History of the Fluids Engineering Division

Of interest and importance prior to the official establishment of the HYD was the state-of-the-art of hydraulics within ASME between its founding in 1880 and the establishment of HYD in 1926 (Figs. 1–3). There were many articles on fluid-related topics in the ASME Transactions and Mechanical Engineering (ME) between 1880 and 1930, as listed in Table 1 from Refs. [1] and [2]. The 1930 paper in ME “Fifty Years' Progress in Hydraulics” by Moody (Fig. 1) and Van Leer [3] had numerous articles, including theoretical hydraulics, water hammer, fluid metering, the Pelton wheel, American hydraulic turbines, and pumping machines.

The development of hydroelectric power stations necessitated the understanding of hydraulic turbine performance. This technology was a major element in design of hydraulic turbines—Francis, Kaplan, and Pelton designs. Moreover, there were issues beyond the design of turbines, namely, water hammer, cavitation, and flow measurement, and technical areas of interest to mechanical engineers (principally ASME). Because of the promise of power output from hydroelectric power stations, flow measurement was critical, resulting in improvement of various techniques including impulse–momentum (Gibson Method, Fig. 2), salt-velocity method attributed to Allen (Fig. 3), and venturimeter for smaller pipes enhanced by Herschel for smaller piping systems.

John R. Freeman (Fig. 4) was the star in the hydraulic activity over the 50-year period from 1880 to 1930, conducting experiments on head loss in pipes and determining the characteristics of fire nozzles. He was aware of the fact that European hydraulic laboratories were far more advanced than those in the U.S. He set out to remedy the deplorable situation by visits to Europe and the encouragement of these laboratories to encourage visitors from the U.S. as well as write reports of their investigations. This effort led to a comprehensive report [4], an article in German, which was later translated into English [5].

The ASME Freeman Fund was established in 1926 by John R. Freeman, noted Hydraulic Engineer and Scholar, Honorary Member, 24th President of ASME, and recipient of the Society's Gold Medal. Mr. Freeman's active life was crowded with achievements in many fields. To an unusual degree, he brought the benefits of engineering to humanity in many lands, giving his energy and his money unselfishly to meritorious causes and directing his talents to business and to engineering with an enthusiasm and thoroughness that made his pursuit of both these professions successful. Exemplifying his unselfish character, Mr. Freeman suggested a flexible program for utilization of the ASME Freeman Fund when he gave in trust to the Society securities, valued at $25,000. It was stipulated that income be devoted in general to research. Mr. Freeman expressed his wish that, for the moment, part of the income from the gift be used to guarantee the publication of the translation and printing of the German work on Hydraulics (representing extraordinary research in that field). He also recommended traveling scholarships for engineering students. In early years, it supported fellowships for the study of hydraulic laboratory practice in Europe, later it supported publication of important hydraulic research data, and lately, it has been granted to support research programs in hydraulics and fluid mechanics. Up until 1938, an article entitled “Progress in Hydraulics” was published periodically in ME and in the ASME Transactions.

Mention should also be made of Robert Henry Thurston, who was the first president of ASME, as well as an educator and an accomplished mechanical engineer. Little is known about his expertise in the design of steam piping systems for heating in cities and for power plant applications. Moreover, he published an article in ASME Transactions in 1883 regarding water hammer in steam lines that, due to inactivity for a period of time, allowed the formation of condensate [6]. Introduction of hot steam in a dormant line with condensate is a current issue and is termed condensation-induced water hammer. Although the application was for single-phase water hammer, it should be noted that the first technical committee established under HYD auspices in 1931 was the Water Hammer committee. The Thurston Lecture is an annual society level award recommended by Basic Engineering Group (BETGOB).

For nearly 46 years, ASME members with an interest in hydraulics had no home of their own but still met at least once annually at the Winter Annual Meeting (WAM) or with other divisions—mainly with the Power Division. There was, however, a ground swell of interest in establishing a division with interest solely in hydraulics. On November 25, 1925, Dr. Lewis F. Moody led the effort as temporary chairman to formulate a petition for establishment of a professional division entitled Hydraulic Division (HYD), which was endorsed by 146 ASME members without any dissenter. Notable cosigners of the petition were C. M. Allen, Worcester Poly; R. L. Daugherty, Caltech; W. F. Durand, Stanford; J. R. Freeman, Industry; N. R. Gibson, Industry; L. F. Harza, Industry; A. Hollander, Berkeley; S. L. Kerr, Industry; J. N. LeConte, Berkeley; C. T. Main, Industry; L. F. Moody, Consulting Engineer; and R. S. Quick, Industry.

Over the next three decades as the activities of HYD developed, committees were formed to cover specific areas of interest. The establishment and history of the Water Hammer (1931) and Cavitation (1937) committees are found in Sec. 5 on Committee Histories, as well as of the following four other original committees: Hydraulic Prime Movers (1938), Pumping Machinery (1938), Compressors (1950), and Fluid Mechanics (1957).

These committees were sometimes called subcommittees at various times over the years, and the ones existing now—including those added in subsequent years—are called Technical Committees.

During the 1930s, the HYD continued to be active in not only the traditional areas of hydraulics, namely, turbine and pump design and performance, but also emerging problems of water hammer, surge tank simulation, and cavitation. Theodore von Kàrmàn, (Fig. 5) after arriving at Caltech during 1930, continued to enhance the understanding of turbulence and its effect on fluid resistance, as well as to advise his colleagues in their research endeavors; the main recipient being Robert T. Knapp (Fig. 6), to be referred to later. Of note is the fact that von Kàrmàn received the ASME Medal for his contributions to a vast array of fluid mechanics problems.

During the decades 1930 and 1940, there was considerable activity devoted to the understanding of surface resistance to flow, in particular, pressure loss in uniform flow in pipes. In 1944, L. F. Moody, then a professor at the Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, took the friction factor correlations from Colebrook and White and prepared a working graph, which, indeed, is the standard in use today—called the Moody diagram.

The Hydraulic Division was aptly named at its inception in 1926, continuing emphasizing activities related to hydraulics as fostered by the six original committees. However, industry was changing and topic areas not only embraced hydraulics, but also the need for research and development—principally in the expanding topic area of fluid mechanics—began to have an effect. Opportunities existed in both industry and university settings. Contract work that existed as a result of World War II continued—especially in defense-related fields.

