Zdenek P Bazant

My interests lie in new interdisciplinary problems of the mechanics of solids and structures, with applications in structural, mechanical and aeronautical engineering, materials science, geophysics and petroleum engineering. My research group has recently been working on nonlinear fracture mechanics and its computational prediction, size effects and scaling of failure, stability of structures, micromechanics of damage in materials, inelastic constitutive laws, creep and hygrothermal effects in nanoporous materials, their sorption isotherm, fracture poromechanics, chemo-mechanics, failure of fiber composites, hydraulic fracturing of shale, geothermal energy, impact problems, probabilistic mechanics of quasibrittle structures, plasticity and finite strain, with related numerical methods, use of asymptotic matching, assembly and analysis of large databases, recently with limited use of AI. Our research, which emphasizes mathematical modeling based on experiments, has been focused on concrete, rock, sea ice, braided and woven composites for automobile crashworthiness, hybrid joints for ships, rigid foams, shape memory alloys, dry snow slabs, fracking of gas shale, sequestration of CO2 in deep mafic rocks, probabilistic analysis of quasibrittle failure, especially the tail distribution of strength, probability of static and fatigue lifetimes, failure probability of biomimetic (architected, nacreous) materials and of printed materials, century-range predictions of creep and shrinkage effects in concrete structures, formulation of standards for concrete, ceramics and composites, fiber-polymer composites for aircraft and ships, metallic thin films, reinforced concrete structures and granular materials; and limitation of CO2 emissions from cement production.