A special symposium honoring Professor J. N. Reddy as recipient of the Society of Engineering Science (SES) prestigious Prager Medal for his lifelong contributions in the field of Engineering Science and Mechanics was held during the 53rd Annual Technical Meeting of the SES in College Park, Maryland, October 2nd, 2016. The symposium, organized by Dr. Samit Roy and Dr. Arun Srinivasa, attracted many of Professor Reddy's distinguished colleagues and former students. A total of 15 papers were presented in the special session spanning a diverse range of topics, such as, “Statistics informed boundary conditions for statistically equivalent representative volume elements of clustered composite microstructures” to “Modeling of toughness enhancement mechanisms in graphene nanocomposites” Consistent with Professor J.N. Reddy's seminal research in computational mechanics, the symposium consisted of invited presentations that pertained to areas of finite element method, plate theory, solid mechanics, variational methods, mechanics of composites, functionally graded materials, fracture mechanics, plasticity, biomechanics, classical and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, applied functional analysis, nonlocal behavior, and emerging topics in mechanics. This special issue honors Professor Reddy and contains original peer-reviewed articles presented at the symposium covering computational and experimental methods for engineering materials and structures.
Professor Reddy is a Distinguished Professor, Regents' Professor, and inaugural holder of the Oscar S. Wyatt Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2015. During the past 40 years, Professor Reddy has made pioneering contributions to the development of theories and computational models in mechanics of composite materials, energy principles, variational methods, plates and shells, as well as to the finite element method and its applications to problems in solid and structural mechanics, computational fluid dynamics, numerical heat transfer, and applied mathematics. The most significant contributions in composite materials are the development of refined third-order and layer-wise plate and shell theories that bear his name in the literature. The theories and finite element models have been implemented into commercial software packages, such as ABAQUS, NISA, and HyperForm.
Professor Reddy's excellence in engineering education is evident from his widely acclaimed textbooks on the Finite Element Method, Composite Structures, Energy Methods, and Continuum Mechanics. He has also been awarded numerous teaching awards at Texas A&M University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has authored over 430 journal papers and 17 text books, including, Mechanics of Laminated Composite Plates and Shells (2nd ed., CRC Press, 2004), and several of them with second and third editions.
Professor J. N. Reddy
Dr. Reddy received numerous awards, including the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award and the Worcester Reed Warner Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Nathan M. Newmark Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers, Award for Excellence in the Field of Composites and Distinguished Research Award from the American Society for Composites, the Computational Solid Mechanics award from the US Association for Computational Mechanics, and the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. Dr. Reddy received Honorary degrees from the Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Odlar Yurdu University (Azerbaijan). Recently, Professor Reddy was bestowed the ASME Honorary Membership for his “distinctive and pioneering contributions to research and education in applied and computational mechanics,” which bears testimony to his immense contributions to engineering education and research. Professor Reddy has also been recognized by ISIHighlyCited.com, a Thomson Reuters website highlighting researchers with over 10,000 citations and has an H-index of 50 as per Web of Science, 2011 (and H-index of 60 as per Google Scholar).
The guest editors wish Professor Reddy good health and the very best in his continued efforts in teaching, research, and mentorship. This special issue honors Professor Reddy for his seminal contributions to applied mechanics in general and composite materials in particular. The guest editors thank all the authors who have contributed to this special issue and the dedicated reviewers for their valuable time. Finally, the guest editors wish to thank the Award Symposia Track Chairs for the 53rd SES Annual Technical Meeting, Dr. Abhijit Dasgupta and Dr. Teng Li, for their kind support.