Roger I. Tanner

University of Sydney

1933 – Present

Mechanical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2016

Roger I. Tanner is the P.N. Russell Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney. Professor Tanner received a B.Sc. from Bristol University in 1956 and a Ph.D. from Manchester University in 1961, both in Mechanical Engineering. He previously served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Sydney and Professor of Engineering at Brown University.

Professor Tanner first became interested in viscoelastic flows and extrusion processes from his background in tribology. He began work on computer simulations of non-Newtonian flows in 1972 which he continues today. In 1977, he co-developed the PTT (Phan-Thien–Tanner) model, a new constitutive equation derived from Network Theory. This model is physically well-behaved in a wide range of flow fields and has been widely cited and used in commercial computer codes as well as by a wide range of academic researchers. Professor Tanner has published two seminal works on extrusion: “A Theory of Die-Swell” (1970) and “The Solution of Viscous Incompressible Jet and Free Surface Flows Using Finite Elements” (1974). These works are widely cited and are considered the beginning of Computational Rheology, which has had a major impact on the field of rheology. Professor Tanner joined the Polymer Cooperative Research Centre in 1999, working with the Moldflow Company, where he became interested in suspension rheology in part because polymer crystallization in viscous matrix liquids results in complex multiphase fluids with suspension-like properties. Suspension rheology continues to be the subject of his present-day research. Professor Tanner has authored four books, eleven book chapters, 270 published Journal papers, and 88 conference manuscripts. His work, most of which is in the field of rheology, has received over 4000 citations. Together with Ken Walters he is the author of the book, Rheology: An Historical Perspective. In recognition of his contributions to rheology and engineering, he has been awarded numerous medals including the Edgeworth David Medal in 1966, the Australian Society of Rheology Medallion in 1993, the Gold Medal of the British Society of Rheology in 2000, and the AGM Michell Medal in 1999. In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Additionally, the Polymer Cooperative Research Centre, of which Professor Tanner was a member, was given the Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Commercialization in 2009. In 2010, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society. He has been an active member of organizing committees for various conferences, including the International Congress on Rheology in Sydney, for which he was the Chairman in 1988. Professor Tanner previously served on the editorial boards of Computational Mechanics and the Korea-Australia Rheology Journal. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, Rheologica Acta, Applied Rheology, and the Royal Society of London Open Science.