Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. John M. Tyler, for his unceasing energetic support and priceless guidance of my research. I wish to thank also Dr. Oleg S. Pianykh for his numerous and valuable scientific and technical advice, incredible responsiveness and support that helped to improve the quality of this research. I wish to thank Dr. Warren Waggenspack, Jr. for the pleasure of working under his guidance in order to fulfill my minor requirement. A large part of what I know about 3D visualization and modeling I learned from him, and large part of the work that I performed under his guidance served the foundation for this research. I wish to thank my committee, Dr. Bijaya B. Karki, Dr. Claire D. Advokat and Dr. Jianhua Chen, for their valuable comments and critiques. I wish to thank all the professors and instructors of Department of Mechanics an