Zdeněk P. Bažant Wins Professor Herbert A. Mang Award
The prize honors an individual who has advanced computational mechanics
Northwestern Engineering’s Zdeněk P. Bažant has won the Professor Herbert A. Mang Award, given by the Central European Association of Computational Mechanics (CEACM).
Bažant, McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, earned the honor that is bestowed annually to an individual who has demonstrated sustained efforts in advancing either theoretical or practical aspects of computational mechanics. Among engineers, Bažant is well-known for his definitive analyses of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, and of the excessive deflection and subsequent collapse of the Koror-Babeldaob Bridge of record span in Palau in 1996.
He has made a number of lasting contributions to solid mechanics, the most impactful being the Bažant size effect law, the crack band model and Lagrangian model, the microplane constitutive law, the gap test, the Age-Adjusted Effective Modulus method for aging creep effects in concrete structures, the shard test proving expansiveness of cement hydration on porous material scale despite contractiveness on nanoscale, the thermodynamics of adsorption role in creep, the statistical sorption isotherm for the filling of nanopores, the fishnet probability distribution transitioning from Gaussian to Weibull, the effect of crack-parallel stress on fracture of hard and soft materials, homogenization of woven and knitted composites, and more.
CEACM initiated the award to honor Mang, a groundbreaking professor at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna). A professor emeritus at TU Vienna since 2011, Mang’s research had a pioneering impact on computer-based analysis techniques with special emphasis on the finite element method.
Bažant was presented the honor at the 2026 CEACM Awards Ceremony, held last month in Budapest, Hungary.