In Memoriam: Professor Richard H. Pletcher (1935–2015), Who Advanced
Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer

Journal of Heat Transfer

Steger was responsible for several creative concepts in CFD
published in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the 1980s, when NASA decided to encourage the development of educational programs in CFD by funding centers, ISU
was selected as one of the five (eventually expanded to seven)national centers. Professor Pletcher was a Co-Principal Investigator of the proposal that won the Center for ISU. Other universities
selected for center sites eventually included Stanford, MIT,
NYU/Princeton, Penn State, the University of Cincinnati, and the
University of Arizona. By this time, the CFD activities at Iowa
State were internationally recognized and many very good students were attracted to participate in the graduate program in
CFD. In addition to CFD, Professor Pletcher had strengths inexperiments, and also taught mechanical engineering courses
related to instrumentation and measurements. His experienceswith both experimental and computational methods made him theoutstanding engineer that we knew. Before he retired in 2008, he
had taught more than 25 courses at Iowa State. He was recognizedfor his teaching and received the ISU Award for Excellence inTeaching.
Professor Pletcher served as Principal Investigator for numerous research grants and contracts from sponsors such as the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office,Allison Gas Turbines, John Deere, the Department of Energy,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the
National Science Foundation (NSF). He was also a consultant toboth industry and government, including Arnold Research Organization, Inc., Caterpillar Tractor Company, Delevon Gas Turbine,and General Electric Company. He was registered and licensed in
the State of Iowa as a Professional Engineer.
Dr. Pletcher authored or co-authored over 100 refereed journaland proceeding papers and over 20 technical reports with students
and colleagues. He was instrumental with advising 33 Ph.D. and
17 M.S. students. He was recognized for his research accomplishments and received the David R. Boylan Eminent Faculty Award
for Research and the Distinguished Faculty Award for Significant
Contributions to CFD, which were both awarded by ISU. He wasone of the first to demonstrate the use of boundary-layer computational methods to compute flows in separated regions [1]. He
has also been a leader in the application of viscous–inviscid interaction methods to flows with heat transfer [2], the application of
preconditioning methods to compressible flows at low Mach numbers [3], the application of LES methods to turbulent flows withsignificant property variations [4–7], and the prediction of turbulent flows using the partially parabolized Navier–Stokes equations[8–11]. Professor Pletcher was also instrumental in employing awide array of turbulence models to predict turbulent flows when
this approach was at its infancy. For example, he used a variable
property finite-difference calculation procedure to predict turbulent flow and heat transfer parameters in annular passages[12–14]. Of the several turbulence models that Malik and Pletcher[14] considered, they used one utilizing transport equations forturbulence kinetic energy and characteristic mixing length scale,
which not only gave the best overall performance, but was
especially crucial for accurately predicting the temperature distribution for flows with heat transfer at Reynolds numbers greaterthan 110,000.
While Professor Pletcher’s work was overwhelmingly computational in nature, a significant piece of his contributions to fluid
mechanics and heat transfer was experimental. Through a multiyear grant from the NSF, he and his students investigatedturbulent shear flows with heat transfer in a water channel withapplications to environmental discharges [15–19]. In the 1980s,
there was a significant interest in understanding turbulent jets andplumes discharging into the atmosphere from smoke stacks aswell as those discharging from power plant condensers into rivers

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AUGUST 2016, Vol. 138 / 080101-1

