Memorial Tributes Volume 25 (2023) / Chapter Skim
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JAN D. ACHENBACH
JAN D. ACHENBACH
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BAŽANT J AN DREWES ACHENBACH, Walter P Murphy Professor and Distinguished McCormick School Professor Emeritus-in-Service at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, passed away peacefully in Evanston, Illinois, on August 22, 2020, just 2 days after his 85th birthday.
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He applied to Stanford University for his graduate studies, was awarded a scholarship, and received his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics in 1962. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, in 1963 Jan was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, where he remained except for sabbatical leaves to the University of California at San Diego and TU Delft.
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technologies for the aerospace industry, then gradually expanded its scope to many areas of engineering applications, including structural health monitoring of civil infrastructures and nuclear power facilities. The center quickly attracted many promising students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting professors from all over the world.
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Jan developed a better model for laminated media and fiber-reinforced composites based on a generalized continuum theory and formulated a method to calculate the material constants from the elastic constants of the constituents and geometrical parameters. His new theory properly represented dispersion of wave motion at high frequencies.
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It is still in print and remains the most frequently referenced book on waves in elastic solids. Jan became widely known for his groundbreaking con tributions to acoustic microscopy.
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The carrier wave, which is the solution of a simple reducedwave equation, carries the thickness motion of the layer.6 This information, in conjunction with a novel application of elastodynamic reciprocity, was extremely useful in deriving expressions for wave motion in an elastic layer (generated by a time-harmonic point load of arbitrary direction) in terms of superposition of wave nodes.
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Throughout his career, a distinctive feature of Jan's research was the elegant application of rigorous mathematical methods in engineering applications. For example, traditional ultrasonic nondestructive methods are based on empirical 7 Achenbach JD, Komsky I, Andrew G, Grills B, Register J, Linkert G, Huerto G, Steinberg A, Asbaugh M, Moore D, Weber H
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. In 2008 Jan delivered the plenary lecture at the 27th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, the prime annual gathering of the international QNDE community.
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As they said, Northwestern "has given us lifelong education, culture, music, travel, and other benefits." Their combined efforts culminated in the establishment of the Jan and Marcia Achenbach Chairs at Northwestern University. They left their entire estate to the university; the planned gift will establish two endowed professorships in mechanics of materials and solids in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
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