John W. Rudnicki
Mechanical Engineering

John W. Rudnicki (Ph.D, Brown University) is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. His research is in the area of inelastic deformation and failure of geological materials, in particular, the mechanics of faulting and earthquake rupture, the coupling of deformation with ground water diffusion, with applications to earthquake processes and the integrity of waste disposal sites. His current work focuses on mathematical modeling of failure in very porous rock in connection with geological sequestration of CO2 in order to mitigate adverse effects on climate change. In 1975 he received the award for Outstanding Basic Research in Rock Mechanics for the paper, Conditions for the localization of deformation in pressure-sensitive, dilatant materials (coauthored with J. R. Rice) which appeared in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids. He has been a member of the U. S. National Committee on Rock Mechanics, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Mechanics and the Journal of Geophysical Research. He is currently a member of the Geosciences Council of the Office of Energy Sciences, U. S. Department of Energy, and a member of the Advisory Board of Mechanics of Cohesive-Frictional Material and Structures, An International Journal on Experiments, Modeling and Computation. He spent April, 2001 as Visiting Professor in the Départment of Terre Atmosphère Océan at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and he has pending a joint NSF-CNRS proposal for continued collaboration with ENS.

jwrudn@northwestern.edu