Tam Sridhar

Monash University

Chemical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2017

Prof. Tam Sridhar is the Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Monash University in Australia. As an undergraduate, Prof. Sridhar studied at Madras University in India. There, in 1971, he received a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering, First Class. In 1973, he went on to graduate with distinction from the Indian Institute of Science with a Master of Engineering in Chemical Engineering. Following this, he moved to Australia and received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria.

Prof. Sridhar has made many profound and lasting contributions to the field of rheology, starting with the formulation of model elastic fluids such as the ‘M1’ test fluid that was circulated widely in the late 1980s for exploring the performance of different instruments being developed as elongational rheometers. Unlike other ‘Boger fluids’ of the era, which were based on corn-syrup and polyacrylamides and tended to degrade due to biological activity, this fluid was based on polyisobutylene in polybutene and was stable for extended periods of time. Working with colleagues Prilutski and Gupta, Prof. Sridhar showed that these highly elastic dilute solutions could be very well described using the (relatively simple) Oldroyd-B constitutive equation and this helped enable significant advances in quantitative comparisons of experimental observations and numerical computations of highly viscoelastic flow fields. However, his most significant contribution is the development in the 1990s of the filament-stretching rheometer for measuring the extensional properties of polymer solutions and other mobile liquids. The filament-stretching rheometer has been crucial for advances in experimental extensional rheology over the last two decades and has enabled quantitative and critical evaluation of the validity of dilute polymer solution theories in strong transient flows. New data generated using this device, along with results from significant international collaboration between experimentalists and theoreticians have led to a revolution in the understanding of polymer chain dynamics and have helped demonstrate the great diversity of chain conformations that can be obtained during strong time-varying deformation histories. Most recently, Prof. Sridhar has been involved in resolving the question of whether concentrated solutions and melts with similar numbers of entanglements exhibit different rheological response in elongational flows.

Prof. Sridhar has over 30 years of continuous service to Monash University. He has served as the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Dean of Engineering, and Academic Vice President. During his time as the Dean of Engineering, he transformed Engineering into a highly research active and successful faculty ranked amongst the best in Australia. His professional accomplishments and contributions to rheology are well recognized. In 2003, Prof. Sridhar earned the Centenary Medal from the Australian Government and the ESSO Award, both for his contributions to chemical engineering. Then, in 2014, he received both the CHEMECA Medal, the most prestigious award for a chemical engineer in Australia and New Zealand, and the Medal of the Australian Society of Rheology. Prof. Sridhar has been an active member of the Australian Society of Rheology since its early days, serving as President from 1997 to 1999.