Unified Approach for Accurate and Efficient Modeling of Composite Beams, Plates, and Shells" is the title of the lecture that Hodges gave at the University of Arizona
Dewey Hodge
Prof. Dewey Hodges

Aerospace engineering professor Dewey H. Hodges was selected to give the November 8 William R. Sears Memorial Lecture at the University of Arizona.

His talk, "Unified Approach for Accurate and Efficient Modeling of Composite Beams, Plates, and Shells"  explores the unified approach, which facilitates accurate and efficient modeling of composite helicopter rotor blades for loads, dynamics, aeroelasticity, and stress recovery.

A faculty member in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering for more than 32 years, Hodges is the recipient of multiple awards and recognitions, including the Nikolsky Lectureship, and, last year, AIAA's Structures, Structural Dynamics, & Materials (SDM) Award, for his lifelong contributions to structures, structural dynamics, and materials.

The unified approach achieves accuracy comparable to that of three-dimensional finite element analysis but with significant savings in computational effort. The basis for this approach is a mathematical technique called the variational asymptotic method, as presented by Berdichevsky in the 1970s and 1980s. His presentation summarizes the modeling approach and presents some of the key equations of the resulting analyses.