Transport phenomena

Abstract

R Byron BirdR. Byron Bird (known as “Bob” to his friends) is well known for his pioneering research in non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, especially as it relates to polymers, as well as macromolecular kinetic theory and transport phenomena. He is the coauthor of four widely used books (the backgrounds of which are described in the following Retrospective) and approximately 125 research papers and 50 review articles which involve these research areas. Professor Bird received a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1947, and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1950. His long career in the Chemical Engineering Department at Wisconsin began in 1953, where he became full Professor in 1957, was Department Chairman 1964–1968, and Vilas Research Professor until 1992, when he “retired” from the university. He has also been visiting professor at Kyoto University, Nagoya University, University of California at Berkeley, Huadong Huagong Xueyuan (Shanghai), Technische Universiteit Delft, Universite´ Catholique de Louvain, and Technical University of Denmark (Lyngby). His outstanding research has been recognized world-wide, resulting in many honors and awards. Among his awards are the Wm. H. Walker Award (1962), Warren K. Lewis Award (1974), and the Founders Award (1989) from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the Bingham Medal (1974) from the Society of Rheology; and the Eringen Medal (1983) of the Society of Engineering Science. In 1987, President Reagan presented him with the National Medal of Science. Professor Bird is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (since 1969) and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, a Foreign Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the Royal Flemish Academy Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (since 1970), the American Academy of Mechanics, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received honorary doctorates from nine universities. Although Professor Bird retired officially from his university position nine years ago, he remains very active in research. During the past five years, he has published papers on, for example, statistical mechanics of transport phenomena, multicomponent diffusion in polymeric liquids, and thermal conductivity of chainlike polymer solutions. He is very interested in languages, having published research papers in several languages, two Dutch readers and three books dealing with translation of technical Japanese texts. He is “addicted to” wilderness canoe trips in Canada; the most unforgettable of his 70 or so trips was a 3-week 320-mile trip down Coppermine River in the Northwest Territory in 1971, ending up at the Arctic Ocean. by Arthur LeissaThe term transport phenomena is used to describe processes in which mass, momentum, angular momentum, and energy move about in matter. Thus it includes diffusional phenomena, fluid dynamics, and heat transport. The subject may be treated from a molecular point of view (kinetic theory), from a microscopic point of view (continuum mechanics), or from a macroscopic point of view (equipment description). Parts of the subject of transport phenomena have been around for a long time: Inviscid fluid dynamics was studied in the 1700s by Bernoulli and Euler, and Newton enunciated his comments on momentum flux in the 1680s, although it was not until the 1820s that the Navier-Stokes equations were formulated. Fourier established the equations for heat flux and heat conduction in the 1820s, and in the century that followed the equations for heat convection and thermal radiation had been established. Fick’s first and second laws of diffusion date back to the 1850s, but it was not until a half-century later that convective mass transport was studied. On the other hand, many topics are of newer vintage. In the 1930s (Onsager), 1940s (Eckart), and 1950s (Kirkwood and Crawford, Hirschfelder and Curtiss, Prigogine, and others) worked on the cross effects, such as thermal diffusion, the diffusion-thermo effect, and forced diffusion. Although the theoretical bases for the transport phenomena were virtually complete by the 1950s, the continuum theory of transport phenomena was not much used in chemical engineering because of the apparent intractability of the equations. Only relatively simple problems could be solved analytically, and computing machines were quite primitive by today’s standards. There was a similar development of the molecular theory of transport phenomena. Both Maxwell and Boltzmann had succeeded before the beginning of the 20th century in drafting formal theories of a rigorous kinetic theory of monatomic gases at low density, and they had established the connection with the equations of change for velocity, concentration, and temperature. But it was not until the second decade of the 20th century that the Boltzmann integrodifferential equation was solved (independently by Chapman a