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It is with great sadness that we sharewith you the loss of a dear colleague
and friend, Dr. Richard H. Pletcher. He
was one of the pioneers and an internationally renowned expert in computational fluid mechanics and heat transfer,and was not only inspirational in directing the careers and lives of so many ofus, but a mentor, who was extremely
supportive and kind to all. Richard,or Dick, as we all personally and collegially addressed him, passed away on
Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015, having been
diagnosed with terminal cancer. His 80 years of life are marked
with multifaceted contributions to engineering, as his work helped
advance computational techniques to solve challenging problems
in aerospace and mechanical engineering. Dick is remembered
for his large body of work in heat transfer, fluid mechanics,
buoyant jets and plumes, turbulence modeling, separated flows,
viscous–inviscid interactions, computational fluid mechanics andheat transfer, and large eddy simulation (LES) of complex turbulent flows.
Richard was born in Elkhart, Indiana, on May 21, 1935 toRaymond Harold Pletcher and Annabelle Mary Pletcher. He
attended Purdue University and graduated with a Bachelor of
Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1957. He married Carol
Robbins on Jun. 9, 1957 in Elkhart and the couple soon thereafter moved to California so that he could report for active dutyin the U.S. Navy. Dick proudly served as Ensign and Lieutenant(junior grade) for three years with amphibious forces in the
Pacific. He served as engineering officer of a landing craft utility division and assistant gunnery officer on a landing ship dock.
After military service, Dick attended graduate school at Cornell
University where he received M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1967)
degrees. During his doctoral studies, he was employed as an
instructor by Cornell University for three years. He also worked
as a senior research engineer in propulsion at United Aircraft
Research Laboratories in Hartford, CT (1965–1967), and subsequent to doctoral graduation he joined the faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University (ISU)in 1967.
During Professor Pletcher’s tenure at ISU, he left a legacy ofaffable collegiality, excellence in teaching, and path-breaking
scholarship in computational modeling of complex fluid dynamics
and heat transfer systems. His expertise centered on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), whereby he developed and taught
courses for over 40 years in this new and emerging field. With
Professor Dale Anderson and Professor John C. Tannehill in the
Department of Aerospace Engineering at ISU, a two-course
sequence in computational fluid mechanics and heat transfer wasdeveloped in 1972. These courses were among the first in the U.S.
in that specialty, which was born from the computer age. Papers
based on numerical simulations carried out by Professor Pletcher
appeared as early as 1965, a time when computer use for simulation in engineering was in an infant state. The early teachingactivities in CFD were accompanied by research in algorithms
and applications by the group at ISU. As a result, the program
gained national recognition and many early international leadersin this field were trained there. The early leaders who trained at
ISU included several branch chiefs and a division head at NASA,an entrepreneur who founded his own company, and several
others who gained recognition as scholars in the field. Most ofthese individuals have already received ISU Alumni Awards.
Even today, one of the computer systems at the NASA Ames
Research Center carries the name Steger for Joseph Steger, an
ISU alumnus who suffered an untimely death a few years ago.

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1997.This textbook is now in its third edition and is used worldwide as a leading authority on finite-difference and finite-volume
methods. It was one of the first texts available once computers
became a viable resource for a tractable solution of coupled partial
differential equations.
On a more personal note, there was more to Professor Pletcher
than his career as he was also a strongly dedicated family man. He
is survived by his wife of 58 years, Carol; his sister Judy; threechildren, Douglas, Laura, and Cynthia; and six grandchildren. For
those that had the opportunity to join Dick and his family fordinner, they can recount how down-to-earth he was, and how heenjoyed being surrounded by his family and Brittany dogs. He
loved to hunt (especially pheasant hunting) and fish with his children, and regularly ran with his dogs. He was an active member ofCollegiate Presbyterian Church, Town and Country Kiwanis, andan avid fan of ISU women’s basketball. The Heat Transfer andFluid Mechanics community and his many friends and colleagues
worldwide will miss him dearly.
S. A. Sherif
Fellow ASME
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
University of Florida,
Gainesville, FL 32611
F. Battaglia
Fellow ASME
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Virginia Tech,Blacksburg, VA 24061
R. M. Manglik
Fellow ASME
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering,
University of Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, OH 45221

