and completed it at the Illinois Institute of Technology from which he received his Ph. D. degree. He has served as Director of the Mechanics of Materials Laboratory at IIT, Walter P. Murphy Professor, Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics program (TAM) and Director of the Center for Intelligent Processing of Composites (IPC) at Northwestern University. He has received numerous recognitions, including honorary Ph. D. degree from Democritus University in Greece, Medal of Excellence from the American Society for Composites, and memberships in the European Academy of Sciences, European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Academy of Athens. He has lectured at home and abroad, has four patents and nearly 500 publications, including a widely used textbook on composites. He has been a faculty member at Northwestern, in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering since 1986.