Professional Experience

Dr. Ferencz has pursued computational mechanics R&D since first being an undergraduate structural engineering student, creating meshes by hand and entering data on punch cards. He currently leads LLNL’s Computational Engineering Division. This organization has over 260 technical staff with expertise in Engineering Modeling and Simulation, Weapon Analysis and Methods, Data Analytics and Decision Science, and Signal and Image Processing. This collection of analytic expertise supports many Laboratory programs, external projects, and research collaborations. Dr. Ferencz has also participated in the private sector, being among the founders of a firm focused on multiphysics simulation software, playing a variety of technical and management roles culminating in Vice President of Engineering. For the past 15 years, Dr. Ferencz has been a voting member of the ASME Standards Subcommittee for Verification and Validation in Computational Solid Mechanics.

Research Interests

Computational solid and structural mechanics, particularly global algorithms for nonlinear implicit finite element methods, advanced applications such as additive manufacturing, and verification and validation.

M.S. and Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, 1984, 1989

B.S. and M.S., Civil Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 1980, 1981

W. King, A. Anderson, R. Ferencz, N. Hodge, C. Kamath, S. Khairallah, "Overview of modelling and simulation of metal powder bed fusion process at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Material Science and Technology, 31(8), 957–968 (2015).

N. E. Hodge, R. M. Ferencz, and J. M. Solberg, “Implementation of a thermomechanical model for the simulation of selective laser melting,” Computational Mechanics 54(1), 33–51 (2014).

V. Mahadevan, E. Merzari, R. Jain, A. Obabko, M. Smith, T. Tautges, P. Fischer, W.D. Pointer, R. Ferencz, “SHARP fuel assembly coupled simulation demonstrations,” Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, 109(1) 774-777 (2013).

A. J. DeGroot, R. M. Ferencz, M. A. Havstad et al., “Accomplishments and Challenges in Code Development for Parallel and Multimechanics Simulations,” 8th International Conference on High Performance Computing for Computational Science (VECPAR 2008), JMLM Palma et al., Eds., Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5336, Springer, Berlin, pp. 214–227 (2008).

J. C. Lynch, R. Bürgmann, M. A. Richards, and R. M. Ferencz, “When faults communicate: Viscoelastic coupling and earthquake clustering in a simple two-fault system,” Geophysical Research Letters 30(6), 10.1029/2002GL016765 (2003).

M. A. Havstad  and R. M. Ferencz, “Comparison of Surface Chemical Kinetic Models for Ablative Reentry of Graphite,” Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer 16(4), 508–515 (2002).

R. M.  Ferencz and T. J. R. Hughes, “Iterative Finite Element Solutions in Nonlinear Solid Mechanics,” in Handbook of Numerical Analysis, Vol. VI: Numerical Methods for Solids (Part 3), P. G. Ciarlet and J.-L. Lions, Eds., Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 7–178 (1998).