Akron, Ohio, Oct. 6, 2004 Dr. Wieslaw Binienda, chair of the civil engineering department in The University of Akron's of College of Engineering, recently was awarded the Turning Goals Into Reality award from NASA for his work on the Jet Engine Containment Concepts and Blade-Out Simulation Team.
Binienda's contributions to this team included numerical simulations in impact and post impact experiments, material and model development, and assistance in the design process of jet engine composite containment systems for General Electric, Honeywell International Inc. and Williams International.
Nearly four years of effort resulted in breakthrough technologies that not only could decrease the aircraft fatal accident rate, but also may reduce by 50 percent the weight of the single-most heavy engine component, the engine case/containment system.
Binienda joined the University in 1988 and is the author of more than 80 publications. He has received more than $4 million in grants for numerous research projects and more than $450,000 in grants for the work that led to this NASA award. Other notable awards for his work include the NASA Lewis Research Center Fellowship and the College of Engineering Outstanding Researcher Award.
Binienda's research interests are in the areas of composite materials testing and processing; material characterization; micro-mechanics based modeling; and implementation of the rigorous techniques such as singular integral equations for analysis of composite damage and failure mechanisms.
A Bath resident, Dr. Binienda received a master's degree in motor vehicles and heavy-duty machines from Warsaw Technical University in Poland, and a master's degree and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia.
