Contents

Executive Committee - 1999-2001
Committees
L. Gary Leal 2000 Bingham Medalist
Student Poster Competition
72nd Annual Meeting - Hilton Head, SC
Rheology Short Course
2000 Bingham Medal Goes To L. Gary Leal
Comments From The President Gerry Fuller
Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting - April 2, 2000
Nominations Of The 2001 Bingham Medal
Technical Program For Hilton Head
	Determining Molecular Weight Distributions From The Rheological Properties of Polymer Melts (PDF, 261 kB)
Rheology Bulletin Author Guidelines
Future Meetings Of The Society
Book Review
Student-Member Travel Grants for Hilton Head
George K. Batchelor (1920 - 2000)
Bird Roasted

Executive Committee - 1999-2001

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Committees

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L. Gary Leal
2000 Bingham Medalist

The Bingham medal of the Society for 2000 will be awarded at the Hilton Head meeting to Professor Gary Leal of of the University of California at Santa Barbara. A write-up appears inside this issue of the Bulletin.

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Student Poster Competition

A $200 prize will be awarded to the best student poster at the Hilton Head meeeting. This is the first time that such a competition is being held. Details of rules are available on the meeting website.

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72nd Annual Meeting
Hilton Head, SC
February 11 - 15, 2001

The venue for the 72nd annual meeting is the Westin Resort on Hilton Head, SC. The meeting will start on Sunday evening, February 11 and end at noon on Thursday, February 15. The meeting organizers are:

Information concerning meeting and hotel registration and transportation to Hilton Head may be found as an insert in this issue of the Bulletin.

A two-day short course entitled "Rheology of Colloidal Dispersions" will be offered in Hilton Head, February 10-11, 2001. The instructors are Professor Bill Russel of Princeton University and Professor Norm Wagner of the University of Delaware. A complete course description as well as registration information are given inside.

Gary Leal, who is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is being honored on account of his outstanding and wide-ranging accomplishments in rheology over the last thirty years and especially so during the past decade.

Gary was born in Bellingham, WA and received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle. After obtaining a Ph.D. at Stanford, he went to Cambridge University for post-doctoral training and then joined the faculty at Caltech from where he moved to U.C. Santa Barbara eleven years ago as Chairman of Chemical Engineering. The pre-eminence of that department as one of the Centers of Chemical Engineering on an International scale is a fitting testimonial to Gary's leadership and vision.

Gary has received numerous awards which include, to name but a few: election to the U.S. Academy of Engineering, a Guggenheim fellowship and the Colburn and Walker awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In addition, he is currently the co-editor of the Physics of Fluids, one of the two most prestigious journals in fluid mechanics.

Gary's research contributions to rheology cover an amazing spectrum of subjects and entail an almost perfect blend of analysis, computations and sophisticated experiments. For example, his research on drop deformation and breakup has brought results that are certain to become classic contributions. His experiments using the four roll mill produced the most complete set of measurements on this problem and may never be matched in thoroughness and precision. In fact, it is fair to say that Gary's results on the dynamics of droplets have laid the foundations for much of the present work on the rheology of blends and emulsions. Furthermore, Gary developed a general theory for describing the dynamics of orientable particles which has become the basis for subsequent constitutive theories for a wide range of microstructural materials. He was also among the first to recognize that the stretching of polymer chains in an inhomogeneous flow depends strongly on the residence time of the chain in different regions of the flow and by means of his ingenious use of optical rheometry obtained some of the most conclusive results on the subject. In addition, he popularized the concept of reptation with segmental stretch in entangled solutions and developed a vector-based version of the reptation model which retains the basic physics and is yet simple enough to allow calculations of nontrivial flows. He has authored over 200 papers plus one textbook and has been the Ph.D. thesis advisor of over 40 students.

Clearly, a more outstanding record would be difficult to imagine.

Andreas Acrivos

Over the past several years, the Society has undertaken a major review of its constitution. This was initiated by Past President Ronald Larson, and the efforts were coordinated by an ad hoc committee chaired by Faith Morrison. This process culminated in a vote on a series of proposed changes late last year, and I am writing to report on the outcome. The ballot consisted of seven issues, and the membership approved all of them by comfortable majorities. Overall, 500 members cast ballots in this important vote.

