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Memorial Tributes Volume 23 (2021) / Chapter Skim
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REX A. ELDER
Pages 82-87

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From page 83...
... engineers could match his perceptive, seasoned expertise, complemented by his down-to-earth manner. His professional activities focused on dams, coal and nuclear power plants, and resolution of concerns related to large pumps and other hydraulic machinery.
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From page 84...
... By the end of World War II the TVA had completed a 1050 km navigation channel along the length of the Tennessee River and was the country's largest electricity supplier. Rex's career spanned TVA's substantial growth as well as milestone advances in hydraulics theory, the use of hydraulics laboratories, associated instrumentation and modeling techniques, and methods for field investigation.
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From page 85...
... His work with locks along the Tennessee River led to a novel approach for filling and draining navigation locks: the new design, a multiport manifold system, reduced lock filling time and lowered the cost of lock construction. In 1952 TVA started on a huge program of power generation by coal-fired thermal power plants, such that by 1955 coal surpassed hydro as the authority's main power source.
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From page 86...
... In 1949 he and TVA colleagues Alvin Peterka and George Hickox received ASCE's James Laurie Prize for their 1947 paper "Friction Coefficients in Large Tunnels."1 Rex's 1965 paper, coauthored with Don Harleman, "Withdrawal from Two-Layer Stratified Flow,"2 led to improvements in water intake design for thermal power plants on lakes and reservoirs. His 1970 paper, "Internal Hydraulics of Thermal Discharge Diffusers,"3 coauthored with Svein Vigander and Norm Brooks, substantially evolved the design of diffusers for wastewater effluents.
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From page 87...
... In this context, he spent considerable time at the University of Iowa's water engineering research institute, IIHR Hydroscience and Engineering, working on projects with his colleague and close friend Jack Kennedy. After his Bechtel retirement, Rex continued his cooperative research with IIHR as an independent consultant, focusing on fish passage projects in the Pacific Northwest.
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Key Terms

  • hydraulic engineering
  • tennessee river
  • ferry nuclear
  • nuclear plant
  • hydraulics lab

  • close friend
  • oregon state
  • lumber mill
  • browns ferry
  • career spanned

  • third child
  • professional activities
  • spanned decades
  • lock filling
  • generating electricity

  • salmon fishing
  • miles northwest
  • main power
  • laurie prize
  • power plant

  • memorial fellowship
  • huge program
  • managing thermal
  • civil engineering
  • passage projects

  • activities focused
  • rouse hydraulic
  • friend duncan
  • bechtel colleague
  • alvin peterka


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