Pioneers of Heat Transfer

8/6/2019 Pioneers of Heat Transfer

1/9

History of Heat Transfer

Jean Baptiste Biot (1774-1862)

A French physicist, best known for his work in

the polarization of light, Jean Baptiste Biot wasborn in Paris, France, on April 21, 1774. He

became a professor of physics in 1800 at theCollege de France through the influence of

Laplace, from whom he had sought and obtainedthe favor of reading the proof sheets of the

Mecanique Celeste. Although younger, Biotworked on the analysis of heat conduction even

earlier than Fourier did (1802 or 1803) andattempted, unsuccessfully, to deal with the

problem of incorporating external convection effects in heat conduction

analysis. Fourier read Biot's work and by 1807 had determined for himselfhow to solve the elusive problem. In 1804, Biot accompanied Gay Lussac onthe first balloon ascent undertaken for scientific purposes. In 1820, with

Felix Savart, he discovered the law known as "Biot and Savart's Law." Hewas especially interested in questions relating to the polarization of light and

for his achievements in this field he was awarded the Rumford Medal of theRoyal Society in 1840. He died February 3, 1862 in Paris.

Allan Philip Colburn (1904-1955)

Allan Philip Colburn was born in Madison,Wisconsin on June 8, 1904. He graduated with

high honors from the University of Wisconsinwith a degree in Chemical Engineering in 1926,

received his Master of Science degree in 1927and his Ph.D. in 1929. Colburn's research focused

on the condensation of water vapor fromsaturated air streams, a topic that in its broader

aspects interested him to the end of his life. Todeal with this complex problem, he brought

together for the first time in Americanengineering work, the fundamentals of momentum and heat and mass

transfer along with thermodynamic principles. Although not known formally

as a dimensionless parameter, the empirical Colburn 3-factor is indeed anoperational one. Colburn joined the Chemical Engineering Department at theUniversity of Delaware in 1938. He was appointed as Assistant to the

President of the University in 1947, Acting President in 1950, and served asProvost and Coordinator of Scientific Research until his death in 1955.

Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830)


2/9

This French Mathematician and Physicist, famousfor his pioneer work on the representation of

functions by trigonometric series, was born atAuxere, France on March 21, 1768. He was the

son of a tailor who became a teacher ofmathematics at age sixteen at the military school

in Auxere. He later joined the faculty at theEcoleNormale at Paris in the year of its founding

(1795) when he was twenty-seven. His teachingsuccess soon led to the offer of the Chair of

Analysis at the EcolePolytechnique and in 1807, he was made a member ofthe Academy of Sciences. Fourier's masterpiece was his mathematical theory

of heat conduction stated in TheorieAnalytique de la Chaleur (1822). As oneof the most important books published in the 19th-century, it marked an

epoch both in the history of pure and applied mathematics. In it, Fourier

developed the theory of the series known by his name and applied it to thesolution of boundary-value problems in partial differential equations. Thiswork brought to a close a long controversy, and henceforth it was generally

agreed that almost any function of a real variable can be represented by aseries involving the sines and cosines of integral multiples of the variable.

After a long and distinguished career, Fourier died in Paris on May 16, 1830at age 62.

Leo Graetz (1856-1941)

Leo Graetz was a German Physicist born atBreslau, Germany on September 26, 1856. He

studied Mathematics and Physics at Breslau,Berlin and Strassburg. In 1881, he became the

assistant to A. Kundt at Strassburg and in 1883 hewent to the University of Munchen where he

became a Professor in 1908 and occupied theSecond Chair for Physics parallel to Roentgen.

His scientific work was first concerned with thefields of heat conduction, radiation, friction and

elasticity. After 1890, his work forcused uponproblems of electromagnetic waves and cathode rays.

Graetz was a prolific technical writer as evidenced by his twenty-three

editions of book Electricity and Its Applications and a five volume workHandbook of Electricity and Magnetism. These works contributed to thewide dissemination of knowledge in electricity which, at their time of

printing, was still in its infancy. He died in Munchen on November 12, 1941,at age 85.

