Tim Foecke

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Tim Foecke (1963 - ) is an American metallurgist. Since 1991, he has held a position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Foecke received a bachelor's degree in 1986 and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering in 1991, both from the University of Minnesota. His thesis work, under Professor William W. Gerberich, involved the interaction of cracks and crack tip emitted dislocations on toughening in crystals. He was awarded a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship at NIST to work with Dr. Robb Thomson in 1991 to study dislocation generation and motion in nanomaterials, and published the first experimental observations of dislocation mechanisms in any nanomaterial in 1993. [1]

Beginning in 1996, Foecke has been involved in the forensic examination of the structure and mechanical properties of metals recovered from the wreck of the RMS Titanic, and has been involved in expeditions in 1996, 1998 and 2004. His initial report on the hull steel and rivets was published in 1998 [2]. He was the originator of the "rivet theory" to explain the rapid sinking of the Titanic, which was greatly expanded upon by Dr. Jennifer Hooper McCarty in her PhD thesis work at Johns Hopkins University, and is the topic of the now available book co-authored by McCarty and Foecke, named What Really Sank the Titanic: New Forensic Discoveries.

Foecke was a member of the National Construction Safety Team that analyzed the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. [3]

Foecke leads a project at NIST that is creating a finite element model of the wreck of the USS Arizona, attempting to estimate remaining lifespan before collapse and to provide a mechanism to test remediation techniques before implementing them on the monument. Foecke is also a consultant on conservation efforts on the wrecks of the CSS Hunley and USS Monitor.

He has been involved in a number of television science productions as an interviewee and consultant, including Titanic - Anatomy of a Disaster (Discovery Channel), Titanic Live (Discovery Channel), Titanic - Answers from the Abyss (Discovery Channel), Collapse of the World Trade Center (Discovery Canada), Seconds from Disaster - Sinking of the RMS Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Living in a Material World (Discovery Science Channel), Return to Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Science of Superhuman Strength (Discovery Channel), and Humanless Earth (NOVA).

Since 2001, Foecke has been an Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Foecke, T.; vanHeerden, D. (1993). "Deformation Mechanisms in Metallic Nanolaminates". Proceedings of the Symposium on Chemistry and Physics of Nanostructures and Related Non Equilibrium Material: 193. 
  2. ^ Foecke, T. (February 4, 1998), “Metallurgy of the RMS Titanic”, NIST-IR 6118, National Institute of Standards and Technology  http://www.metallurgy.nist.gov/webpages/TFoecke/titanic/Titanic.pdf
  3. ^ NIST and the World Trade Center, <http://wtc.nist.gov/>. Retrieved on 12 November 2007