David L. McDowell, MPRL Director
David L. McDowell has a primary appointment in The GWW School of Mechanical Engineering and a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He joined the Tech faculty in 1983 after receiving his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. McDowell is a 1979 B.S.M.E. graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Dr. McDowell's research and teaching interests include nonlinear constitutive models for engineering materials, nonlinear and time dependent fracture mechanics, finite strain inelasticity and defect field mechanics, distributed damage evolution, shape memory phase transformations, deformation and damage of high temperature alloys, multiscale computational mechanics ranging from atomistics to continuum, and relation of computational micromechanics models to materials design. His research support has come from industry (General Motors, Ford, Texas Instruments, the American Foundrymen's Society, INTEL, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, QuesTek) and government (Army, Air Force, Navy, National Science Foundation, NASA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute) sources. Author of more than 300 research articles, McDowell has advised or co advised over 60 graduate students.
McDowell teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in mechanical behavior of materials, continuum mechanics, nonlinear constitutive relations fatigue and fracture. As Chair of the Institute's Materials Council (http://www.matecouncil.gatech.edu/index.html), McDowell provides leadership for the Institute's strategic materials thrust involving over 100 faculty from a broad cross-section of disciplines. A Fellow of the ASME, he is also a Regents' Professor at Georgia Tech. McDowell is a recipient of numerous engineering society awards for research and teaching, including the 1997 ASME Nadai Award, the highest distinction bestowed by the ASME Materials Division.
A former President of the Society of Engineering Science (SES), McDowell serves on the editorial advisory boards of the International Journal of Plasticity, Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures, the Journal of Multiscale Computational Engineering, Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, and the International Journal of Damage Mechanics. He is a Fellow of ASME and SES.
McDowell has previously received Georgia Tech's Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award (2000), Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award (2001), and Faculty Research Author Award (1993). He was selected as the ASTM Annual Fatigue Lecturer (2002), and Jack M. Zeigler Woodruff School Outstanding Educator Award recipient (2004).