References[1] Pletcher, R. H., 1987, “Recent Results in the Prediction of Turbulent Separated Flows,” Invited Lecture, 2nd Symposium on Transport Phenomena in
Turbulent Flows: Theory, Experiment, and Numerical Simulation, Tokyo,
pp. 559–578.
[2] Hall, E. J., and Pletcher, R. H., 1985, “Application of a Viscous-Inviscid
Interaction Procedure to Predict Separated Flows With Heat Transfer,”
ASME J. Heat Transfer, 107(3), pp. 557–563.
[3] Pletcher, R. H., and Chen, K. H., 1993, “On Solving the Compressible
Navier–Stokes Equations for Unsteady Flows at Very Low Mach Numbers,”
AIAA Paper No. 93-3368-CP.
[4] Avancha, R. V. R., and Pletcher, R. H., 2002, “Large Eddy Simulation of the
Turbulent Flow Past a Backward-Facing Step With Heat Transfer and Property Variations,” Int. J. Heat Fluid Flow, 23(5), pp. 601–614.
[5] Dailey, L. D., Meng, N., and Pletcher, R. H., 2003, “Large Eddy Simulationof Constant Heat Flux Turbulent Channel Flow With Property Variations:
Quasi-Developed Model and Mean Flow Results,” ASME J. Heat Transfer,
125(1), pp. 27–38.
[6] Lee, J. S., Xu, X., and Pletcher, R. H., 2004, “Large Eddy Simulation of
Heated Vertical Annular Pipe Flow in Fully Developed Turbulent Mixed
Convection,” Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 47(3), pp. 437–446.
[7] Liu, K., and Pletcher, R. H., 2004, “A Procedure to Establish Inflow Conditions for LES of Spatially Developing Turbulent Boundary Layers,” ASME
Paper No. HT-FED2004-56606, pp. 1091–1099.
[8] Chilukuri, R., and Pletcher, R. H., 1980, “Numerical Solutions to the Partially Parabolized Navier–Stokes Equations for Developing Flow in a
Channel,” Numer. Heat Transfer, 3(2), pp. 169–188.
[9] Chiu, I. T., and Pletcher, R. H., 1986, “Prediction of Heat Transfer in
Laminar Flow Over a Rearward Facing Step using the Partially
Parabolized Navier–Stokes Equations,” Eighth International Heat Transfer
Conference, Vol. 2, Hemisphere, Washington, DC, pp. 415–420.
[10] Liu, X., and Pletcher, R. H., 1986, “A Coupled Marching Procedure for thePartially Parabolized Navier–Stokes Equations,” Numer. Heat Transfer,10(6), pp. 539–556.
[11] Madavan, N. K., and Pletcher, R. H., “Prediction of Laminar Separated
Flows Using the Partially Parabolized Navier–Stokes Equations,” AIAAPaper No. 83-1954.

