Fluid mechanics

In this Oral History, Prof. Roger Tanner (University of Sydney) discusses his life and career in rheology with Gareth McKinley. Starting with discussion of his time growing up in England and working at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, attending Bristol University and then going to UC Berkeley on a King George VI Memorial Fellowship for a Master’s degree in control engineering. He describes the development of his interest in lubrication flows in bearings and first exposure to rheology through Frank Leslie and Arthur Lodge during his doctoral studies in Manchester, UK. He discusses in depth his work in Manchester, University of Sydney and Brown University as well as sabbaticals at the Rheology Research Center in Wisconsin and at the University of Delaware and time in academic administration as Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research. The historical development of the Australian Society of Rheology (ASR) is outlined as well as organization of the quadrennial International Congress of Rheology in Sydney (1988). He explains his first exposure to computational finite element schemes for analysis of viscoelastic die swell with Bob Nickell at Brown as well as his long-standing interests in simulating viscoelastic flows in complex geometries, constitutive model development (with Nhan Phan-Thien amongst others) and most recently the fluid dynamics of particulate suspensions with viscoelastic matrices. 

Transcript of a conversation between Gareth McKinley (SOR Historian) and Prof Ken Walters FRS at Norton House Hotel, The Mumbles, Swansea on July 10, 2018, on the eve of a meeting of the Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (INNFM) to be held at the University of Swansea. Ken discusses his life from growing up in Wales to his PhD with James G. Oldroyd, his time in the United States at UW Madison and his career at the University of Wales – Aberystwyth. He also discusses his time as president of the British Society of Rheology (1974-75) and also as inaugural president of the European Society of Rheology (1997), starting the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (1976), and the organization of the very successful Dynamics of Complex Fluids meeting (1996) at the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge.