Maciej Bieniek

Maciej P. Bieniek (born January 5, 1927 in Vilnius , † January 23, 2006 in Atlanta ) was a Polish civil engineer.

Bieniek grew up in Jarosław , lost his father in 1941, who was an officer in the Polish army, and could not officially attend a higher school under German occupation, but received instruction at an underground university for civil engineering. After the war he studied at the Polytechnic in Cracow and the Technical University of Danzig with a diploma in 1948. He was Witold Nowacki's assistant at the chair for structural engineering and received his doctorate in 1951 ( Dynamics of Elastic-Plastic Bodies , Polish). In 1955 he became a professor in Gdansk as the youngest Polish university professor at the time. At that time, he was researching creeping in prestressed concrete bridges, viscoelasticity, and spatial structural analysis of bridges. In 1956 he set up the Institute for Applied Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Harbin , commissioned by the Polish Academy of Sciences and after his return he was department head at the Institute for Basic Problems of Technology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

In 1958 he went to the United States at the invitation of Alfred Freudenthal and did research at Columbia University , where he became an associate professor in 1960. In 1963 he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and from 1969 until his retirement in 1993 he was a professor at Columbia University.

He dealt with structural dynamics and behavior of load-bearing structures in the elastic-plastic range (even with large deformations), fatigue and aging, for example of suspension cables for suspension bridges, and fracture mechanics. During his time in California he also dealt with theoretical questions of mechanical engineering, aerospace and space travel. In New York he advised Weidlinger Associates (development of computer codes for elastic-plastic behavior TRANAL and EPSA, the latter for submerged shell structures), for the American Bureau of Shipping (offshore structures) and ATT (vibration control in chip factories).

For his contributions to the renovation of bridges in New York, he received the Roebling Award of the Metropolitan Section of the ASCE in 1991. He was on the Williamsburg Bridge Advisory Committee in 1987/88. In 1994 he became an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers .

literature

• Karl-Eugen Kurrer : History of Structural Analysis. In Search of Balance , Ernst & Sohn 2016, p. 952 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03134-6

Fonts

• Introduction to the theory of elasticity and plasticity (Polish), Lodz 1955
• with RS Atkash, ML Baron: A finite difference variational method for bending of plates, International Journal of Computer and Structures, Volume 11, 1980, pp. 573-577.
• with RS Atkash, IS Sandler: Theory of viscoplastic shells for dynamic response, Journal of Applied Mechanics, Volume 50, 1983, pp. 131-136
• with Arzoumanidis: Finite element analysis of suspension bridges, Int. J. Computer and Structures, Vol. 21, 1985, pp. 1237-1253
• with TV Kutt: Elasto-plastic constitutive equations if stiffened plates, Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE), Volume 114, 1988, pp. 656-670.
• with TV Kutt: Cumulative damage and fatigue life prediction, AIAA Journal, Volume 26, 1988, pp. 213-219.
• An integral equation method for dynamic crack growth problems, International Journal of Fracture, Volume 46, 1990, pp. 207-221.
• Safety and aging of cables of suspension bridges. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Structural Failure, Product Reliability and Technical Insurance, Vienna 1992, Elsevier 1993
• with EG Barsoum: Constitutive relations and finite element analysis of nonlinear elastic continua, Proceedings of the AIAA 34th Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Conference, LaJolla, Canada, April 1993.

Web links

• Biography and photo