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This book is a personal anthology of the author's utmost academic works and accomplishments with his former students and colleagues intended as an enduring record for the engineering community for many years to come.
The author's forty-year professional career and academic life journey is first briefly sketched in Chapter 1 and more details are elaborated in three chapters that follow: Chapter 2: The first ten years at Lehigh - beginning to show; Chapter 3: Twenty=three years at Purdue - the highly productive years; and Chapter 4: seven years at UH - the pursuit of excellence. The author's specific academic contributions are documented in the following three chapters: Chapter 5: 23 academic bulletins are selected to highlight his 10 major research areas; Chapter 6: 23 Academic masterpiece books are listed along with their respective peer review comments; and Chapter 7: academic publications include journal articles, conference proceedings and symposiums, and lectures and keynotes. The book ends with the listing of all the author's 55 doctoral students' dissertation titles in Chapter 8.
In 1975 at Lehigh, the author published a milestone treatise on Limit Analysis and Soil Plasticity. In 1982 at Purdue, he published another pioneering work on Plasticity in Reinforced Concrete.
In September 1999, the author was recruited by UH to take the Deanship of the College of Engineering to accomplish the noble mission: to build the College to become one of the top 50 engineering schools by strengthening the faculty, improving the facilities, and increasing the enrollment. Over his seven years at UH, a lot of progress was made in all these three areas - the research program expanded, facilities improved, and enrollment increased.
About the author
Dr Wai-Fah Chen "" A well-respected leader in the field of plasticity, structural stabil-ity, and structural steel design over the past half-century, he has made major contribu-tions to introduce the mathematical theory of plasticity to civil engineering practice, especially in the application of limit analysis methods to the geotechnical engineering field. Having headed the engineering departments at the University of Hawaii and Purdue University, Chen is a widely cited author and the recipient of several national engineering awards, including the 1990 Shortridge Hardesty Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction.