The proposal to change the qualifications for the Bingham Medal to include members of the Society residing outside of North America elicited the greatest debate. Nonetheless, 79% of the ballots were in favor of this important change. The call for nominations for the Bingham Medal contained in this Bulletin is the first to include this expansion in eligibility. Also connected with the Bingham Medal was the second issue, which proposed allowing the Executive Committee to set the monetary award (subject to the constraint that it not be changed more than twice in a five-year period). This measure won 86% of the vote.

The next election of officers in the year 2001 will see the addition of a third Member-at-Large on the ballot. This measure, which passed with 77% of the vote, will expand the representation of the Executive Committee and will offer increased opportunities for members to serve the Society and to become trained in its governance.

The remaining four issues that were presented for vote were motivated by a desire to improve the language of the constitution and to remove inconsistencies. They also involved legalistic clarification, adoption of gender-neutral language and correction of grammar and punctuation. These matters were all accepted with a strong majority of the votes cast.

The Society was certainly well served by the very careful work by Faith Morrison and her committee. Successfully putting this ballot before the membership represented a tremendous amount of work, and I thank Faith on behalf of the Society. I am also pleased to announce that Faith has accepted the assignment to serve as Chair of the Membership Committee following the fine work by the previous Chair, Bill Vanarsdle.

Nominations are invited for the 2001 Bingham award. These should be submitted before December 1, 2000*  to the next chair of the Bingham Award Committee, Professor Bamin Khomami, at Department of Chemical Engineering, Washington University, Campus Box 1198, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899. Professor Khomami's e-mail address is bam@poly1.che.wustl.edu. New award guidelines may be found here. Note that these guidelines now permit the nomination of any member of the Society, regardless of the continent of residence.

* This is earlier than the deadline stated in the print version.

Authors should submit an abstract after September 1, 2000, but before October 27, 2000, through the World Wide Web using the SoR abstract submission page at the meeting web site. The planned symposia and the corresponding chairs are:

The Rheology Bulletin publishes papers on the applied aspects of Rheology which are intended for the non-specialist. Appropriate topics include the application of rheological principles to a specific system, instrumentation for rheological measurements, description of interesting rheological phenomena, and the use of well-established rheological techniques to characterize products, processes or phenomena. Papers describing historical aspects of the practice of rheology and how these have influenced current trends are welcome. Also welcome are papers that address the present and changing status of rheological education. Consultation with the Editor prior to manuscript submission is encouraged.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ELASTOMER MOLECULAR NETWORK THEORY

Arthur S. Lodge
Bannatek Press, P.O. Box 44133, Madison, WI 53744 (1999).
160 pages, $25 or 18 Sterling

In this monograph, which can be considered as an extension of his earlier work on Elastic Liquids (1964), Professor Lodge provides us with a critical, concise account of a molecular theory of condensed phase macroscopic behavior.

This work develops, from first principles, the required physics used in developing molecular theories of macroscopic properties of materials. In particular, a reasonably successful molecular theory of macroscopic rubber properties is described. Concepts and terms are clearly defined. Chapter 1 characterizes the rubber-like state. Chapter 2 deals with elastomers at the macroscopic level. The discussion is limited to homogeneous deformations. Chapter 3 deals with classical thermodynamics and uses body stress and metric tensors as generalizations of p and v. The term "equilibrium state" is treated as an undefined element. Chapter 4 is on statistical mechanics, introducing/reviewing ensembles, phase space, .... bridging molecular and macroscopic levels. These chapters dealing with continuum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are self contained. The tools presented are used in the (classical mechanics) derivation of constitutive equations. Chapter 5 introduces the Gaussian network theory while Chapters 6 and 7 provide the reader with a critical discussion of the theory deductions and available experimental evidence. Optical analysis is briefly mentioned but the references in this area are not up to date.

Very useful exercises are dispersed throughout. Solutions to these problems as well as further comments on the literature can be found in the appendices.

This work is relatively free of typographical errors and makes for a nice complement to an introductory rheology course which typically would deal only with topics such as generalized Newtonian fluids, rheometry and (mainly) linear viscoelasticity. This attractively priced monograph could also, quite nicely, be used in the context of an independent study course for students pursuing graduate work in rheology.

I enjoyed reading this presentation and plan to work it into the more advanced rheology course taken by Ph.D. candidates at Tulane.

Daniel De Kee
Department of Chemical Engineering
Tulane University

The Society is again offering travel grants to graduate student members to attend the annual meeting of the Society. Support is provided to defray the cost of public transportation to the meeting site. Interested student members may contact Dr. Lisa Mondy at Sandia National Laboratories concerning rules and eligibility. Dr. Mondy can be reached by telephone at (505) 844-1755 or by e-mail at lamondy@sandia.gov.

