Wilhelm Flügge (engineer)

Gottfried Wilhelm Flügge (born March 18, 1904 in Greiz ; † March 19, 1990 in Los Altos ) was a German engineer and professor at Stanford University .

Life

Flügge was the son of a pastor and went to school in Dresden . After graduating from high school in 1921, he studied civil engineering at the TH Dresden with a diploma in 1925. He then worked as an assistant to Kurt Beyer (an expert in reinforced concrete construction), where he received his doctorate in 1927. He then worked in the construction industry at Dyckerhoff & Widmann in Wiesbaden and Leipzig from 1927 to 1930 , where he worked on what was then new, thin concrete shell constructions. In 1930 he went to the University of Göttingen , where he completed his habilitation in 1932 and became a private lecturer. After the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, his university career was practically ended when he was classified as politically unreliable . In 1938 he went to Berlin as a department head at the German Aviation Research Institute (DVL), where Irmgard Lotz headed the hydrodynamics department. At the DVL, he applied his knowledge of shell theory to aircraft designs. In early 1944 he went to Saulgau with Irmgard Lotz, whom he had married in 1938, and the rest of the DVL department . After the war, they first worked in Paris from 1947 for the French ONERA (Office National d'Etude des Recherches Aéronautique). At the invitation of Stephen Timoshenko , both went to Stanford University in 1949, where Flügge became a professor and stayed until his retirement. He worked closely with his wife on this. Irmtraud Lotz was a recognized expert in hydrodynamics, but was initially only able to be a lecturer at Stanford for reasons of university policy (married couples could not have both professorships) - she only became a professor in 1961.

In 1933 he was one of the founders of the Zentralblatt für Mechanik. His statics and dynamics of the bowls were a standard work in their time.

In 1970 he received the Von Karman Medal and he was awarded the Worcester Reed Warner Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers .

His marriage to Irmgard Lotz, whom he met in Göttingen in the 1930s, remained childless. He was the brother of Siegfried Flügge .

Fonts

• Statics and dynamics of the shells , Springer Verlag 1934, 2nd edition 1957, 3rd edition 1962, reprint 1981,
  • English edition: Stresses in Shells , Springer Verlag 1960, 1973
• Viscoelasticity , Blaisdell 1967, 2nd edition, Springer Verlag 1975
• as editor and co-author: Handbook of engineering mechanics , McGraw Hill 1962
• Strength theory , Springer Verlag 1967
• Tensor analysis and continuum mechanics , Springer Verlag 1972

literature

• Karl-Eugen Kurrer The history of the theory of structures. Searching for Equilibrium , Ernst and Son 2018, p. 746 and p. 996 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9
• Klaus Stiglat : Civil engineers and their work , Ernst & Sohn 2003

Web links

• Memorial resolution for Wilhelm Flügge, Historical Society, Stanford University, pdf