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He is currently co-authoring a completely revised edition of Mechanical Properties of Ceramics. His contributions are primarily concerned with the mathematical basics of mechanical behavior as well as statistical and stress corrosion aspects of strength.

He has developed computational models for modeling various aspects of sintering.

One model simulates the transport of gas through the porous green body. In particular, the model looks at the removed of SiO2 from SiC by gas phase transport, primarily via CO, during a hold at an intermediate temperature at the start of the sintering cycle. The model can be used to predict optimum hold times and temperatures as a function of the properties of the green body. While sed for SiC the model can be used to model other gas phase transport phenomena, including drying or porous bodies and binder removal.

A second model uses finite element (FE) analysis to simulate the stresses and deformations that occur during densification / sintering. The model essentially involved coding a visco-plastic sintering element for the ABAQUS package. Model was successfully applied to predict the distortions of multilayer, multi-material ceramic structures, such as LTCC materials. However, it can also be used to predict the behavior of single material monoliths with, for example, non-uniform distributions of temperature, density, particle size, etc.

With over 20 years experience in the field of optical fiber reliability, Expert has published over 100 papers on the topic. Much of his work has been concerned with the fundamentals of the fatigue process. He has also developed mechanical testing techniques and mathematical descriptions of the stresses and statistical aspects of the tests, with specific application to optical fiber and fiber components. He has also developed mathematical models for predicting long-term reliability as a function of applied stress and service environment.

Expert has chaired or co-chaired more than 5 international conferences on the topic of fiber reliability.


Expert helped a company well-known in the fiber optics industry establish a laboratory with extensive mechanical testing capabilities. This involved construction of bending and uniaxial tension testing equipment, static fatigue testing equipment, etc. Expert has helped several fiber optics manufacturer assure the reliability of their products. This involved making industry standard tensile and bending strength and fatigue measurements and then using the results to predict the lifetime under stress in a variety of environments.