Franz Grashof (1826-1893)


3/9

A German engineer, born July 11, 1826, at

Dusseldorf, Germany, Franz Grashof left schoolat the age of 15 to work as a mechanic while

attending trade school. From 1844 until 1847,Grashof studied mathematics, physics and

machine design at the Berlin Royal TechnicalInstitute. In 1849, he set sail on a voyage which

took him as far as the Dutch Indies and Australiaand where he stayed for nearly three years before

returning to Berlin to continue his studies in1852. Grashof was one of the founding leaders of

the Society of German Engineers (VereinDeutscherIngenieure, VDI) andassumed an enormous load as author, editor, corrector and dispatcher of

publications. By 1863, Grashof's name was so esteemed that the Technicalof Karlsruhe appointed him to be a successor Superintendent of the

Engineering School. He also served as Professor of Applied Mechanics and

Mechanical Engineering where his reknowned lectures included "Strength ofMaterials," "Hydraulics," "Theory of Heat," and "General Engineering."After Grashof's death on October 26, 1893 at Karlsruhe, the Society of

German Engineers honored his memory by instituting the GrashofCommemorative Medal as the highest distinction that the society could

bestow for merit in the engineering skills.

Max Jakob (1879-1955)

Max Jakob was a German Physicist, born July 20,

1879, in Ludwigshafen, Germany. He studiedElectrical Engineering at the Technical University

of Munchen where he graduated in 1902. He wasawarded a Diploma Ingenieur in Applied Physics

in 1903, and the degree of Doctor Ingenieur in1904. From 1903 until 1906, he was an assistant

to O. Knoblauch at the Laboratory for TechnicalPhysics and later joined the Physikalisch-

TechnischeReichsanstalt at Berlin-Charlottenburgin 1910, where he started his career in

thermodynamics and heat transfer. He conducted a large amount ofimportant work in these fields, covering such areas as steam and air at high

pressure, devices for measuring thermal conductivity, the mechanisms of

boiling and condensation, flow in pipes and nozzles and much more. Duringthis time, he wrote over 200 technical papers and was a prolific source ofcritical reviews, articles and discussions. In 1936, he emigrated to the United

States, and began a one-year lecture tour sponsored by ASME. He became aresearch professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Consultant in

Heat Transfer Research for the Armour Research Foundation. In 1942, hefounded and became the first director of IIT's Heat Transfer Laboratory. His

long years of research resulted in significant contributions to the literature of


4/9

the profession; nearly 500 books, articles, reviews and discussions have been

published bearing his name. His formal honors include an Honorary Degreeof Doctor of Engineering from Purdue University in 1950, and The

Worchester Reed Warner medal from the American Society of MechanicalEngineers in 1952. He was admired by colleagues and students alike, for his

warm personality, subtle wit, and rare humility of spirit. He died on January4, 1955.

The Max Jakob Memorial Award was created in 1961 to commemorate theoutstanding contributions of this much admired pioneer. It is bestowed

annually by ASME, to honor eminent achievement of distinguished servicein the field of Heat Transfer

Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

Working as both an Austrian physicist andphilosopher, Ernst Mach's work had a great

influence on 20th-century thought, both in

physics and in philosophy. He was born onFebruary 18, 1838, at Turas in Moravia andeducated in Wien. He was a Professor of Physics

at Graz from 1864 -1867, at Prague from 1867-1895, and Professor of Inductive Philosophy at

Wien from 1895-1901. He was made a memberof the Austrian House of Peers in 1901 and died

at Munchen on February 19, 1916. Mach was athorough-going positivist and took the view, which most scientists now

share, that no statement is admissible in natural science unless it isempirically verifiable. His criteria of verifiability were exceptionally

rigorous and led him not only to reject such metaphysical conceptions as thatof absolute space and time, but also to oppose the introduction of atoms and

molecules into physical theory. Nevertheless, it was his criticism along theselines of Sir Isaac Newton's system that made the way clear for Albert

Einstein's theory of relativity. As a positivist, he regarded scientific laws aspurely descriptive and held that the choice between alternative hypotheses

covering the same facts was to be made on the grounds of economy. Mach'sname is most closely associated with the Mach Number which expresses the

speed of matter relative to the local speed of sound.

Wilhelm Nusslet (1882-1957)


5/9

Wilhelm Nusselt, a German engineer, was bornNovember 25, 1882, at Nurnberg, Germany. He

studied machinery at the Technical Universitiesof Berlin-Charlottenburg and Munchen and

graduated in 1904. He conducted advancedstudies in mathematics and physics and became

an assistant to O. Knoblauch at the Laboratory forTechnical Physics in Munchen. He completed his

doctoral thesis on the "Conductivity of InsulatingMaterials" in 1907, using the "Nusselt Sphere" for

his experiments. From 1907 to 1909 he worked asan assistant to Millier in Dresden, and qualified for a Professorship with his

work on "Heat and Momentum Transfer in Tubes."In 1915, Nusselt published his pioneering paper: The Basic Laws of Heat

Transfer, in which he first proposed the dimensionless groups now known as

the principal parameters in the similarity theory of heat transfer. Otherfamous works were concerned with the film condensation of steam onvertical surfaces, the combustion of pulverized coal and the analogy between

heat and mass transfer in evaporation. Found among the primarilymathematical works of Nusselt are the well known solutions for laminar heat

transfer in the entrance region of tubes, for heat exchange in cross-flow andthe basic theory of regenerators. Nusselt was a professor at the Technical

Universities of Karlsruhe from 1920-1925 and at Munchen from 1925 untilhis retirement in 1952. He was awarded the Gauss-Medal and the Grashof

Commemorative Medal. Nusselt died in Munchen on September 1, 1957.

