Robert M. McMeeking, Professor

Professor Robert M. McMeeking

Department of Mechanical Engineering
and Department of Materials
Engr II Bldg., Room 2361D
Phone: (805) 893-8434
Fax: (805) 893-8651
E-mail: rmcm@engineering.ucsb.edu

Ph.D. Brown University, 1976

Solid Mechanics, Materials, and Structures: mechanics of materials, fracture, plasticity, composite materials, materials processing

Robert M. McMeeking earned a B.Sc. (with 1st class Honours) in mechanical engineering at the University of Glasgow, Scotland in 1972, finishing first in his class of mechanical engineers. He then completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in solid mechanics at Brown University under the supervision of Professor James R. Rice with dissertations on finite deformation plasticity methods for finite elements and ductile crack tip blunting in metals. He was at Stanford University for 2 years working on metal forming problems with Professor Erastus H. Lee. After seven years at the University of Illinois at Urbana?Champaign on the faculty of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Department, Dr. McMeeking came to UCSB in 1985 as Professor of Materials and of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering. He was Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering at UCSB in 1992-1995 and again during 1999-2003. He has published over 180 scientific papers on such subjects as plasticity, fracture mechanics, computational methods, glaciology, tough ceramics, composite materials, materials processing, powder consolidation and sintering, ferroelectrics, structural evolution, nanotribology, actuating structures and blast and fragment protection of structures. In 1983, Professor McMeeking was a Science and Engineering Research Council Senior Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. Later, in 1995-1996 he spent a year as a Visiting Professor at Cambridge University with the honor of a position as Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College. He was Southwest Mechanics Lecturer in 1988, a Plenary Lecturer at the Seventh International Congress on Fracture in 1989 and was honored as a Midwest Mechanics Lecturer in 1992-93. In 1998 he was elected to Fellow grade in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and in 2002 was recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a Highly Cited Researcher in the fields of Materials Science and Engineering. He was also promoted to Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics in 2002. Dr. McMeeking has served as a reviewer for funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the Army Research Office in the US and for the funding agencies of Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong and Sweden. He is active in consulting for medical devices manufacturers and other industrial entities on topics of mechanical stress, fatigue life, fracture and ferroelectric devices. He was Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics, 1987-93 and is currently Editor for the term 2002-2007. He is an editorial board member for several journals in the fields of solid mechanics and materials and has reviewed for all the major journals in solid mechanics, materials and computational mechanics.