history

The Development of TEXSTAN

The TEXSTAN boundary layer code is the outgrowth of a long development period carried out at Stanford University and The University of Texas at Austin. The genesis of the Stanford code was a sabbatical taken by Professor William M. Kays (now Professor Emeritus at Stanford University) in the 1960's which allowed him to work with Professor Brian Spalding at Imperial College - London (now retired, and managing director of CHAM, UK) and with his student, Suhas Patankar (now Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota). Professor Kays was given a copy of Patankar's thesis code, and the Stanford version of the Patankar-Spalding boundary layer code was started. Several students of Professor Kays contributed to the development of the early code, with a significant contribution by Dr. Howard Julien and other contributions by Dr. Ben Blackwell and Dr. Peter Andersen. In the early 1970's, Dr. Michael Crawford completely revised the code while developing a film cooling model for simulation of full-coverage film cooling. At the urging of Dr. Ray Colladay, then at NASA-Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Dr. Crawford documented the non-film cooled version of the code, renaming it STAN5 (there were earlier STAN versions), and NASA published the documentation as a NASA-CR.¹ The companion film-cooled version, STANCOOL, was turned over to NASA-Lewis Research Center for utilization by the aeropropulsion industry. Commencing in 1980, the code was further developed at UT-Austin by Professor Crawford, and his most recent version was renamed TEXSTAN to reflect the blending of the codes developed while at Texas and earlier at Stanford. Significant contributors to TEXSTAN at UT-Austin include Dr. Joe Pietrzyk (deceased), Dr. Tzong-Huei Chen, and Dr. Sriram Neelakantan.

Development work on TEXSTAN from the period 1985-1993 was carried out in part at the ITS (Institut für Thermische Strömungsmaschinen), a research institute at Universität Karlsruhe (TH) in Karlsruhe, Germany. The support and encouragement of Professor Sigmar Wittig (now Professor Emeritus), Dr. Achmed Schulz, and Dr. Klaus Sieger are greatly appreciated. Further development work was carried out over the period from 1994-2000 at the LTT (Laboratoire de Thermique appliquée et de Turbomachines), a research and teaching institute within the School of Engineering (STI) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The support and encouragement of Professor Albin Bölcs (now Professor, retired), Dr. Peter Ott, Dr. Uwe Drost, and the students at the LTT are greatly appreciated.

TEXSTAN has enjoyed wide support outside the academic community over the years, including the Garrett Engine Division of Allied-Signal Aerospace Corporation (now Honeywell) and David Winstanley; DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Dr. Howard Julien of Kaiser Engineers; Viscase Corporation and Dr. Darrell Wilhoit; NASA-Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center) and Dr. Raymond Gaugler and Frederick Simon; Wright-Patterson AFB Propulsion Directorate and Dr. Charles MacArthur; General Electric Corporate Research and Development and Dr. Anil Tolpadi; and finally ABB and Alstom-Switzerland and Dr. Prith Harasgama and Dr. Bernhard Weigand.

A sincere thanks to all of you.

References