Jean Claude Eugene Peclet (1793-1857)

A French physicist, born February 10, 1793, atBesancon, France, Jean Claude Eugene Peclet

became one of the first scholars of theEcoleNormale at Paris (Gay-Lussac and Dulong

being his teachers). He was elected professor atthe College de Marseille in 1816, teaching

physical sciences there until 1827. He returned toParis when he was nominated Maitre de

Conferences at the EcoleNormale and was elected

Professor at the important EcoleCentrale des Artset Manufactures. Peclet's publications werefamous for their clarity of style, sharp-minded views and well performed

experiments. His most famous book Trait de la Chaleur et de SesApplications aux Arts et aux Manufactures (Paris 1829) was distributed

world-wide and translated into German. He retired in 1852 to devote himselfexclusively to teaching and continued lecturing until his death on December

6, 1857 in Paris.


6/9

Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953)

Ludwig Prandtl, born at Freising, Bavaria onFebruary 4, 1875, was a German Physicist

famous for his work in aeronautics. He qualified

at Munchen in 1900 with a thesis on elasticstability and held the position of Professor ofApplied Mechanics at Gottingen for forty-nine

years (from 1904 until his death there on August15, 1953). In 1925, Prandtl became the Director

of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for FluidMechanics. His discovery in 1904 of the

Boundary Layer which adjoins the surface of abody moving in a fluid led to an understanding of skin friction drag and of

the way in which streamlining reduces the drag of airplane wings and othermoving bodies. His work on wing theory, published in 1918 - 1919,

followed that of F.W. Lanchester (1902-1907), but was carried outindependently and elucidated the flow over airplane wings of finite span.

Prandtl's work and decisive advances in boundary layer and wing theoriesbecame the basic material of aeronautics. He also made important

contributions to the theories of supersonic flow and of turbulence, andcontributed much to the development of wind tunnels and other aerodynamic

equipment. In addition, he devised the soap-film analogy for the torsion ofnon-circular sections and wrote on the theory of plasticity and of

meteorology.

Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919)

Lord Rayleigh was a British physicist born nearMaldon, Essex, on November 12, 1842. He was

educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where hegraduated as Senior Wrangler in 1865. As a

successor to James Clerk Maxwell, he was head ofthe Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge from 1879-

1884, and in 1887 became Professor of NaturalPhilosophy at the Royal Institute of Great Britain.

He was elected in 1873 as a Fellow of the RoyalSociety and served as its president from 1905-1908.

He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 forhis 1894 collaborative discovery (with Sir William Ramsay) of the inert

elementary gas argon. Rayleigh's research covered almost the entire field ofphysics, including sound, wave theory, optics, colour vision,

electrodynamics, electromagnetism, the scattering of light, hydrodynamics,the flow of liquids, capillarity, viscosity, the density of gases, photography

and elasticity, as well as electrical measurements and standards. His researchon sound was embodied in his Theory of Sound and his other extensive


7/9

studies in physics appeared in his "Scientific Papers." Rayleigh died on June

30, 1919 at Witham, Essex.

Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912)

English engineer and physicist, Osborne

Reynolds, was best known for his work in thefields of hydraulics and hydrodynamics. Born in

Belfast, Ireland on August 23, 1842, he gainedearly workshop experience and graduated from

Queens College at Cambridge in 1867. Hebecame the first Professor of Engineering at

Owens College, Manchester in 1868. He waselected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1877 and

a Royal Medalist in 1888.Reynolds'studies of condensation and the transfer

of heat between solids and fluids brought about radical revisions in boiler

and condenser design, and his work on turbine pumps laid the foundation fortheir rapid development. A fundamentalist among engineers, he formulated"The Theory of Lubrication" (1886) and in his classical paper on "The Law

of Resistance in Parallel Channels" (1883) investigated the transition fromsmooth, or laminar, to turbulent flow. Later, in 1889, he developed a

mathematical framework which became the standard in turbulence work.Other work included the explanation of the radiometer and an early absolute

determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat. Reynolds retired in 1905and died at Watchet, Somerset, on February 21, 1912. His name is

perpetuated in the "Reynolds Number," which provides a criterion fordynamic similarity and for correct modeling in many fluid flow experiments.

