Institute of Mechanics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Institute of Mechanics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Інститут механіки імені С.П. Тимошенка НАНУ; Instytut mekhaniky imeni S.P. Tymoshenka NANU). The first technical scientific research institute in Ukraine founded in Kyiv in 1918 as the Institute of Technical Mechanics of the newly created Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. It functioned under the name Institute of Technical Mechanics until 1929 and later was called the Institute of Construction Mechanics until 1959 when it was renamed Institute of Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. During the Second World War the institute’s scientists were evacuated to Ufa, RSFSR. In 1964 a section of the institute was established in Kharkiv on the basis of the Laboratory of Hydraulic Machines, which in 1970 was reorganized as Kharkiv section of the Institute of Technical Thermophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1972 the Kharkiv section became the separate Institute of Mechanical Engineering Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1968 a section of the institute was established in Dnipropetrovsk. In 1980 it became the new Institute of Technical Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, directed by Viktor Pylypenko. Research by its staff of over 450 in 11 departments and a special technological design office was focused on the dynamics of complex mechanical systems, particularly in railway and air transport. The new institute also had an experimental manufacturing enterprise and a computer center.

The Institute of Mechanics published the periodic compendium Teplovye napriazheniia v elementakh konstruktsii. In 1993, as part of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the institute was named after its first director Stephen Timoshenko. After reaching its highest point in 1980 (578), the number of staff declined to 205 in 2016. The institute has a graduate program. Currently, the institute has 15 departments, including dynamics and stability of continuous media; mechanics of stochastic nonhomogenous media; mechanics of composition media; rheology; computer mechanics and engineering; thermoplasticity; thermoelasticity; electroelasticity; dynamics of complex systems; vibration theory; and others. Today the main research themes include mechanics of compositional and nonhomogeneous media; mechanics of shell systems; mechanics of coupled fields in materials; fracture mechanics and fatigue; and dynamic and stability of motion of mechanical systems. The results of the institute’s research have been widely utilized in the USSR and in independent Ukraine. The institute publishes the international monthly journal of applied mechanics Prikladnaia mekhanika (58 vols, 1955–) and a number of multi-volume monograph series (primarily in Russian), including Metody rascheta obolochek (5 vols, 1980–2), Prostranstvennye zadachi teorii uprugosti i plastichnosti (6 vols, 1984–5), Mekhanika kompozitov (12 vols, 1993–2003), Uspekhi mekhaniki (6 vols, 2005–11), and Sovremennye problemy mekhaniki (3 vols, 2016–8), which contains the most important works of the institute’s scholars that appeared in scientific press between 2011 and 2017. The institute has been directed by Stepan Tymoshenko (1918–20), Dmytro Grave (1921), Kostiantyn Siminsky (1921–32), Serhii Serensen (1932–40), Mykola Kornoukhov (1940–4), Fedir Bieliankin (1944–58), Hurii Savin (1958–9), Anatolii Kovalenko (1959–65), Viktor Kononenko (1965–75), and Oleksandr Huz (since 1975). Among the most prominent scientists who worked in the institute at different times are Nikolai Bogoliubov, Rivner Ganiev, Oleksandr Dinnik, Konstantin Khrenov, Mykola Kornoukhov, Viktor Hrinchenko, Yevhen Paton, Mykola Krylov, Heorhii Pysarenko, Heorhii Karpenko, Yaroslav Hryhorenko, and Yurii Shevchenko.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Institut mekhaniky im. S. Timoshenko/S.P. Timoshenko Institute of Mechanics (Kyiv 1998)
Do 100-richchia Instytutu mekhaniky im. S.P. Tymoshenka Natsional'noї Akademiї nauk Ukraїny (Kyiv 2008)
Institut mekhaniky im. S. Timoshenko NAN Ukrainy (1918-2008) (Kyiv 2008)
The institute’s official website: http://www.inmech.kiev.ua/

Serhiy Bilenky

[This article was updated in 2022.]