Major research-oriented universities became active during the 1950s, as reported by Rouse (1976), who referred to the next decade or so as “The Rise in Fluid Mechanics,” leading to the formation of a fluid mechanics committee with R. C. Dean (Fig. 7) as the first chair in 1957. Also, the first specialty conference on hydraulics (HYD) was held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, in 1959—of a total of 20 papers, seven could be classified as fluid mechanics papers. Then, in 1963, a newsletter was initiated with R. C. Dean as Editor.

Elite universities in New England and California led the way. There was also a groundswell of activity and interest in renaming HYD to more accurately reflect the interest and focus of subcommittee members. The charge to rename HYD to FED was led by Robert C. Dean (MIT)—supported by Stephen Kline (Stanford) (Fig. 8) and Howard Emmons (Harvard) (Fig. 9) with encouragement from A. H. Shapiro (MIT) (Fig. 10). There was, however, a cadre of subcommittee members from Water Hammer and Hydraulic Prime Movers who strongly supported the name HYD, as it suited their activities. As described by Rouse [7], a well-respected individual who brought the hydraulic-oriented members and fluid mechanics members together was George Wislicenus (Fig. 11). When the vote was taken, the “Old-Timers” were defeated as indicated in Table 2, and the name was changed from HYD to FED in 1963. Moreover, Dean and Kline used their platform to stimulate discussion of unresolved fluid mechanics problems [8].

Chairs of the HYD/FED Executive Committee are listed in Table 3. At this point, a timeline of significant events or milestones in the history of the FED would be helpful to the reader and would put all the subsequent details of the paper in the proper perspective. Therefore, the major FED milestones are presented in Table 4.

By 1989, the fluids engineering landscape had changed sufficiently to merit a significant structural adjustment. Affected were the technical committees (sometimes called subcommittees over the years) and the other functions of the Division. As we have seen, this had happened in varying degrees from the formation of the Division's technical committees in the 1930s through changes of the names of these committees and the combination of some of them into new ones that took on new areas of interest and reduced activity in other areas. Some committees were formed and then disappeared along with activity in the fields they addressed.

So the Fluids Engineering Division Executive Committee (FEDEC) at their meeting in late 1989 proposed a review that would ensure better coordination of their committees and would increase participation of the industrial members of the Division in its technical programs. This would address three trends that characterized the new landscape, namely, (a) the increase in fluids engineering industrial applications in addition to traditional fluid machinery (pumps and turbines), (b) a fusion of the disciplines of that traditional fluid machinery area, and (c) increased research in basic flows in the fluid mechanics discipline.

Accordingly, under the direction of Chair Tom Morel, the FEDEC solicited input from the technical committee and coordinating group chairs, and from this, they developed a suggested structure. They asked Paul Cooper and Sam Martin to chair an open meeting of the Division on June 4, 1990, at the ASME Spring Fluids Engineering Conference that was held jointly with the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) Mechanical Engineering Forum in Toronto on June 3–8, 1990. The purpose of the meeting was for the attendees to examine the operation, structure, and mission of the FED and to consider improvements that would maintain and increase the effectiveness of the FED. Tom Morel presented the FEDEC report, and after discussion, the members authorized the proposed new committee structure, which is shown in the Organization Chart of Fig. 12.

The major change leading to this chart was the formation of two new technical committees, namely, the Fluid Applications and Systems Technical Committee (FASTC) and a Fluid Mechanics Technical Committee (FMTC). Into FASTC were folded the activities and responsibilities of the former Fluid Machinery Committee (FMaC), the Fluid Transients Committee (FTC), and the portion of the earlier Fluid Mechanics Committee that pertained to engineering applications of Fluid Mechanics. The new FMTC would emphasize fundamental fluid mechanics. The Multiphase Flow Technical Committee (MFTC) continued as before, as did the two coordinating groups—for Fluid Measurements (CGFM) and for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CGCFD).

The program areas and subcommittee structures within these three committees were defined in a subsequent meeting of members of the FEDEC and the subcommittee chairs in October 1990, as shown, respectively, in Tables 5–7 [9].

For the coordinating groups, the CGFM was charged with working in such areas as fluid meters, laser Doppler anemometry, other optical flow measurement and visualization applications, pressure and temperature measurements, and experimental uncertainty. The CGCFD was to apply computational fluid dynamics techniques to the solution of fluids engineering problems, and the program areas included numerical uncertainty, identification of benchmark cases, and cooperation with similar groups from other technical societies. Both groups were to coordinate with the technical committees in their respective areas of endeavor.

Beside the technical committees and coordinating groups, Fig. 12 also shows the other committees that were recognized as part of the new structure of the FED. First, there were the Standing Committees listed in the right-most column of the figure. Up top is the then newly created Advisory Board to the FEDEC, which consisted of resource persons such as past FEDEC members, past technical committee and coordinating group chairs, senior members of the Division, and others familiar with the programs of FED and fluids engineering. They advised the FEDEC in future technical programs, industry, government, and university cooperation, the FED Student Papers Contest, and agendas for special programs and other topics.

With regard to the foregoing changes in the technical committees and coordinating groups, these are simply developments in the evolution that has been a feature of the existence of the FED from the foundation of the Division. This evolution up to the present time can be seen in Fig. 13.

Note, in this figure, that the previous significant change was the formation of the Fluid Machinery Committee in 1968 by combining within it the activities of the earlier committees on Hydraulic Prime Movers (mainly hydraulic turbines formed in 1938), Pumping Machinery (also formed in 1938), and Compressors (1950). The name of the Cavitation Committee (formed in 1937) was changed to the Polyphase Flow Committee (PFC) in 1970, thereby including in its mission all types of flow with more than one phase, cavitation being only one of these. Then, in 1982, conforming to general terminology for such flows, this became known as the MFTC.

Finally, it will be noted from Fig. 13 that the two coordinating groups became technical committees in 2002, namely, the Fluid Measurements and Instrumentation Technical Committee (FMITC) and the Computational Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee (CFDTC). Also, at that time the new Micro and Nano Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee (MNFDTC) came into existence.