Ernst Schmidt (1892-1975)

Ernst Schmidt was a German scientist and

pioneer in the field of EngineeringThermodynamics, especially in Heat and Mass

Transfer. He was born on February 11, 1892 atVogelsen, near Luneburg, Germany. He studied

Civil and Electrical Engineering at Dresden andMunchen and joined the Laboratory for Applied

Physics at the Technical University, Munchen, in

1919 (which was then under the direction ofOscar Knoblauch). One of his early researchefforts there was a careful measurement of the

radiation properties of solids, which caused him to propose and develop theuse of aluminum foil as an effective radiation shield. In 1925, he received a

call to come serve as Professor and Director of the Engineering Laboratoryat the Technical University in Danzig. Here he published papers on the now

well known "Graphical Difference Method for Unsteady Heat Conduction"


8/9

and on "The Schlieren and Shadow Method" to make thermal boundaries

visible and to obtain local heat-transfer coefficients. He was the first tomeasure the velocity and temperature field in a free convection boundary

layer and the large heat-transfer coefficients occurring in dropletcondensation. A paper pointing out the analogy between heat and mass

transfer caused the dimensionless quantity involved to be called the"Schmidt Number." In 1937, he became the Director of the Institute for

Propulsion of the newly founded Aeronautical Research Establishment atBraunschweig and Professor at the University there. In 1952, Schmidt

occupied the Chair for Thermodynamics at the Technical University ofMunchen which before him had been held by Nusselt. Being strongly

involved in the development of the international steam tables, Schmidtcontinued his scientific activity after his retirement in 1961 and until his

death in 1975. In recognition of his work, he received numerous honors andawards, including the Ludwig Prandtl Ring, the Max Jakob Award and the

Grashof Commemorative Medal.

ThomasKilgore Sherwood (1903-1976)

Thomas Kilgore Sherwood was born in

Columbus, Ohio on July 25, 1903 and becameone of America's great Chemical Engineers. His

energy, research contributions, appliedengineering achievements and influence on

chemical engineering education were prodigious.Sherwood came to the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology in 1923 to do his graduate work inthe Chemical Engineering Department and

completed his doctoral thesis on The Mechanismof the Drying of Solids under Warren K. Lewis in

1929. From 1930 to 1969 he was Professor at MIT and contributeddecisively to the standards of excellence of this famous institution.

Sherwood's primary research area was mass transfer and its interaction withflow, chemical reaction and industrial process operations in which those

phenomena played an important part. His rapid rise to the position of worldauthority in the field of mass transfer was accelerated by the appearance of

his book Absorption and Extraction, published in 1937 as the first significanttext in this area. Although completely rewritten, with Pigford and Wilke in

1974 under the title Mass Transfer, the book has maintained enormous

influence and worldwide use of the "Sherwood Number" is a memorial tothat effort. In addition to three honorary doctorates, Sherwood receivedmany honors and awards, including: The U.S. Medal for Merit in 1948 and

The Lewis Award in 1972. He died January 14, 1976.

Sir Thomas Edward Stanton (1865-1931)


9/9

British Engineer Sir Thomas Edward Stanton wasborn at Atherstone in Warwickshire, England on

December 12, 1865. In 1888, he entered OwensCollege, Manchester, and followed the

engineering curriculum at the WhitworthLaboratory under Osborne Reynolds. After taking

the degree of B.SC. in 1891 at VictoriaUniversity, with first-class honors, he continued

to work in Reynolds' laboratory, at first as aJunior and later as Senior Demonstrator until

1896. From 1892 until 1896 he was resident tutorin mathematics and engineering at the Hulme Hall of Residence,

Manchester. In June 1896, Stanton obtained a post as Senior AssistantLecturer in Engineering at University College, Liverpool, under Professor

Hele-Shaw. In December 1899, he became a Professor of Engineering at

Bristol University College and Superintendent of the EngineeringDepartment of the National Physical Laboratory in Bristol in July 1901. Heheld this post until his retirement from official duties in December 1930 at

the age of 65 and just one year before his death. Stanton's main field ofinterest was fluid flow and friction and the related problem of heat

transmission. From 1902 to 1907 he executed a large research programwhich focused upon wind forces on structures, such as bridges and roofs.

After 1908, the year when the Wright Brothers made their first aerospaceflights in Europe, Stanton devoted himself to problems of aeroplane and

airship design and the dissipation of heat from air-cooled engines.

Pioneers of Heat Transfer

Documents

Transcript of Pioneers of Heat Transfer