Advances in Computational Engineering Science

This book on Advances in Computational Engineering Science (ACES) is dedicated to our professor and friend, G. R. Liu, together with the 8th International Conference on Computational Methods held in Guilin, China, to celebrate his 60th birthday and in honor of his numerous, important, and sustained contributions to the field of computational engineering science, especially the original and pioneering works on Smoothed Finite Element Methods (S-FEMs), Smoothed Point Interpolation Methods (S-PIMs), Meshfree and Particle Methods, Methods for Inverse Analysis and Optimization, and in general areas of Computational Methods. Prof. Liu received PhD from Tohoku University, Japan in 1991. Currently he is a prestigious Ohio Eminent Scholar professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics, and the Director of GR Lab and Data-Design-Analysis (DDA) Center, at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He served as the School Faculty Chair of the School of Aerospace Systems, University of Cincinnati; a Deputy Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Director of the Centre for Advanced Computations in Engineering Science (ACES), National University of Singapore (NUS). He was the past President of the Singapore Association for Computational Mechanics, the President of the Asia-Pacific Association for Computational Methods, and an Executive Council member of the International Association for Computational Mechanics. Prof. Liu has been internationally recognized as a most productive and distinguished scientist in the broad area of computational engineering science.  He authored a large number of international journal papers and books including two bestsellers: “Mesh Free Method: moving beyond the finite element method” and “Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics: a Meshfree Particle Methods.” He authored recently a book on “Smoothed Finite Element Methods” and “The Smoothed Point Interpolation Methods – G Space Theory and Weakened Weak Forms” that are now used for solving various types of problems. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computational Methods (IJCM), Associate Editor of the international technical journal Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering (IPSE), Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (MANO), Advanced Modeling and Simulation in Engineering Sciences (AMSES), and served as an editorial member of five other journals including the IJNME. Except for his great achievements in research, Prof. Liu is also renowned for his enthusiasm in training students and cultivating young researchers.  He has supervised more than 50 PhD and 40 Master students, and collaborated with a large number of post-doctoral researchers, while many of them are leaders and outstanding scientists in diversified branches in computational engineering science.  Prof. Liu’s creativity, diligence and passion in research have deeply influenced his students, post-doctors, collaborators and colleagues in their academic and professional careers. Prof. Liu has won numerous prizes and awards during his scientific career, including the Outstanding Engineering Educator and Beset Teacher Awards at NUS, Singapore Defence Technology Prize, NUS Outstanding University Researcher Award, the APACM Computational Mechanics Awards, the ICACM Computational Mechanics Awards, the JSME Computational Mechanics Awards from JSME, and the ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award. He is listed as a world top 1% most influential scientist (Highly Cited Researchers) by Thomson Reuters in 2014, 2015 and 2016 consecutively. The abbreviation of the book, ACES (Advances in Computational Engineering Science), is the same as the name of the Center for ACES founded about 20 years ago by Prof. Liu.  This book contains representative works from professor Liu’s former students or post-doctoral researchers, among which many were ACES and the GRLab members. Thus this edited book has a dual overarching objective.  On one hand, it is a celebratory collection, in which the participants honor Prof. G. R. Liu and recognize his great contributions to the advancement of computational engineering science.  On the other hand, former ACES members recall the wonderful moments spent at ACES and GR Lab share their current cutting-edge research work. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to all authors and referees for their critical contributions and valuable assistance. We also wish to thank the ScienTech Publisher and the editorial board, for providing us this opportunity to publish this book to honor Prof. G. R. Liu.