5/13/2025 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
Huck Beng Chew has been awarded the Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal from the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It is an honor created in 2022 by the AMD to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of mechanics through research, practice, teaching and/or outstanding leadership. Chew is a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The award recognizes Chew for his pioneering contributions in the fundamental understanding of nanomechanics and micromechanics and the bridging of fundamental science to real-world interdisciplinary engineering applications.
“Huck Beng has made creative, original contributions to fundamental problems of multiscale and nanoscale material fracture, failure, and deformation. His development of new methodologies has enabled him to make an impact in both fundamental science and real-world interdisciplinary engineering applications,” said John Lambros, who is a professor in the department and Chew’s colleague.
Lambros said the hallmark of Chew’s academic work is his unique approach to not only perform computational materials science at the microscale, but to relate that to continuum-scale tools of practical use.
“The uniqueness of Huck Beng’s research stems from his strong physical understanding of the mechanical behavior of materials across scales, especially heterogeneous materials with highly complex microstructures. He is as comfortable working with carbon nanotubes or graphene as with void growth or grain-scale plasticity in additively manufactured metals. This has allowed him to expand his research direction to make an impact outside of the traditional domain areas of mechanics,” Lambros said.
One example, Lambros mentioned, is Chew’s research on designing space materials that can survive when exposed to extreme environments such as the intense heat spacecrafts face during reentry.
“Because the heatshield of a spacecraft makes up nearly a third of its mass, sizing of the heatshield is critically important for future crewed missions to Mars,” Lambros said. “In his groundbreaking study to understand the failure of porous composites used in the heatshield of the Orion, Huck Beng offers a one-of-its-kind prediction of the material’s burn rate.
“His model will help NASA accurately size the heatshield and design and optimize the heatshield microstructure and structural geometry for specific reentry conditions. This is a critical step toward ablation-by-design of thermal protection systems and represents a significant advancement over those in use since the Apollo era of the 1950s.”
Chew earned his Ph.D. in 2007 from the National University of Singapore, working on continuum and micromechanics of materials for fracture and failure applications. He joined the nano and micromechanics laboratory at Brown University as a postdoc in 2008, and later as a Research Assistant Professor, where he focused on emerging novel materials’ techniques such as atomistic simulations.
He joined the faculty at Illinois in 2011 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 2018, and to full professor in 2024.
Chew received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2017, is Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and a registered Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmental Engineer. He is also an associate editor for the Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science.
His service to ASME includes organizing and chairing conference symposia with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition since 2012; serving as chair of the ASME Fracture and Failure Mechanics technical committee for three years; and is currently on the Executive Committee of the ASME Materials Division as track-chair. Chew is also a Panel Fellow for National Science Foundation Game Changer Academies for Advancing Research Innovation.