The 1990 restructuring of the FED Technical Committees and Coordinating Groups was a watershed event in the development history of the FED, not only because of the actual changes that were made but also because it established a mindset that would facilitate further changes if and when future needs might demonstrate a need to do so. In that sense, the line-up of these technical committees and coordinating groups can now be viewed as a snapshot which addressed the prevailing needs of the fluids engineering community at that point in time.

For example, as described above, just 12 years later in 2002, the respective roles, missions, and involvements of the two Coordinating Groups—on Fluid Measurements and on CFD—had developed sufficiently to merit upgrading them to full status as Technical Committees.

To get a sense of the dynamics involved in such developments, it is instructive for us to fill out the story of each of these Technical Committees from their foundation to the present day. Of particular note, as shown in Fig. 13, 1938 saw a major reorganization of the HYD—akin to 1990 in importance—when it added three more committees, another having just been formed in 1937. Thus, for the first time, there were then five fully functioning committees, which for the most part remained active and prominent for the next 30 years.

The FASTC today has its roots in five earlier committees that began in the 1930s and later. These committees were led by distinguished engineers and academicians and were influential in their time. Also, as shown in Fig. 13, others underwent permutations and name changes. Still others were formed and later phased out. These developments can be traced by studying the ASME Society Records from 1927 to 1978 [10]. The FED Newsletters, which have been published annually in the spring since the first one appeared in 1963 under the editorship of Dr. Robert C. Dean, have carried the record forward to the present. The respective histories of these groups are described in the following paragraphs.

As discussed in Sec. 4 on FED Restructuring, the FASTC was formed in 1990 from the FTC and FMaC and the applied portion of the material handled by the former Fluid Mechanics Committee. In turn, the FMaC had been formed in 1968 as a combination of the Hydraulic Prime Movers, Pumping Machinery, and Compressors Committees. The details of these progenitors of the FASTC are next described.

Founded in 1931, this was the first technical committee formed by the HYD—then just 4 years old. In those days, such committees reported to the Executive Committee (just as the technical committees do today), but each was simply called a “committee” (or “subcommittee”). According to the ASME Society Records, they all became “subcommittees” in 1957; however, in 1964, they are listed as “committees” again. Finally, in 1972, they all officially incorporated “technical committee” in each name [10].

Starting out as the Water Hammer Committee, the name was changed in 1965 to the more general Fluid Transients Committee. Dave Wiggert, Committee member and Chair (1980–1982), described this committee and its activities as follows [11]:

In the 1930s, the graphical method of waterhammer analysis was developed in Europe and elsewhere by Schnyder, Bergeron, Angus, and others. ASME sponsored the translation of the treatise by Bergeron titled “Water Hammer in Hydraulics and Wave Surges in Electricity,” which elegantly described the graphical method and was published in 1961 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. In 1965, a third symposium, entitled “Waterhammer in Pumped Storage Projects” was presented. This may be one of the earliest publications to mention the use of digital computation for the analysis of waterhammer. In the same year, with V. L. Streeter as Chairman, the name of the Committee was changed to FTC; this was done in part to encompass the diverse interests of the committee members and participants which included topics, such as biological, two-dimensional, and two-phase flows and flows in aircraft hydraulic systems, power plant piping, oil pipelines, among others.

A revitalization of the Committee took place in the 1970s; in addition to traditional waterhammer, its scope was expanded to include unsteady flow, fluid–structure interaction, and vibrations. The impetus for change resulted from a task force study spearheaded by P. Rothe and C. S. Martin beginning in 1975. Recommendations included a broadening of fluid transients topics, outreach to interested industrial practitioners, and an increase in the offering of symposia. A significant number of symposia and forums were sponsored by the FTC between 1970 and 1990. These are found in Sec. 6 on Conferences, Symposia, and Forums.

Past Chairmen of the Water Hammer Committee/FTC are given in Table 8. The fluid transients component of the FASTC has continued to remain active inasmuch as the discipline continues to evolve, new applications interestingly appear, and practitioners around the world look to ASME to provide leadership in offering venues for disseminating state-of-the-art information.

Although the Water Hammer Committee/FTC was formed officially in 1935, the other major committees of the HYD were formed in 1937–1938; and, as we have seen with the FTC that they remained strong contributors to the Division's program up to the 1990 restructuring and beyond. This certainly can be said of the FMaC and its three predecessor committees, namely: (1) Hydraulic Prime Movers, (2) Pumping Machinery—both formed in 1938—and (3) Compressors (1950), all of which were folded into the FMaC in 1968.

1. (1)

   The Hydraulic Prime Movers Committee (HPMC) was chaired by J. Frank Roberts for its first 10 years (from 1938) as seen in the list of the chairs of this committee in Table 9. In those years for which the ASME Records have lists of the members of the committees, the HPMC had as many as 19 members (1958). Large hydraulic turbines were a major emphasis of the HPMC, and it was in the 30 years of its existence that the country saw so much of the development of its hydropower infrastructure.

2. (2)

   The Pumping Machinery Committee (PMC) was chaired by Robert L. Daugherty (Fig. 15) for its first 10 years and had various sponsors during that time and always B. F. Tillson and Hans Ulmann as members. When Robert Folsom became the chair in 1948, A. Hollander, A. J. Stepanoff, and some others became members for the first time. The committee soon grew to include others, notably George Wislicenus, with ten members in 1952, when James W. Daily (Fig. 16) was Chair. Membership reached 20 in 1959. The PMC and the FTC were perhaps the most important continuing influences within the newly formed Fluid Machinery Committee (1968). It is therefore appropriate at this point to list in Table 10 the chairs of the PMC/FMaC from its founding in 1938 until it became part of the FASTC in 1990. This list is a roll call of academicians and engineers who were involved with some of the most important pumps and pump research and technology of their day, such as Professor Daugherty, Professor Daily, and Professor Kittredge and engineers Lewis Kessler, Fred Antunes, Alexander Agostinelli, and Sankaraiyer Gopalakrishnan. In later years, the membership and participation in the work of these committees grew to encompass large lists of engineers and academicians in the particular areas addressed. For example, in 1973, the FMaC consisted of 100 active members and 67 associate members.

