Ahmed Elbanna is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His primary affiliation is autonomous materials systems. He is also affiliated with theoretical and computational biophysics. He is a member of many professional societies: United States Association of Computational Mechanics, Society of Engineering Sciences, American Physics Society, Engineering Mechanics Institute -ASCE, and the American Geophysics Union. His service on department committees include being a member of Graduate Recruitment Weekend, a member of Structures Conference Organizing Committee, and Chair of Structural Engineering Qualification Exam Committee. His service on campus committees include being a member of the Faculty Senate and a steering committee member of the Computational Science and Engineering Program. Additionally, he is a co-leader of the Computational Science Disciplinary Group within the Planning Committee of the Southern California Earthquake Center.

Education

• BSc., civil engineering faculty of engineering, Cairo University, 2003

• MSc., structural engineering faculty of engineering, Cairo University, 2005

• MSc., applied mechanics, California Institute of Technology, 2006

• PhD., civil engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2011

• 2020: Donald Biggar Willet Faculty Fellow

• 2019: 7th Arab American Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine - Invited Participant

• 2019: Journal of Applied Mechanics Paper Award

• 2018: National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award

• 2015-2016: National Center for Super Computing Applications Fellowship

Research Interests

• Modeling epidemics

• Friction and fracture

• Mechanical metamaterials.

• Mechanics and physics of networked and biological materials

• Mechanics and physics of earthquakes and granular matter

Research Areas

• Structural engineering

• Energy-water-environment sustainability

• Structural engineering

Their research focuses on problems in theoretical and applied mechanics of solids, in the presence and absence of pore fluids, with special emphasis on fracture, deformation and wave propagation. Currently, we have three major research thrusts:

MECHANICS AND PHYSICS OF EARTHQUAKES AND GRANULAR MATERIALS:

The long term objective of this research is to link small scale processes in fault zones with large scale dynamic rupture characteristics, wave propagation, seismic and aseismic slip, and long term earthquake cycle models to provide rigorous predictive tools for nonlinear fault dynamics that can ultimately inform next generation seismic hazard models. Their work is contributing to the development of micromechanical models of deformation and failure in granular materials, modeling dynamic ruptures in heterogeneous fault zones and branched fault systems, identification of hydro-thermo- mechanical weakening mechanisms specific to fault gouge, investigation of strain localization and stick-slip dynamics in sheared and vibrated granular layers with breakable particles, and establishment of novel hybrid numerical techniques for multi-scale fault zone dynamics.

MECHANICS AND PHYSICS OF NETWORKED AND BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS:

The long term objective of this research is to develop a rigorous understanding for the effect of micro-structure and local topology on deformation and failure of networked materials. Specific systems of interest include polymer networks as arising in hydrogels and soft tissues and trabecular networks in human bone. Current efforts focus on multi-scale constitutive modeling and fracture in soft materials including rate dependence, damage evolution, poro-mechanical effects and structure-function relations as well as the development of quasi-continuum models for domain decomposition in fractured lattice-like materials.

MECHANICAL METAMATERIALS:

The primary objective of this research is to design materials with adaptive, tunable and extreme elastodynamic properties using principles from biology and geophysics that will transform applications in impact resistance, wave modulation, and earthquake engineering. Current efforts focus on theoretical understanding of the nature of mechanical band gaps, elastodynamic response of layered systems, novel applications of transformation elastodynamics, and modeling of negative stiffness structural elements.

To address these challenging topics they use a variety of theoretical techniques stemming from non-equilibrium statistical thermodynamics (shear transformation zone theory), computational mechanics (finite element and boundary integral methods), optimization theory (topology optimization), machine learning, and nonlinear dynamics (stability analysis, reduced order models and chaos theory).