MR QIAN LINGXI AND RESEARCH ON COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS

Mr Qian Lingxi (1916−2009) was a renowned mechanician and educator, and the founder of computational mechanics in China. The year 2026 marks the 110th anniversary of his birth. To this end, this paper introduces the life and major academic contributions of Mr Qian Lingxi to remember his great achievements and inspire young students. He conducted in-depth researches and achieved important innovative results in structural mechanics, variational principles, plate and shell theory, limit analysis, and structural optimum design. He advocated that mechanics should serve engineering and practiced what he preached, as well as achieved remarkable results in engineering fields such as bridges, dams, port engineering, shipbuilding, and national defense. Particularly, Mr Qian established the discipline of computational mechanics in China, developed the theories and methods for structural optimum design, and advocated and led the research and development of industrial software for large-scale structural analysis and optimal design. In 1981, he co-founded the International Association for Computational Mechanics.