3. (3)

   The Compressors Committee (CC) was first chaired in 1950 by A. M. G. Moody for 3 years, successive chairs serving for 2 years each as seen in Table 11. Government and academic researchers such as Joseph Hamrick and George Serovy were among those who served as chairs, and the committee had vice chairs who were responsible for centrifugal, turbomachinery, and reciprocating compressors. This committee appears to have been spun off from the Pumping Machinery Committee, as the ASME records show several pump engineers such as Stepanoff, Gilman, Church, Folsom and Gartman as members of this CC as well as the PMC. However, the CC took on a life of its own and reached a membership of 19 in 1958, which is similar to the numbers reported for the HPMC and the PMC.

4. (4)

   Another, albeit short-lived, committee that appears to have been spun off from the PMC—and could therefore be associated with the committees that were eventually folded into the FMaC—was the Positive Displacement Hydraulic Machinery Committee, which was formed in 1948 and chaired by W. E. Wilson for 3 years and had the same 11 members listed for those years, ending in 1950.

5. (5)

   Another short-lived committee that could be regarded as being under the Fluid Machinery umbrella was the Fluid Power Systems Subcommittee, which was formed in 1957 and chaired by O. S. Carliss for 5 years through 1961. It had seven members, including Hemeon, Laird, Messaros, and Vaugn.

6. (6)

   Next, even though fluidics is probably not a fluid-machinery-related subject, we should mention at this point the one remaining relatively short-lived committee shown in Fig. 13, namely, the Fluidics Committee. This committee was formed in 1967 with Forbes Brown as Chair, and it was organized jointly by the FED and the Automatic Controls Division. As seen in Table 12, it had a series of chairs that ended with Milton Franke in the 1976, after which the committee was transferred over totally to the Automatic Controls Division.

As found in Sec. 6 for all the committees, many symposia and forums were sponsored by the FMaC. Those that were repeated periodically continued to be sponsored by the FASTC after 1990.

Of particular interest to many colleagues who appreciated his leadership in the FED and especially the fluid machinery field within the FASTC, was a technical session honoring Sankaraiyer Gopalakrishnan (Fig. 17), who had passed away in September 2005, was held at the FEDSM-2006 in Miami, FL [12]. His genius in fulfilling the ASME mission of the advancement and interchange of technology via projects within his own industry and involving academia and the ASME was chronicled at this session [13], and the first recipient of the Sankaraiyer Gopalakrishnan Flowserve Pump Technology Award was honored at the close of that memorial session in Miami.

The list of chairs who served from the formation of FASTC in 1990 to date is seen in Table 13. (See the listings in Sec. 6 on Conferences, Symposia, and Forums for all the symposia and forums sponsored by all the committees and Sec. 8 on FED Honors and Awards for a presentation of all the FED-related ASME awards and awardees.)

Before moving into the history of the FMTC, it must be remembered that in 1990, the applied portion of the material handled by this committee was spun off into the FASTC as described in Sec. 4. The materials transferred at that time are found under Item 3 of Table 5, wherein Bajura listed the subjects covered under the program area called Industrial and Environmental Applications. (Positive Displacement Compressors, Pumps, and Motors—the first subject listed—had been added to what otherwise are the “applied” fluid mechanics subjects taken under FASTC cognizance.) Table 6 shows the basic fluid mechanics program areas that were retained by the FMTC and so effectively have remained under its cognizance down to the present.

That said, the FMTC has a long and venerable history, effectively harking back to 1938, when Murrough O'Brien (Fig. 18) and others saw the need for research into and understanding of the fluid dynamical principles involved in the hydraulic machinery, installations, etc., that were being developed at the time. Accordingly, they formed the Committee on General Hydraulics, with O'Brien as Chair. The committee carried on for 3 years, its concerns apparently having been absorbed into the other committees after 1940, when it ceased to exist.

However, it could be argued that Murrough O'Brien had established the precedent for a separate committee dedicated to fluid mechanics. This may have been a factor in the process that led to the establishment in 1957 of the Fluid Mechanics Committee under the Chairmanship of Robert C. Dean (Fig. 7). What is indisputable is that Bob Dean was passionate about the many applications and possibilities for applying the science of fluid mechanics that were arising, knowing that progress in this area also required advancement in the science itself. His vision was for the HYD to meet this challenge in three ways, the first of which was to establish a dedicated and focused Fluid Mechanics Committee within the division. This inevitably led to the second way, which was to change the name of the division in 1963. And finally, in 1973, he would create and become the first editor of the new Journal of Fluids Engineering (JFE)—a part of the Transactions of the ASME. The Fluid Mechanics Committee was therefore an essential element in the total transformation that Dean brought about by driving this rebirth of the Division to serve the evolving fluids engineering reality that he saw so clearly.

While the FMTC started by addressing both the applied and basic subject areas of fluid mechanics as seen in Tables 5 and 6, over the years that followed, it had taken on so much in so many subject areas—namely, the basic ones of Table 6 and many of applied areas of Table 5—that the latter had to be spun off into the FASTC in the 1990 restructuring in order to maintain a balance in the technical committee structure so as to aid the progress and growth of the FED. The many symposia and forums sponsored by the FMTC are found in Sec. 6 on Conferences, Symposia, and Forums. The chairs of the committee are listed in Table 14.

Active for over half a century as an MFTC Committee Member and Chair (1972–1974), William B. (Bill) Morgan (Fig. 19) has provided the following detail about this venerable FED technical committee [14,15].

The founding of the Cavitation Committee came out of sessions devoted to cavitation at the 1935 ASME annual meeting. ME, November 1935, Vol. 57 included the following information under the HYD's report: “At the 1935 annual meeting, two sessions will be devoted to the study of Cavitation and have been arranged in cooperation with the Power Division of the ASCE and the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME.” The two cavitation papers which were presented at the 1935 ASME annual meeting were: “Cavitation Testing of Model Hydraulic Turbines and Its Bearing on Design and Operation” by L. M. Davis and “Cavitation Testing Propeller Pumps” by A. Tenor.

