Bio

B.S. (Civil Engineering), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1985

M.S., Ph.D. (Civil Engineering/Applied Mechanics), University of Virginia, 1988 & 1993

Cliff Lissenden’s academic career is sharply focused on mechanics. Initially, his research featured experiments and supporting analysis to explore, characterize, and verify constitutive material models under multiaxial stress states and their limitations in terms of deformation, fatigue, and fracture. His current research targets ultrasonic guided wave technologies to characterize damage, and precursors to damage, for structural health monitoring. He has served the mechanics community by organizing technical symposia at conferences. During the course of his career Dr. Lissenden has taught mechanics courses ranging from a first-year seminar on Adventures in Mechanics to graduate courses like Advanced Mechanics of Materials, Stress Waves, and Structural Health Monitoring.

Dr. Lissenden’s solid mechanics research has focused specifically on experiments and supporting analysis to explore, characterize, and verify constitutive material models; with his niche area being deformation, fatigue, and fracture under multiaxial stress states. He has developed new experimental methods to characterize the inelastic response of metallic alloys (e.g., nickel base superalloys and beta titanium) and composites (e.g., aluminum and titanium matrices) over a range of temperatures. Supporting analyses include viscoplasticity of metals and composites at high temperature and micromechanics of fibrous and particulate composites with thermal residual stress and weak bonding between the reinforcement and matrix. He has leveraged this background and applied it to structural health monitoring with the aim of reducing maintenance and operating costs, improving public safety, and increasing readiness for service. Dr. Lissenden’s primary focus is now on characterizing damage in structures using ultrasonic guided waves. Damage modes of interest include fatigue cracks, corrosion, degradation of adhesively bonded joints and inter-ply delaminations in plate-like composite structures with ultrasonic guided waves. Characterization of precursors to macroscale damage is a major ongoing thrust, where nonlinear ultrasonic guided waves are being investigated. The interaction of ultrasonic guided wave modes with microstructural features generates higher harmonic modes whose amplitudes increase with propagation distance. Lissenden’s research group has identified primary modes that generate strong cumulative secondary modes and is pioneering the use of magnetostrictive transducers to excite these primary modes and receive the secondary modes. His research activities have been externally funded by NSF, NASA, DoE, AFOSR, EPRI, and others.

To date, Professor Lissenden has taught mechanics courses on thirteen different topics. Four of these are service courses, taken by a wide range of undergraduate students, while others are senior level and graduate level courses. He served from 2004 to 2009 as the Undergraduate Officer for the Engineering Science and Mechanics department with the goal of improving the preparation of the students. At the same time he was also the ABET Coordinator and Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. Prof. Lissenden has organized and chaired technical symposia on guided waves, structural health monitoring, cyclic plasticity of materials - experimentation and constitutive modeling at the micro and macroscopic levels, mechanics of fibrous composites, plasticity and damage mechanics, and understanding and predicting material degradation.