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Ronald D. Flack Jr.
Professor Emeritus
E-mail: rdf@virginia.edu
Ron Flack received his B.S. degree from Purdue University 1970, M.S. from Purdue in 1973, and Ph.D. from Purdue in 1975. Between 1970 and 1971, he worked for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft as a compressor design engineer. In 1976, he came to the University of Virginia and served as Department Chairman from 1993 to 2000. He retired in 2005.
His research interests included fluid film bearings, turbomachinery flows, and free convection heat transfer. Most of his work was experimental. He was director of the ROMAC Industrial Research Lab from 1983 to 1986.
He is a Registered Professional Engineer in two states (Virginia and Hawaii) and a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has Over 110 journal publications and over 80 conference publications in fluid film bearings, internal flows in turbomachines, rotor dynamics, instrumentation, and free convection heat transfer. He published the textbook Fundamentals of Jet Propulsion with Applications with Cambridge University Press in 2005. In 2003 he was the recipient of the ASME Lewis F. Moody Award “for the best paper dealing with a topic useful in mechanical engineering practice”.
While at the University he taught first year through advanced graduate courses. Most recently he taught Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics II, Air Breathing Propulsion, and Turbomachinery.
In 2005 he moved from the Charlottesville area to Southside Virginia with his wife, dog, and cat.
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