ME, 1937, reported the following: “On June 25 and 26, 1937, there was a joint meeting of the Applied Mechanics and Hydraulic Divisions in Ithaca, NY. On Saturday morning, there was a discussion on the pitting resistance of metal under cavitation conditions and the relative resistance to cavitation erosion by the vibratory method. Saturday afternoon was devoted to a round-table conference by the HYD on present status of cavitation research in the U.S. and Canada. It was an unusual privilege to have representatives from all the groups now engaged in cavitation research present to discuss this problem and to report upon their work and the programs contemplated for the future. The following research investigations were reported upon: Pennsylvania Water & Power Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of Toronto, Shawinigan Water & Power Corporation, Canada, and U.S. Naval Propeller Testing Laboratory. Following the discussion of the research program, the meeting was thrown open to discussion on the definition of cavitation action, and it was generally agreed that a sharp distinction should be drawn between cavitation itself and the pitting or erosive action resulting from cavitation. A subcommittee of the main Cavitation Committee is to be appointed to prepare a definition, which would be recommended, for general use. Subcommittees are also being organized to prepare recommended methods for determining the relative resistance of materials to pitting under cavitation conditions and also for the recommended methods by which the characteristics of turbines, pumps, and propellers can be established under cavitation conditions.”

From this information, one can conclude that the Cavitation Committee of the Hydraulic Division was formed in 1937. The ASME Society Records [10], Part 1, lists for 1937 the following under the HYD: Committee on Cavitation, C. F. Merriam, Sponsor (Chairman to be appointed). The ASME Society Records list the following as in office 1 January 1938: Committee on Cavitation, C. F. Merriam, Sponsor and Lewis F. Moody, Chairman (Fig. 1). Moody served as Chairman through 1947. R. T. Knapp (Fig. 6) became Chairman and Sponsor in 1948 but by 1950, the position of Sponsor had been dropped. Sponsors during the term of L. F. Moody as Chairman were: 1938, C. F. Merriam; 1939–1943, E. B. Strowger; and 1944–1947, R. E. B. Sharp. The role of Sponsor versus Chairman is unclear from the records. Full Cavitation Committee membership was first listed in the Society records in 1941. Besides the Chairman and Sponsor, the following were listed as committee members: R. T. Knapp (Fig. 6), J. M. Mousson, W. J. Rheingans, and George F. Wislicenus (Fig. 11). There was no change in committee membership, except for sponsors, up through 1947. The ASME Society Records 1948 lists the committee members as R. T. Knapp, Chairman, J. W. Daily, C. H. Hancock, W. B. Hess, W. J. Rheingans, Hunter Rouse (ASCE), R. E. B. Sharp, R. O. Standing, Hans Ulmann, and George F. Wislicenus. In 1959, the committee members were: J. W. Daily (Chairman), C. F. Cheng, W. B. Hess, J. Z. Lichtman, J. Parmakian, K. Pilarczyk, W. J. Rheingans, B. G. Rightmire, L. E. Robinson, Jr., R. S. Sproule, W. W. Weltmer, W. G. Whippen and G. F. Wislicenus. In 1960, the listing of committee members was dropped from the Society records. Chairs of the Committee are listed in Table 15.

The Cavitation Committee has held very few meetings by itself. In 1938, the Cavitation Committee held a meeting in Lancaster and Safe Harbor, PA, with an attendance of 50. Also, the Cavitation Committee sponsored a Cavitation Seminar on November 11–13, 1955 in Milwaukee at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. The first annual HYD National Conference was held in April 1959 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. This has become the annual Summer Conference of the Fluids Engineering Division which negated any need for sole meetings of the Cavitation Committee.

In the April 1970 Newsletter, a proposed name change for the Cavitation Committee was suggested. “The Cavitation Committee is considering changing its name to reflect a broader coverage than that indicated by the word cavitation. Two suggestions under consideration are the ‘Poly-Phase Flow’ or ‘Multi-Phase Flow’ Committee. Some prefer Poly-Phase since both words are of Greek origin whereas Multi is a word of Latin origin. Dr. Milton Plesset, former chairman of the Committee and a current member of the Executive Committee, is acting as ‘referee’ on this question.” At the WAM in December 1970, the PFC officially came into being. The new technical committee extends the scope of the former Cavitation Committee to the general area of polyphase flow, partly to offset a decline in activity in the field of cavitation and partly to emphasize new areas.

In 1980, the FED Executive Committee formulated a Task Force consisting of Dick Bajura, Clayton Crowe, and Kumar (Upendra) Rohatgi to review the past activity in the PFC and make recommendations concerning future organizational changes and programs which would broaden both the scope and membership of the Committee. This Task Force reported out in 1982 and recommended a name change to the Multiphase Flow Technical Committee and that the Committee should consider the constituent technologies of the various combined flows of liquids, gases, and solids. Thus, the name was changed to the Multiphase Flow Technical Committee in line with the current usage of term “multiphase.” The MFTC held special sessions to celebrate its 75th Anniversary at the 2012 FEDSM in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.

The Committee has sponsored many symposia and forums over the years. Three of these have been large, ongoing symposia at FEDSM conferences since 1990 (see Sec. 6 on Conferences, Symposia, and Forums.)

At FEDSM 2002, it was announced that the Coordinating Groups, founded in the 1980s, would as of that meeting become full-fledged Technical Committees. The original idea behind the coordinating groups was that they would represent their technologies (fluid measurements and CFD) across the research and application space of the existing Technical Committees. However, the Coordinating Groups had evolved to operate as Technical Committees (organizing sessions, reporting to the FEDEC, etc.). The CGFM became the FMITC and the Coordinating Group on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CGCFD) became the CFDTC. In addition, the Coordinating Group on Industry Technology was converted to an advisory committee called the Industry Technology Committee (not a TC).

The conversion of the CGFM to the FMITC was timely in that rapid advances were underway in experimental techniques, mostly due to advances in camera, sensor, and computing capabilities. The FMITC has continued to organize workshops, tutorials, and panel discussions on new and timely topics like particle image velocimetry and quantification of experimental uncertainty, specific sessions on diagnostic techniques or a class of related techniques, and broader sessions on applications of fluid measurements in the field and in the laboratory. The FMITC organizes annual sessions on Fluid Measurements and Instrumentation at both IMECE and FEDSM conferences. The chairs of the CGFM/FMITC are listed in Table 16.

