B.S. (1959)
NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY

PH.D. (1965)
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Contact Information

ccwang@rice.edu
Office: 222 MEB
713.348.5259

Professor Wang's research is in continuum mechanics and applied mathematics. His primary interest is in the exact formulation and solution of problems in continuum mechanics by means of analytical methods in differential geometry.

An important topic in continuum mechanics is the theory of elasticity. Developed originally as an exact mathematical model for some material bodies, elastic response of all three-dimensional continua are intrinsically nonlinear. However, approximation based on linearization has been taught and used so widely that many students of elasticity no longer realize the exact elastic response that is being approximated by the linearization. Professor Wang's work mainly concerns the exact nonlinear formulation of elastic response for homogeneous or inhomogeneous materials, which may be isotropic or anisotropic, solid or fluid.

Professor Wang is investigating both problems of equilibrium in elastostatics and problems of wave propagation in elastodynamics for material bodies having various structures. For instance, in a recent study, he shows that the exact solution to the problems of bending torsion, expansion, and eversion may be classified according to the symmetry of the material and a laminated or fibrillar structure of the body.

Other topics considered by Professor Wang include rods, shells, non-Newtonian fluids, subfluids, and composite materials. He has also worked on problems in the energy industry, such as a study of the temperature and stress anomaly under a salt dome and a method for determining the orientation of a borehole during drilling.