Honoring Professor Erdogan’s Seminal Contributions to Mixed Boundary-Value Problems of Inhomogeneous and Functionally Graded Materials

Abstract

Professor Fazil Erdogan has influenced several generations of applied and solid mechanicians working in the area of mixed boundary-value problems of inhomogeneous media, most notably fracture and contact problems. The analytical approaches that he had developed with his students in the 1960s and 1970s for the formulation and reduction of fracture mechanics problems involving layered media to systems of singular integral equations, and the corresponding solution techniques, have motivated researchers working in this area throughout the entire world. His subsequent work on fracture mechanics problems of inhomogeneous media with smoothly varying elastic moduli has laid the foundation for applying these techniques to functionally graded materials, which played key roles in many technologically important applications (e.g., spatially tailored structures for the new generation of hypersonic aircraft, graded cementitious composites for sustainable infrastructure, high-performance graded components for automobiles, and graded microtools in mechatronics). Professor Erdogan’s continuing leadership role and ceaseless contributions to the fracture and contact mechanics of this new generation of materials provide guidance and motivation for others to follow. This special issue honors Professor Erdogan in recognition of his past and continuing contributions in the area that plays a critical role in the development of engineered material systems for critical technological applications, and builds upon a minisymposium under the above title held at the recent International Conference on Multiscale and Functionally Graded Materials (M&FGM2006) on Oct. 15–18, 2006, Honolulu, HI.