Professor
Manhattan, Kansas
Faculty member of the Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department. Continued focus on applied numerical modeling of engineering systems. Research included modeling crack growth in layered structures for aging aircraft (funded by Boeing, NSF, and NASA). Work on fractures branched to include research in the simulation of deep, hot dry rock geothermal reservoirs. In these reservoirs, water is pumped at high pressure into fractures where it is heated by the rock, brought to the surface, and used to provide energy. The challenge in simulation is the tight coupling of rock stress, fluid flow, and heat transfer, where cooling the rock opens the fractures that leads to more flow and cooling through that fracture. This research was funded by Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy, and NEDO in Japan.Introduced new courses in fracture mechanics, finite elements, and computer programming applications. Research resulted in the Geocrack2D and Geocrack3D software for coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical problems in fractured rock.