Research

My research interests lie in the general area of computational mechanics and numerical modeling, with emphasis on computer modeling and simulation of materials and structures, pavement analysis, geomechanical process modeling, multi-scale computation, nanomechanics and nanomodification of construction materials.

With Prof. Steven L. Crouch at the University of Minnesota, I developed an efficient numerical method for modeling nonhomogeneous materials with inclusions and cavities. It has application in characterizing the mechanical response and predicting the microstructural damage of the materials. The complexity of the algorithm is O(N) (where N is the number of degrees of freedom), which makes it capable of solving large scale problems. This micromechanics approach has been extended to model fiber-reinforced composites with inhomogeneous interphases and functionally graded materials.

My recent research at the University of Florida centers around pavement materials and geomechanics modeling. Particularly, my work involves development of a hot mix asphalt (HMA) fracture mechanics based crack growth simulator to model pavement cracking using the viscoelastic displacement discontinuity method, as well as FEM modeling of rock softening and failure under dynamic loading using the damage mechanics model. I am also interested in some other interdisciplinary topics such as mathematical modeling and algorithm development related to lower dimensional representation of data and pattern recognition.

Selected Publications

"Micromechanical modeling of functionally graded materials (FGMs)," Submitted to Composites Science and Technology.

"An iterative boundary element method for modeling surface crack closure and sliding," Engineering Fracture Mechanics 2008, Vol. 75, No. 1, pp. 128-135 (with S.L. Crouch).

"Development of Windows-based top-down cracking design tool for Florida based on the energy ratio concept," Transportation Research Record 2007, No. 2037, pp. 86-96 (with B. Birgisson, R. Roque).

"The development of a new moisture conditioning procedure for hot mix asphalt," Submitted to Transportation Research Record 2007, No. 2001, pp. 46-55 (with B. Birgisson, R. Roque, G. Page).

"A time-domain boundary element method for modeling the quasi-static viscoelastic behavior of asphalt pavement," Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements 2007, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 226-240 (with B. Birgisson).

"A new algorithm for determination of crack growth path in HMA materials," International Journal of Road Materials and Pavement Design 2007, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 47-60 (with B. Birgisson, R. Roque).

"Numerical implementation of a strain energy-based fracture model for HMA materials," International Journal of Road Materials and Pavement Design 2007, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 7-45 (with B. Birgisson, R. Roque).

"Numerical evaluation of the effective elastic moduli of rocks," International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Science 2007, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 425-436 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"A viscoelastic displacement discontinuity method for analysis of pavements with cracks," International Journal of Road Materials and Pavement Design 2006, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 417-455 (with B. Birgisson, B. Sangpetngam).

"The effect of viscoelastic stress redistribution on the cracking performance of asphalt pavement," Journal of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists (AAPT) 2006, Vol. 75, pp. 637-676 (with B. Birgisson, R. Roque).

"Solving the small sample size problem in face recognition using generalized discriminant analysis," Pattern Recognition 2006, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 277-287 (with P. Howland and H. Park).

"Numerical modeling of the elastic behavior of fiber-reinforced composites with inhomogeneous interphases," Composites Science and Technology 2006, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 1-18 (with S.L. Crouch, S.G. Mogilevskaya).

"A fast and accurate algorithm for a Galerkin boundary integral method," Computational Mechanics 2005, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 96-109 (with S.L. Crouch and S.G. Mogilevskaya).

"An embedding method for modeling the micromechanical behavior and macroscopic properties of composite materials," International Journal of Solids and Structures 2005, Vol. 42, No. 16-17, pp. 4588-4612 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya, S.L. Crouch).

"Benchmark results for the problem of interaction between a crack and a circular inclusion," Journal of Applied Mechanics 2003, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 619-621 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"A numerical procedure for multiple circular inclusions and holes in a finite domain with a circular boundary," Computational Mechanics 2003, Vol. 32, No. 4-6, pp. 250-258 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"A complex boundary integral method for multiple circular holes in an elastic plane," Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements 2003, Vol. 27, No. 8, pp. 789-802 (with S.L. Crouch and S.G. Mogilevskaya).

"A Galerkin boundary integral method for multiple inclusions, holes, and cracks," Electronic Journal of Boundary Elements 2002, Vol. BETEQ 2001, No. 3, pp. 509-518 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"Numerical implementation of a Galerkin boundary integral method for elastic materials with circular inclusions and holes," Electronic Journal of Boundary Elements 2002, Vol. BETEQ 2001, No. 1, pp. 85-93 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"A Galerkin boundary integral method for nonhomogeneous materials with cracks," In: Rock Mechanics in the National Interest, Elsworth D, Tinucci J, Heasley K (eds.), 2001, pp. 1453-1460 (with S.G. Mogilevskaya and S.L. Crouch).

"Thermo-stress analysis for the strut system of deep foundation pit," Chinese Journal of Construction Technology, October 1998, pp. 255-261 (in Chinese) (with G. Zheng, X. Gu).

Selected Honors