JAMSTEC > Research Institute for Value-Added-Information Generation (VAiG) > Member > Muneo Hori

Center for Mathematical Science and Advanced Technology (MAT)

Members

Muneo Hori

photo

Director-General [Principal Scientist]
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Research Institute for Value-Added-Information Generation

3173-25, Showa-machi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama-city, Kanagawa, 236-0001, Japan
horimune_at_jamstec.go.jp


Short CV

Employment

1992.10 Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo
2001.11 Professor, Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo
2012.10 Unit Leader, Computational Disaster Mitigation and Reduction Research Unit, Advanced Institute of Computational Science, RIKEN
2017.4 Program Director for Disaster prevention of SIP,Cabinet Office
2018.4 Director-General, Department of Mathematical Science and Advanced Technology Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
2019.4 Director-General, Research Institute for Value- Added-Information Generation (VAiG) Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology

Education

1984.3 B. E., Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo
1985.8 M. E., Civil Engineering, Northwestern University
1987.8 Ph. D., Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences, University of California, San Diego

Research Topics

1. Solid micromechanics
For composite materials and materials with micro-cracks, we studied micromechanics to estimate their linear and non-linear material properties and damage and fracture processes. Mathematically, the estimation is based on the simple computations of the spatial average of the physical field and the quantification of the relationship between the spatially averaged values. However, it does not finish in half a century to rigorously estimate the material properties, because the following two conditions are imposed: 1) the physical field satisfies the physical law; and 2) the inclusions and cracks grow and change. I propose a rational averaging method, which, I think, is fairly well accepted in the field of micromechanics.
2. Fracture analysis of brittle and ductile materials
Fracture analysis has been studied for brittle materials such as rocks and concrete that are broken by the generation and growth of cracks, and ductile materials such as metals and soils that are greatly deformed and broken due to accumulation of plastic deformation. For brittle materials, it is difficult to predict the shape of the surface of a growing crack. I propose that it is impossible to accurately predict the crack shape, but possible to estimate the shape within a certain range. For ductile materials, I propose that the basic theory that is currently adopted might have a flaw and that it will be easier to predict the fracture phenomena by solving the flaw.
3. Invention of numerical analysis method of deformation of solid
I propose a Non-Linear Stochastic Finite Element Method which numerically solves stochastic mechanical problem based on the rigorous treatment of stochastically varying field variables and a Particle Discretization Scheme Finite Element Method which uses a set of characteristic functions of an analysis domain as basis functions.      
4. Computational earthquake engineering
I seek to incorporate computational science into earthquake engineering and to establish a new research area of computational earthquake engineering. Three examples of computational earthquake engineering are: 1) High Performance Computing Finite Element Method (HPC-FEM) which performs large scale high speed numerical analysis of solving solid wave equation, the basic equation of earthquake engineering; 2) Integrated Earthquake Simulation (IES) which analyzes the whole process of earthquake, tsunami disaster, damage and response in an entire city; and 3) data processing that automatically builds various numerical analysis models from various urban area digital information. HPC-FEM is attracting attention of computational science and computer science due to its high performance, and is being developed in a project of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. IES has been developed in the post K priority issue project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and it is possible to carry out large-scale numerical analysis of recovery processes of economic activities using advanced agents. Data processing is one of the basic technologies of i-construction that is promoted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.      

Publications