College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology & OSU Chapter, Sigma Xi
Southwest Mechanics Lecture Series

Three–Dimensional Effects on Fatigue Crack
Closure in the Small–Scale Yielding Regime

Prof. Robert H. Dodds Jr.
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801

Professor Dodds earned the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1978. Before returning to UIUC in 1987, he was on the faculty at the University of Kansas for nine years. He has been an active researcher in the field of nonlinear fracture mechanics and computational methods for the past 25 years. His current research enjoys support from external sponsors including the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and NASA (Ames, Langley, Marshall). Professor Dodds has published more than 80 journal papers in the areas of fracture mechanics, computational methods, and software engineering. In 1996, he became Co-Editor of Engineering Fracture Mechanics, a leading international journal on fracture mechanics for the past 30 years. He is an Associate Editor for two other international journals on these topics and actively participates in related technical societies including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Society for Testing and Materials (E–8). He recently served on a Technical Advisory Panel for the national research project on performance of steel buildings during strong earthquakes sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Professor Dodds has won several research awards, most notably the American Society of Civil Engineers Walter L. Huber Research Prize (1992), and the Nathan M. Newmark Medal (2001), the George R. Irwin Medal from ASTM (2000) and the 2001 Award of Merit with Fellow status from ASTM. In 1997, Professor Dodds was named the inaugural holder of the Nathan and Anne M. Newmark Professorship in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois. In 2000, he became the first holder of the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Chair in Civil Engineering.