As CFD became more and more prevalent in fluid flow research, several individuals thought that a committee dedicated solely to CFD was needed to set standards, promote new algorithms, and encourage new applications of CFD, so the CGCFD was approved. In its early days, the CGCFD organized benchmarking of commercial codes, tutorials in CFD, and several symposia and fora on CFD. Many symposia were also coordinated with other committees within FED and also with other divisions such as the heat transfer division. In addition, symposia were organized in emerging computing architectures, such as parallel computing. The initial mission of the CGCFD was to mature the rapidly evolving field of computational fluid dynamics and specifically address the question of accuracy of simulations. Ultimately, many of the first members of the CGCFD and later CFDTC suggested to ASME leadership the formation of a Codes and Standards committee whose mission was to development methods and standards for verification, validation, and uncertainty assessment in computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer simulations. As a direct result of the CGCFD/CFDTC, the ASME V&V 20-2009 Standard for Verification and Validation in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer was released and has now become a true standard followed by U.S. regulators and the modeling and simulation community as a whole. Currently, a large fraction of papers appearing in fluids engineering research are concerned with CFD development and application. The CFDTC remains active in promoting fluids engineering research and education. Since 2002, the CFDTC has organized sessions on topics including Applications of CFD, CFD Verification and Validation (discussed in detail in Sec. 7 on the JFE), Development and Applications of Immersed Boundary Methods, DNS, LES, and Hybrid RANS/LES Methods, and Algorithm Development in CFD. The chairs of the CGCFD/CFDTC are listed in Table 17.

At the 2001 IMECE, a proposal to form the MNFDTC was approved by the FEDEC. This technical committee was formed in response to the significant international interest and high level of activity in both basic and applied micro- and nanofluid dynamics. Earlier FED efforts in this area were supported by the FMTC, from which the first symposium on this topic was organized by Promode R. Bandyopadhyay (Application of Microfabrication to Fluid Mechanics, IMECE 1994). Since then there was a series of symposia at the IMECE in 1996 and 1998; then starting in 1999, these became annual events. The scope of the MNFDTC was to coordinate, primarily at IMECE but also at FEDSM, strong participation between numerous divisions within the ASME to organize sessions devoted to all the aspects of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The first chair of the MNFDTC was Fred K. Forster and its initial meeting was held at FEDSM 2002 in Montreal, QC. The MNFDTC has organized sessions on Fluids Engineering in Micro and Nano systems at IMECE conferences since then. Table 18 lists the chairs of the MNFDTC.

The first Hydraulic/FED Division conference apart from the Winter Annual Meeting (now IMECE) was held in 1961. At first, these conferences consisted of the presentation of individual papers, arranged in topical sessions. It was soon recognized that the several specific topic areas represented in these papers would command a larger audience and the attention of experts and others working in each such area if the conferences could introduce one or more symposia of multiple sessions, each symposium consisting of papers on a topic for which the symposium is named, its sessions, respectively, addressing subtopics. Soon was added the concept of doing this in one or more forums for shorter papers, often reflecting ongoing research. Over the years, symposia and forums became the primary vehicle for the presentation of technical papers at these FED conferences. Because they happened in the summer—so as to supplement a similar presentation format that developed for the multidivisional “winter” meetings—these conferences came to be known as Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meetings (FEDSM). Eventually, they became the primary conferences for FED symposia and forums.

On several occasions, these FED conferences were held jointly with those of other divisions of ASME's Basic Engineering Group. These have included the Applied Mechanics (1965, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1983, 1985, and 1987), AIAA (1982 and 1986), Gas Turbine (1960, 1972, 1976, and 1980), and other Divisions. The FEDSM's are currently held as joint conferences with other organizations on a rotating 4 year cycle, with the Heat Transfer Division (2016), the European Fluid Mechanics Societies (2018), and the JSME/KSME as the Joint Fluids Engineering Summer Conference (2019).

Virtually, every symposium and forum conducted at a conference has originated with one or more of the FED technical committees, which have been the initial sponsors, organizers, and producers of these events. Each has been approved by the FED Executive Committee, so that in effect the FED has been the overarching sponsor of every symposium and forum. In the following paragraphs, the involvement of most of the individual technical committees in this sponsorship process is described. In most instances, however, complete lists of symposia and forums sponsored, respectively, by these committees are not presented in this FED history document.

Nevertheless, FED historical researchers have compiled lists of all these events by conference without reference to the technical committees responsible for them. Past Chair of the Fluid Mechanics Committee, Richard A. Bajura, compiled a list of all the FED symposia and forums held from 1962 to 1986 [16]. A similar list covers most of the years between 1933 and 1995 and was compiled by C. Samuel Martin—with a few additions up to the present by P. Cooper [17]. (The additions are of the Pumping Machinery symposia to date described under the FASTC below.) This last list must be updated for the years 1996 to date and in that regard should be viewed as a work in progress.

FED technical committees have sponsored symposia at FEDSM and IMECE conferences—either individually or in cooperation with other FED technical committees. Some of these are described and/or listed as follows:

1. (1)

   Fluid Transients/FASTC: Symposia and forums in the subject area of fluid transients were sponsored by the FTC and—after the 1990 restructuring—by the FASTC. A significant number of symposia and forums were sponsored by the FTC between 1970 and 1990 including topics like fluid transients and structural interaction, power plant transients, multidimensional transients, and multiphase fluid transients. It was during this period that F. Moody and F. Dodge organized the Symposium on Fluid Transients and Fluid–Structure Interaction, which was held with the PVP Division from 1985 to 1987, and P. Rothe and D. Wiggert ran the Forum on Unsteady Flow from 1984 to 1990.

   With the restructuring in 1990, the fluid transient subject areas were absorbed into the FASTC and resulted in a refocusing on internal fluids, with external unsteady flow, fluid vibrations, and acoustics continuing to be addressed independently. Nevertheless, the offerings of symposia and forums were meaningful and well received, see Table 19. Significant among them were the three Forums on Fluid Transients between 1996 and 2003 and the highly successful International Symposium on Water Hammer, organized by J. Liou and held jointly with the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1999 and 2003. The latter was truly an international event with many participants from Asia and Europe in attendance.

