Memorial Tributes Volume 25 (2023) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
JACK L. KERREBROCK
JACK L. KERREBROCK
Pages 242-253
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 243... ...
His research included airbreathing propulsion, space propulsion, and turbomachinery; his inventions and innovations included the gas core nuclear rocket, the technology for transient turbo machinery testing, and many devices and techniques for diagnostics and improvements in jet engines; his educational contributions included a seminal book on gas turbine engines as well as decades of excellence and positive impact in teaching and mentoring students; and his advice to industry and government was widely recognized and highly sought. Jack started his career as a theorist, where his combination of physical insight and mathematical abilities fueled contributions to propulsion and to magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
|
From page 244... ...
, he founded the Space Propulsion Laboratory in 1962 and directed it until 1976, when it merged with the Gas Turbine Laboratory, of which he had become director in 1968. He was named the R.C.
|
From page 245... ...
He returned to space propulsion in the early 1990s, studying flow instabilities in particle bed nuclear reactors for space propulsion. Contributions to Gas Turbine Technology Jack's important contributions to gas turbine technology include basic conceptual features of compressor phenomena.
|
From page 246... ...
To do the unsteady aerodynamic and aeromechanic experiments, he had to develop his own high-frequency response measurement techniques based on semiconductor pressure transducer technology, but he saw that as part of the challenge -- and the fun. For some years, therefore, in contrast to the photographs in our department brochures of faculty looking directly into the camera, the photo of Jack was of the back of his head as he stared into a microscope while crafting the miniature probes he had designed.
|
From page 247... ...
In later years Jack was the originator of vaporization cooling, a scheme to allow turbine blades to operate at a nearly uniform temperature, and of the aspirated compressor. In connection with the former, his work on heat transfer in internal passages, recognized by the ASME International Gas Turbine Institute as the best heat transfer paper of the year,3 provided a first-of-a-kind clarification of the mechanism responsible for the heat transfer coefficients observed in rotating blade rows.
|
From page 248... ...
His educational leadership extended beyond the classroom. As head of the Gas Turbine Laboratory, head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and dean of engineering, Jack did much to maintain gas turbine engineering at the forefront of the department's engineering curriculum.
|
From page 249... ...
, and many committees as part of the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, for which he chaired the ad hoc Committee on the Aeropropulsion System Test Facility, Science and Technology Advisory Group AF Systems Command, and Division Advisory Group of the Aeronautical Systems Division. For NASA, he served on the Space Station Advisory Committee and Advisory Board for Aircraft Fuel Conservation Technology.
|
From page 250... ...
, NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1983) , and 1992 AIAA Leland Atwood Award (for educational contributions)
|
From page 251... ...
Also, from what appeared to be a casual chat, Jack could determine that a prospective graduate student from a not very highly ranked institution, or one with a less than stellar record, had the potential to excel at MIT. He then advocated for, and mentored, the student who might not otherwise have been admitted or prospered.
|
From page 252... ...
Redmond in 2007. Jack and Crickett traveled widely, to South Africa, Scotland, Tuscany, Paris, and a special trip to Cape Canaveral for one of the last space shuttle launches, where he was able to introduce Crickett to one of her heroes, Neil Armstrong.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.