Kalnins honored by American Society of Mechanical Engineers

	Arturs Kalnins

Arturs Kalnins, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and mechanics, has received a top honor from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
At ASME’s recent 2008 Pressure Vessels and Piping (PVP) Conference, Kalnins received the society’s PVP Medal.
ASME, which was founded in 1880, has 127,000 members worldwide and is considered the premier professional society for mechanical engineers. Kalnins was named an ASME fellow in 2007.
Kalnins was recognized for “significant contributions to the field of pressure vessel and piping technology, particularly for advancing the state of the art in the development of new design curves for torispherical heads and primary stress limits on the basis of plasticity, and for other significant breakthroughs in the field.”
Kalnins, who served on Lehigh’s faculty from 1965 to 2004, studies the fatigue of metals, particularly the behavior of metal plates and shells. He has developed computer programs to analyze shells of revolution that include metal plasticity, free vibration, buckling and creep.
Kalnins has served as a consultant to companies in the U.S. and abroad on pressure and thermal stress analyses, creep rupture, metal fatigue, and buckling and fracture of ductile cast iron.
He has also been active on the international lecture circuit, giving presentations in Mexico, Austria and Brazil. He was a member of a review group that independently evaluated the repair and return to service of the steam generators at the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant.
Kalnins has written or co-written 124 research papers and one book, and has supervised nine Ph.D. candidates.
--Kurt Pfitzer