2. (2)

   Fluid Machinery/FASTC: As with fluid transients, the FMaC—and its earlier predecessors (PMC, HPMC, and CC) sponsored many symposia and forums, and after 1990, the fluid machinery subject area was well represented among the many FASTC symposia and forums. Many of these that were repeated periodically were carried forward into sponsorship by the FASTC after 1990. A prominent example is the International Symposium on Pumping Machinery [18] started in 1984 and held quadrennially at FED summer meetings since that time; the interval in a recent case being biennial, which is more likely in the future. This symposium addresses both the theory and applications of all the categories and sizes of rotodynamic and positive displacement pumps, attracting global participation with typically ten and as many as a dozen sessions in a given conference, including the two most recent Joint ASME–JSME–KSME (AJK) Fluids Engineering Summer Conferences (Hamamatsu 2011 and Seoul 2015).

3. (3)

   Cavitation/Polyphase Flow/MFTC: The MFTC has sponsored many symposia and forums over the years. The forum, which has been most consistent in yearly meetings, has been the Cavitation Forum, which started in 1966. Traditionally, this forum has been held at the Summer meeting of FED. The name has changed over the years: 1966–1971, Cavitation Forum; 1972, Polyphase Forum; 1973–1982, Cavitation and Polyphase Forum; and, since 1983, Cavitation and Multiphase Flow Forum. The organizers/editors of the Forum over the years are listed in Table 20. In 1985, the organizers/editors, Jack Hoyt and Oki Furuya, wrote a history of this forum for its 20th anniversary [19]. The 50th session of this Forum was held at the AJK2015 meeting.

One symposium which has continued over the years has been the International Symposium on Cavitation Inception. This symposium started out as the Symposium on Cavitation Inception but quickly became an international symposium because of the large international participation. The subject matter of the papers of the symposium has ranged from the fundamental aspects of cavitation inception to practical prediction of cavitation inception. Since this is such a narrow topic, a decision was made to hold the symposia only every 4 or 5 years or so. The symposia have been held in 1979, 1984, 1989, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2013. The last two have been at the joint ASME/JSME meetings. The organizers for the first three symposia were W. B. Morgan and Blaine L. Parkin. M. L. Billet and W. B. Morgan organized the fourth symposium and M. L. Billet, H. Kato (of JSME), and W. B. Morgan have organized the last two symposia.

Most of the material in this section was provided by Dr. Frank M. White, Fig. 20, editor of the JFE from 1979 to 1990 [20].

When the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was founded in 1880, the subject of fluids engineering was fractured and awkward. The existing theories were primarily for inviscid fluids and were rarely realistic. Engineers rejected these results and relied entirely upon a variety of experiments, most of which were simply reported in pounds, feet, and seconds. There were no correlating principles.

In the early 1900s, workers such as Prandtl, Rayleigh, and Reynolds combined theory and experiment into a single discipline, fluid mechanics. In the ensuing century, mechanical engineers have developed the practical and design aspects of fluid flow into a very successful discipline.

For its first 50 years, all the ASME research papers were published in a single inclusive publication, the Transactions of the ASME. There were a dozen divisions, but only one journal, although conferences allowed for paper groupings. Then, the ASME divisions began to request their own specialized journals, a trend which continues to this day. Moreover, the increase in output of journal-quality archival papers was making it impractical for all of them to appear in a single volume. Currently, there are 30 different journals published by the Society, and they are all under the umbrella of the Transactions of the ASME. The first non-Transactions periodical for fluids engineers was the Journal of Applied Mechanics, which began in 1933. Although primarily devoted to theory, the early JAM published some practical fluids engineering papers, such as flow measurement, duct flow, fluid transients, pumps, and turbines. Many such papers of course also appeared in the Transactions, of which the JAM is today a part.

In 1959, the science-oriented divisions began two new publications, the Journal of Basic Engineering (JBE), which carried fluids papers, and the Journal of Heat Transfer [21]. Research in fluid dynamics had expanded beyond traditional hydraulics, and in 1963, the Society changed the old Hydraulics name to the Fluids Engineering Division. Workers such as Robert Dean, Stephen Kline, and George Wislicenus urged the formation of a specialized journal. Finally, in 1973, the Society authorized a new publication, the Journal of Fluids Engineering, with Robert Dean as Technical Editor. The first issue was in March 1973.

The choice of Bob Dean as first editor was inspired. He had leadership, wide-ranging knowledge of fluids engineering, and great organizational ability. He assembled an outstanding board of Associate Editors and a rigorous review process. He demanded conciseness and relevance in all the submitted papers. His Executive Secretary, Marguerite Blaney, began a detailed log of all the papers and set up an efficient system for the entire review process. The journal, under Dean's leadership, quickly took hold and immediately became an important publication on engineering aspects of fluid flow.

Bob Dean was an experimentalist and fully aware that data are not correct to six significant figures. In 1975, he announced a requirement for uncertainty in experimental data that all the authors must report in their papers. This was followed in 1986 by a policy, formulated by Associate Editors Patrick Roache, Kirti Ghia, and Frank White for reporting uncertainty of numerical accuracy in computer solutions. Professor White championed this policy, which was later superseded by a much expanded and more specific version in 1994 put forth by the CGCFD with an introduction by Chairman Christopher J. Frietas. These policies, still in effect today, are believed to be the first such requirements in any engineering journal. Indeed, the 1986 original was the first of its kind and was emulated the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer (1994) and several other journals [22].

The emphasis of the JFE has changed with progress in fluids engineering research. The first issue, March 1973, was divided into five areas: Fluid Transients, Fluid Machinery, Fluid Mechanics, Fluidics, and Polyphase Flow. By 1981, Fluidics had vanished, to be replaced by Fluid Measurements, handled by Bob Dean himself. The journal has always published highly regarded review articles. By 1987, associate editors were added for Numerical Methods, and the term Polyphase was changed to the more euphonious Multiphase Flow. In this new millennium, there are too many diverse topics to mention on the masthead. The number of associate editors has doubled to an average of 20. In spite of a heavy workload, all the ASME editors are dedicated volunteers.

