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IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR RAY W. CLOUGH OF THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY AT BERKELEY, WHO DIED ON OCTOBER 8, 2016
Ray W. Clough, Nishkian Professor of Civil Engineering, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, Honorary Member of IAEE, and Founding Editor of Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics. Born July 23, 1920, he grew up in Seattle, Washington.
Ray W. Clough
He received his B.S. degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1942, and the Sc.D. degree at M.I.T. in 1949. He chose Civil Engineering as his undergraduate major because of his love of the outdoors. During those years he had trekked extensively and climbed several of the major volcanic peaks—Rainier, Baker, Glacier, and St. Helens — in the states of Washington and Oregon. Professor Ray Clough was a dedicated skier and mountaineer. We climbed together Mt. Olympus in Greece.
Immediately after completion of his doctoral studies, Ray Clough came to Berkeley as an Assistant Professor. Despite receiving numerous offers from other universities, his entire academic career was at Berkeley until he retired from teaching in 1987. Ray's contributions in teaching, research and consulting during 1950-1995 in the fields of finite element analysis, structural dynamics and earthquake engineering have been monumental. On his arrival at Berkeley, Ray Clough was assigned to develop a graduate course on Dynamics of Structures. He, Joseph Penzien, and Vitelmo Bertero developed the teaching program in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering at Berkeley that many considered to be the best in the world. It led to the book Dynamics of Structures (co-authored with Joseph Penzien) published in 1975 and again
in 1993. It was a landmark book in terms of its broad scope, comprehensive coverage, and philosophy. Several generations of students and engineers, in the United States and abroad learned the subject from this very book. It has been translated into Chinese, Greek, French, Japanese, Russian, Bahasa Indonesian etc. Perhaps his most important research contribution in structural engineering was as a co-developer in the "Finite Element Method" beginning with a classic paper in 1956. With the advent of digital computers the finite element method forever revolutionized the field of structural analysis and design. The method has been extended to many fields of engineering and makes it possible to analyze complex systems of many different kinds, including those encountered in design and safety evaluation of structures, and in aircraft, automobile, nuclear and oil industries. Because of the fundamental nature of the finite element concept, researchers in diverse fields of applied science and engineering recognized its potential in solving problems in their respective fields.
Although Ray Clough was a leader in the development of analytical methods to predict the effects of earthquakes on structures, he had been cognizant of the limitations of these methods.
Elephant foot bulge during the May 1983 Coalinga Earthquake
Recognizing that analytical capabilities have advanced beyond the experimental results on which they should be based, during the 1970s and 1980s he directed his research activities toward the experimental side of this dual development. His experiments on concrete, steel, and masonry buildings and liquid-storage tanks using the Berkeley shaking table received world-wide attention and the findings of these experiments have influenced design
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practice. Similarly, a series of papers that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s presented new and accurate methods utilizing the finite element concept for earthquake analysis of concrete dams. He served as a consultant for many of these projects for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the World Bank, and many private companies.
A Single-Story Masonry House on the EERC earthquake simulator facility
This was the reason for my first meeting with Professor Ray Clough at the University of South Wales at Swansea in 1975 during a international Congress on the Numerical Analysis of Dams under the presidency of Professor Oleg Zienkiewicz. Professor Clough remained active for a
long time in his research on the dynamic and earthquake response of large dams. He established international cooperation on this subject and he was active in performing many in-situ tests. The following are research areas that I had the privilege to cooperating with Professor Clough:
Research on Liquid Storage Tanks Full-scale experiments conducted at the EERC Earthquake Simulator Facility. Relevant publications: - The measured and predicted shaking table response of a broad tank model, GC Manos, RW Clough Am. Soc. Mech. Eng., Pressure Vessels Piping Div.,(Tech. Rep.) PVP. - Tank Damage during the May 1983 Coalinga Earthquake, Manos G.C. and Clough R.W. Int. J. Earth. Eng. Str. Dyn., Vol. 13, pp. 449466, (1985). - Manos G.C. Earthquake Tank Wall Stability of Unanchored Tanks, ASCE Journal of Str. Eng. ASCE, Vol. 112, No 8, pp. 1863-1880 (1986).
Research on Masonry Houses for the Department of Housing and Urban Development USA (1975-1984). Full-scale experiments conducted at the EERC Earthquake Simulator Facility. Relevant publications: - Shaking Table Study of Single-Story Masonry Houses GC Manos, RW Clough, RL Mayes, EERC 83 (11) - Gulkan P., Clough R.W., Manos G.C. and Mayes R.L. "Seismic Testing of Single-story Masonry Houses : Part 1", Journal of Str. Eng. ASCE, Vol. 116, No 1, January 1990, pp. 235-256. - Gulkan P., Clough R.W., Manos G.C. and Mayes R.L. "Seismic Testing of Single-story Masonry Houses : Part 2", Journal of Str. Eng. ASCE, Vol. 116, No 1, January 1990, pp. 257-274.
Dr. George C. Manos, December 2017