With the passing of George Batchelor last March 30, at the age of 80, the international fluid mechanics community lost one of its most influential leaders who, by common consent, had dominated the field throughout the past five decades.

George was born in Melbourne, Australia, where he received his undergraduate education in Mathematics and Physics. In January 1945, after having spent the war years at the Australian Aeronautical Research Laboratory, where he focused on fluid-flow problems in aircraft engines, George embarked on a ten-week voyage via New Zealand, the Panama Canal and in a convoy across the Atlantic, reaching Cambridge, where he was destined to spend the whole of his academic career and the rest of his life.

His Ph.D. thesis on Kolmogorov's theory for the structure of small-scale turbulence, under the direction of G. I. Taylor, brought him instant recognition and established him as one of the rising young stars in fluid mechanics. In numerous subsequent papers and in his landmark monograph, "The Theory of Homogeneous Turbulence", George greatly expanded the theoretical underpinning of the field as well as its application to diverse areas such as heat transfer and the dispersion of particulates in turbulent atmosphere. But turbulence was not the only area of fluid mechanics in which George made seminal contributions, as a cursory glance at the Author's Index of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics will quickly ascertain. Indeed, the scope of George's deep knowledge of the whole of fluid mechanics is amply demonstrated by the contents of his masterful 1967 textbook, "An Introduction to Fluid Mechanics" which has already taken its place as one of the top classical fluid mechanics books to have ever been written. Of more relevance to the rheology community, however, are his numerous papers on particle motions at low Reynolds numbers where, inter alia, he developed an original and highly ingenious technique for renormalizing certain divergent integrals which are encountered invariably in the determination of the bulk properties of dilute suspensions. In this way, he was able to extend Einstein's famous formula for the effective viscosity of a suspension of spheres to the order v², where v refers to the particle volume fraction, and to derive in a rigorous way the first order correction to the hindrance function for sedimenting suspensions. He was also the first to show theoretically that a dilute suspension of aligned slender rods can increase dramatically its extensional viscosity while leaving its shear viscosity essentially unchanged.

George was more than an outstanding researcher, however. He was a superp teacher who educated a large number of students through his lectures and by acting as their Ph.D. advisor. Scores of them have already achieved international reputations of their own, and about a dozen or so of his former students have already been elected Fellows of the Royal Society of London. But his influence extended even beyond his role as a researcher and teacher, for, as is well-known, he created a school in Cambridge, eventually to become the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, which quickly developed into a top fluid mechanics center on an international scale that attracted countless reseach students, post-docs, and international scholars, as well as senior seientists on sabbatical leaves. He was invariably supportive of the visitors to his department, especially to the members of the younger generation, and the hospitality which he and his late wife Wilma extended to all of them became legendary.

In 1956, George founded the Journal of Fluid Mechanics which, from its inception, became the leading and most prestigious journal in the field, and served as its editor until a little over a year ago. He was a founding member and long-time chairman of the European Mechanics Committee, which was responsible for rejuvenating, during the post-war years, the mechanics activity throughout Europe, and served the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics in several capacities.

George was elected to the Royal Society, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and numerous other prestigious organizations, and received countless Awards and Honors. But what surely must have pleased him even more than such recognition is the realization that he had an enormous and very positive impact on fluid mechanics and on the lives of many of us.

George was the leader who led us into the promised land, the fascinating world of fluid mechanics. We are grateful to him for what he created and thankful that he made us a part of it.

Andreas Acrivos

On February 4, 2000, Texas A&M University hosted a symposium in honor of University of Wisconsin (UW) Emeritus Professor of Chemical Enginering R. Byron Bird. Professor Jeffrey Giacomin of the University of Wisconsin delivered a lecture on Professor Bird's academic genealogy, called the Bird's nest. The roast included birthday cake, complete with trick candles, to celebrate Professor Bird's 76th birthday which was the following day. Held in Bird's birthplace, Bryan, TX, the banquet coincided with Charles Lindbergh's birthday. A hero of Professor Bird's, Lindbergh is the UW Mechanical Engineering Department's most celebrated former student. Giacomin, who flew in from Singapore for the event, pointed out that without trans-oceanic flight, the roast would have been impossible. Asked why he would fly so far for a banquet, Giacomin quipped, "I think we all like Bird well roasted."

The symposium consisted of a large number of technical lectures including one by Bird himself showing how mass flux in polymeric liquids can be affected by the flow field.