After Bob Dean, the JFE had three editors with 10 year terms: Frank White, Demetri Telionis, and Joseph Katz. The present editor, M. J. Andrews, took office in 2010. Since ASME papers are limited in length, data are often published just as a few graphs and a short table. In 1993, Professor Telionis established the JFE Data Bank, in which the complete data from a study can be stored, available to readers. The JFE was the first Transactions journal to be available online. Presently, the entire paper submission, review, and publication process can be achieved online.

The JFE has grown from a quarterly, publishing 600 pages per year, to bimonthly, and now to a monthly, with 1600 pages per year. The year 1990 saw the growth of papers on microflows, followed more recently by nanoflows. Our new century has seen many CFD papers on large-eddy and detached-eddy results, in addition to direct numerical simulation of turbulence. Although the JFE continues to primarily be an experimental journal, 40% of recent papers have been the results of Computational Fluid Dynamics studies.

The JFE was an initial success and continues to become even better. It has always been profitable for the Society. The Journal is generally thought to be the leading international publication in the field of engineering applications of fluid flow.

ASME has two categories of awards, namely, Society Awards and Division Awards. The society as a whole can nominate an individual for the highest level of award, or existing Division Awards can be elevated to society level, being recommended by the FED Honors and Awards Committee.

• ASME Medal: The ASME Medal is the highest award that the Society can bestow and is to recognize “eminently distinguished engineering achievement.” Table 21 lists the five individual Medalists with FED affiliation.

• Honorary Member: This level of recognition should be awarded to a person who has made “distinctive contributions” to engineering, science, industry, research, or public service. Sixteen ASME members with FED affiliation listed in Table 22 have received honorary membership.

• Fluids Engineering Award: The Fluids Engineering Award was initiated as a Division-Level award until approval—by the FED Honors and Awards Committee and the Society Honors Committee—to be a Society-Level award, with the first recipient in 1979 being Robert C. Dean, as seen in the list of the 38 recipients in Table 23. To be considered for this award, one would need to have made “Outstanding contributions over a period of years to the engineering profession—especially in the field of fluids engineering through research, practice, and/or teaching.”

• Freeman Scholar: This is a biennial award to a person of significant expertise to review a coherent topic in their specialty, resulting in a review article for the JFE or the JBE before 1973 and a plenary lecture. The 38 ASME awardees are listed in Table 24. The review articles published by Freeman Scholars from 1970 to date are found in Table 25. From 1927 to 1970, this award was administered by the ASME Honors Committee for visits to European hydraulic laboratories. In 1971, the Freeman Scholar Award was elevated to a Society-Level award.

• Thurston Lecture: This is to be given annually by an outstanding leader in pure or applied science that stimulates thinking on a subject of broad technical interest to engineers. Eight engineers with FED connections have had been Thurston lecturers as listed in Table 26.

• Worthington Medal: This Society-Level award is administered by the Petroleum Division. It is awarded for eminent achievement by engineers in the field of pumping machinery—of whom the 17 medalists listed in Table 27 have FED affiliation or association via contributions to FED conferences and publications.

• Fluid Machinery Design Award: Recipient must excel in the design of fluid machinery involving significant fluid mechanics principles. The ten awardees to date are listed in Table 28.

• Gopalakrishnan Flowserve Award: Recipient must have at least 5–10 years of experience in the pump field documented through publications and testimonials of peers and coworkers. The five awardees to date are listed in Table 29.

• Knapp Award: For an outstanding original paper resulting directly from analytical or laboratory research. Over 86 author recipients are listed in Table 30.

• Moody Award: For an outstanding original paper useful to the practice of mechanical engineering. Over 88 author recipients are listed in Table 31.

Further notes regarding the Knapp and Moody Awards: (1) While it is known that these awards existed as early as 1958, records for Knapp and Moody awards made prior to 1965 are not available. (2) The titles of the winning papers have been archived by the ASME.¹

Probably, the most significant development within the ASME after its founding in 1880 and its Power Division thereafter was the formation of the HYD in 1926. This brought together outstanding engineers from industry and academia who addressed the rapidly expanding field of hydraulic machinery and the underlying fluid flows and behavior involved. As the field of fluid flow phenomena and applications expanded, the inevitable change of the name of this division to the FED took place in 1963. Today's pattern of technical committees had already emerged in the early 1930s, with the formation of the Water Hammer, Cavitation, Hydraulic Prime Movers, and Pumping Machinery Committees and a short-lived “General Hydraulics” Committee that presaged the 1957 founding of the Fluid Mechanics Committee. These committees developed technical programs in which many landmark papers in the fluids engineering field were presented at conferences they organized and published in the journals of the Transactions of the ASME. One of these is the JFE, which started in 1973 and which was and remains dedicated solely to the FED, being produced by FED members who are the editors and associate editors.

These accomplishments were due to a procession of engineers and scientists who have been renowned in the field and include names like Lewis F. Moody, John R. Freeman, Robert T. Knapp, Theodore Von Kàrmàn, Robert C. Dean, etc.

Many more FED members have been recognized by their peers through several awards. First are the “Society” awards, namely, the ASME Medal, Honorary Membership, Freeman Scholar, Thurston Lecturer, the Fluids Engineering Award, and the Worthington Medal. Then, there are the “Division” (FED) awards, namely, the Fluid Machinery Design Award, the Gopalakrishnan Flowserve Award, and the Knapp and Moody awards for the authors of outstanding technical papers.

The timeline of the developments of the FED throughout its 90-year history reveals a flexibility and adaptability to engineering and scientific developments in the fluids engineering disciplines that promise to keep the division providing relevance for present and future engineers and scientists who choose to specialize in this field.

The authors (Figs. 21–23) would like to thank all those who contributed to this history of the FED. In particular, we acknowledge: (1) Dr. Frank M. White, who provided the history and much of the information for the Journal of Fluids Engineering, (2) Dr. Richard A. Bajura, who provided documents from his files on the reorganization described in Sec. 4 and one of the lists of FED symposia referenced in Sec. 6, (3) Dr. William B. Morgan, who provided summary articles and a presentation on the history of the FED as well as his history of the Cavitation/Multiphase Flow Technical Committee, and (4) Dr. David Wiggert for his history of the Water Hammer/Fluid Transients Committee and related activity of its successor Fluid Applications and Systems Technical Committee.