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and lakes. The Environmental Protection Agency funded many
investigations in this area over a number of years. The experimental work that Professor Pletcher performed was partially used toverify the many computational investigations he performed withhis students in the same area (see, for example, Madni and
Pletcher [20,21])Professor Pletcher was extremely active with the research community, and had a prominent contributing presence in professionalsocieties that included the American Society of MechanicalEngineers (ASME), and the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics (AIAA). He served on the ASME Heat Transfer
Division Committee on Honors and Awards, the K-20 Committee
on Computational Heat Transfer, the K-12 Committee on
Aerospace Heat Transfer (Chairman 1980–1983), and the Fluids
Engineering Division Coordinating Group on CFD. He also
served as Chairman of the Advisory Board for Heat Transfer—
Recent Contents, a publication of ASME. He had been recognized
during his long and successful career with numerous accolades.
He was a Fellow of ASME (and was elected to Life Fellow in2001) and an Associate Fellow of AIAA. His extensive work
related to aerospace applications received a Certificate of Recognition for Creative Development of a Technical Innovation fromNASA. Most recently he received the ASME Heat Transfer
Memorial Award in Science in 2009. His involvement with both
the ASME Heat Transfer and Fluids Engineering Divisions
reflected his ardent desire to partake in technical committees so as
to share ideas as well as disseminate research. In this effort, heorganized more than 25 technical sessions at various conferences.
He was also an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Heat
Transfer and served on the Editorial Advisory Board of NumericalHeat Transfer. He co-edited the Handbook of Numerical Heat
Transfer, which is considered a landmark reference in this area ofheat transfer. He also co-authored a chapter in the handbook andcontributed a chapter to the Handbook of Forced Convection,
among the several book chapters he authored or co-authored. He
lectured at NASA Research Centers on several occasions and presented seminars at the University of Minnesota, the University of
Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, RPI,
and Clemson among others. He participated in three workshops
on computational issues sponsored by NSF. While on faculty
improvement leave in 1976–1977, he lectured at the Imperial
College in London. In 1978 he was an invited lecturer for an
NATO sponsored Advanced Study Institute held in Turkey on
Turbulent Forced Convection in Channels and Rod Bundles. In
1983, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the 7th Indian
National Heat Transfer Conference in Kharagpur, India, which
was sponsored by NSF. He visited several universities in India
and presented a short course on Turbulence Modeling. In 1983 he
was co-author of a “cover” article for Mechanical Engineering,“Computers in Analysis and Design.” He gave a keynote address
at the 2nd International Symposium on Transport Phenomena in
Turbulent Flows in Tokyo, Japan in 1987. On the same trip, hegave three lectures at the Korea Advanced Institute of Scienceand Technology. He has also been an invited lecturer at threeworkshops on Supercomputing in Fluids held in Japan in 1989,
1991, and 1997. In 1985, he was selected as the lecturer for theSouthwest Symposium on Thermal Sciences whereby lectures
were given at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech
University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the University of Oklahoma. In 1988, Professor Pletcher was one of the 20
people invited to write a review article for the 50th anniversaryof the ASME Heat Transfer Division which was published in a
special issue of the Journal of Heat Transfer.
The most notable contribution for which Professor Pletcher isremembered is the textbook Computational Fluid Mechanics andHeat Transfer, which he co-authored with Professors John C.
Tannehill and Dale A. Anderson, and was first published in 1984.
The book was widely adopted (more than 90 schools at one time)
and translated into Russian in 1990. It was one of the first comprehensive texts in this new field. The second edition appeared in[12] Malik, M. R., and Pletcher, R. H., 1978, “Computation of Annular Turbulent
Flows With Heat Transfer and Property Variations,” Proceedings of the Sixth
International Heat Transfer Conference, Vol 2, Hemisphere, Washington,
DC, pp. 537–542.
[13] Malik, M. R., and Pletcher, R. H., 1980, “Calculation of Variable Property
Heat Transfer in Ducts of Annular Cross Section,” Numer. Heat Transfer,3(2), pp. 241–257.
[14] Malik, M. R., and Pletcher, R. H., 1981, “A Study of Some Turbulence Models for Flow and Heat Transfer in Ducts of Annular Cross-Section,” ASME J.
Heat Transfer, 103(1), pp. 146–152.
[15] Sherif, S. A., and Pletcher, R. H., 1989, “Measurements of the Flow andTurbulence Characteristics of Round Jets in Crossflow,” ASME J. Fluids
Eng., 111(2), pp. 165–171.
[16] Sherif, S. A., and Pletcher, R. H., 1989, “Measurements of the Thermal Characteristics of Heated Turbulent Jets in Crossflow,” ASME J. Heat Transfer,
111(4), pp. 897–903.

[17] Sherif, S. A., and Pletcher, R. H., 1991, “Jet-Wake Thermal Characteristics
of Heated Turbulent Jets in Crossflow,” J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer, 5(2),pp. 181–191.
[18] Sherif, S. A., and Pletcher, R. H., 1991, “A Hot-Wire/Film Probe Method for
Measurement of Turbulent Stresses and Heat Fluxes in Nonisothermal Highly
Three-Dimensional Flows,” Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci., 4(1), pp. 127–134.
[19] Sherif, S. A., and Pletcher, R. H., 1998, “Measurements of the Thermal Characteristics of a Cooled Jet Discharged Into a Heated Cross-Flowing Water
Stream,” Int. Commun. Heat Mass Transfer, 25(4), pp. 455–469.
[20] Madni, I. K., and Pletcher, R. H., 1977, “Buoyant Jets Discharging
Nonvertically Into a Uniform, Quiescent Ambient—A Finite-Difference
Analysis and Turbulence Modeling,” ASME J. Heat Transfer, 99(4),pp. 641–647.
[21] Madni, I. K., and Pletcher, R. H., 1977, “Prediction of Turbulent Forced
Plumes Issuing Vertically Into Stratified or Uniform Ambients,” ASME J.
Heat Transfer, 99(1), pp. 99–104.
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