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SwRI opens Minnesota computational mechanics office

June 27, 2007 — Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) has opened an office in Minnesota to enhance its computational capabilities in evaluating the dynamic response of materials and structures to impact and explosive loading.

The Computational Mechanics office, located in Saint Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, will be headed by Dr. Gordon R. Johnson, an internationally known expert in the field of computational modeling of materials. Johnson is joining the SwRI staff as a program director. Other staff members at the Minnesota office are Principal Engineer Timothy J. Holmquist, Senior Research Engineer Dr. Stephen R. Beissel and Research Engineer Dr. Charles A. Gerlach.

"SwRI has collaborated with Dr. Johnson on materials characterization research since the late 1970s and has worked with him and his colleagues on a number of projects," said Dr. Charles Anderson, director of SwRI's Engineering Dynamics Department, which will oversee the Minnesota office. "SwRI has an international reputation in engineering dynamics. When Dr. Johnson and his colleagues became available for hire, we saw an opportunity to further enhance our expertise in this area."

Anderson said a number of important computational constitutive models bear Johnson's name and the names of his co-workers including the Johnson-Cook, Holmquist-Johnson-Cook and Johnson-Holmquist-Beissel models, used to model the response of metals, concrete and ceramics subjected to high-rate loading.

"Dr. Johnson is also the creator of the finite element hydrocode EPIC (Elastic Plastic Impact Computations) used for modeling explosive-metal interaction and armor applications," Anderson said. "SwRI will now assist in the distribution of this code for the U.S. Army for use by the Department of Defense and its contractors."

Anderson said the Computational Mechanics office will initially support the Engineering Dynamics Department on projects for the U.S. Army concerned with understanding and modeling the response of armor materials and using numerical methods to better understand advanced protection concepts.

Southwest Research Institute's Engineering Dynamics Department has solved problems for the government and industry for more than 30 years. For more information about Engineering Dynamics at SwRI, visit engineeringdynamics.swri.org. SwRI's Computational Mechanics Minneapolis office is located at 5353 Wayzata Boulevard, Suite 607, Saint Louis Park, Minn., 55416.

For more information contact SwRI Solutions.