Progress in Structural Mechanics

The book is devoted to the retirement of Prof. Wilfried Becker—a liber amicorum for a well-known specialist in the field of structural mechanics. Many excellent scientists from institutions around the world wrote their scientific chapters, stressing the Becker’s influence to structural mechanics. Thus, this collection discusses a lot of important problems and applications of mechanics.

Holm Altenbach is a member of the International Research Center on Mathematics and Mechanics of Complex Systems (M&MoCS), Italy, and International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM). In 1996, he was appointed as a full professor (Engineering Mechanics) at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and since 2011, he has been a full professor at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. He graduated from Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1980 (diploma with a distinction), defended his Ph.D. and obtained his postgraduate degree (habilitation) from the same university in 1983 and 1987, respectively. His areas of scientific interest are theory of plates and shells with applications, continuum mechanics and material modeling, generalized media, sandwiches and laminates. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics/Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (the oldest journal in mechanics in Germany) and of Springer’s Advanced Structured Materials series. He is a member of the editorial board of several journals: among them Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Technische Mechanik, Mechanics of Composite Materials, and Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design. He was awarded the Polish Humboldt Prize in 2018. In November 2019, he was elected as a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in May 2021 as a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since October 1st, 2022, he is retired.

Jörg Hohe is head of the Composite Materials Group of Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of materials IWM at Freiburg, Germany. He graduated in from Darmstadt University of Technology with a Diploma degree in mechanics in 1992 and obtained a doctoral degree with a thesis in fracture mechanics in the same department in 1996. After a time in industry as an engineer in technical supervision and inspection, he joined Siegen University at Siegen, Germany as a postdoctoral fellow from 1998 to 2002, interrupted by a research stay as a visiting scholar at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VirginiaTech) at Blacksburg, VA, USA in 2001. He obtained a habilitation degree from Siegen University in 2003. In 2002 he joined Fraunhofer IWM as a staff scientist and was appointed head of IWM’s Composite Materials Group in 2012. Since his habilitation he also is external lecturer (Privatdozent) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Siegen University. His research activities include mechanical characterization and numerical modelling of composite materials of all types, especially multiscale simulation and homogenization, continuum mechanics and material modelling, probabilistic methods for uncertainty prediction as well as methods for characterization and prediction of aging and degradation effects.

Christian Mittelstedt studied civil engineering at the University of Wuppertal, where he graduated as Dipl.-Ing. in 1999. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Siegen in 2005 with a dissertation on stress concentration problems in composite laminates. From 2006 he worked in the German aerospace industry as a research engineer and from 2011 as a technical leader and expert in the field of structural analysis. He habilitated in 2012 with a thesis on the stability of thin-walled fibre composite components in lightweight construction and is the author and co-author of more than 200 scientific papers published in international journals, conference proceedings, but also officially recognised calculation manuals. Since August 2016, he has been head of the institute of Lightweight Engineering and Structural Mechanics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Darmstadt University of Technology.