THE 2016
NUKIYAMA MEMORIAL AWARD
Presented toMAMORU TANAHASHI
at the Fourth International Forum on Heat Transfer

November 3, 2016
by the Heat Transfer Society of JapanMamoru Tanahashi
Dr. Mamoru Tanahashi was born on November 1, 1966. He is professor of Department ofMechanical Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). He obtained his
B.E. degree in 1990, M.E. degree in 1992 and Dr. Eng. degree in 1996 all from Tokyo Tech.
He was research associate (1992-2000) and associate professor (2000-2012) at Tokyo Tech.
He was appointed as full professor of Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineeringat Tokyo Tech in 2012. Currently, he is serving as a deputy director of Academy for
Co-creative Education of Environment and Energy Science from 2011 and a chair ofDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from 2014 at Tokyo Tech.
Dr. Tanahashi's research interests include heat and mass transfer, fluid dynamics andcombustion science. He has discovered universal fine scale structure of turbulence from thedetailed analysis of direct numerical simulation (DNS) of various turbulent flows. Dr.
Tanahashi extended his research to many turbulence-related phenomena such as turbulentheat & mass transfer, drag reduction, acoustics and so on. Based on the universal fine scalestructure, he has investigated drag reduction mechanism and showed that all of drag reduction
mechanism can be explained by considering the time scale of the universal fine scale structurenear the wall. This idea has been applied for drag reduction by surfactant or micro-fiber
addition and heat transfer enhancement of the drag-reducing flow, which are filed as several
patents and licensed to a big gas company. To validate the existence of the universal finescale structure of turbulence, he has developed high-resolution and high-speed particle image
velocimetry which filed as Japanese patents and also licensed to a big trading company
contributing to R&D in many industries and universities. In turbulent combustion research,
Dr. Tanahashi conducted the world's first three-dimensional DNS of turbulent combustion
with a detailed kinetic mechanism. From the detailed analysis of DNS results, he have shownlocal and global flame structures in turbulence and proposed a new sub-grid scale combustion
model. His research group has developed combined and high speed laser diagnostics such as
simultaneous measurement of several radical concentrations and all velocity & velocity
gradient components, to investigate fine scale structure of turbulent combustion and validate
DNS results.
Dr. Tanahashi has published more than 110 refereed journal papers, more than 200
international conference papers, more than 24 review papers and 7 books. His invited or
keynote lectures are more than 30 and he has won 15 awards from different institutions
including Paper Award of Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), Paper Award ofCombustion Society of Japan (CSJ) and the Young Scientists' Prize, the commendation for
science and technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology, Japan.
Dr. Tanahashi is fellow of Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics (JSFM) and JSME, board
member of CSJ and JSFM (2014-2015), member of scientific council of Asian Union ofThermal Science and Engineering, member of steering committee of Japan Association ofComputational Mechanics, member of editorial board of Flow, Turbulence and Combustion,
chief editor of Journal of JSFM and member of organizing, advisory and executive committeeof many international conferences.

The Nukiyama Memorial AwardThe Nukiyama Memorial Award has been established in 2011 by the Heat Transfer Societyof Japan to commemorate outstanding contributions by Shiro Nukiyama as an excellent heattransfer scientist. Nukiyama addressed the challenges of the boiling phenomena and publisheda pioneering paper which clarified these phenomena in the form of the Nukiyama curve(boiling curve). This epoch-making work was done in 1930s, when heat transfer research wasin an early stage and Nukiyama himself was young, under forty years old. The Nukiyama
Memorial Award shall be bestowed to a scientist under/about fifty years of age, once every
two years in the field of Thermal Science and Engineering.

Past Recipients2012 Peter Stephan2014 Gang Chen

Board of the 2016 Nukiyama Memorial Award
H. Yoshida (Chairperson)
K. Okazaki (Vice Chairperson)
J. S. Lee
S. Maruyama

P. Stephan
T. W. Simon
X. ZhangShiro Nukiyama 抜山 四郎 (1896 – 1983)
Shiro Nukiyama was born in 1896 in Tokyo, Japan. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, andimmediately started his professional career as a Lecturer of Tohoku Imperial University (currently TohokuUniversity). He was appointed Associate Professor in 1921. He visited England, Germany, Switzerland
and the United States in 1922~24. He was appointed Professor in 1926. In subsequent years he actively
conducted boiling heat transfer research.
In 1934, Nukiyama published a pioneering paper*) which was entitled “The Maximum and Minimum
Values of the Heat Q Transmitted from Metal to Boiling Water under Atmospheric Pressure.” This paper
clarified and provided an overview of the boiling phenomena in the form of the Nukiyama Curve (boilingcurve).
In this work, Nukiyama made an excellent experiment using a metallic wire or a metal wire), in which
temperature and heat flux are evaluated accurately, and found that the relation between degree ofsuperheating and heat flux is not monotonous, and that a maximum heat flux points appears in the nucleateboiling region and a minimum heat flux point appears in the film boiling region. He also found thehysteresis behavior that occurs in the transition region between the nucleate boiling and film boiling.
Furthermore, he suggested that the boiling curve can be drawn even in the transition region if the state of
the boiling water can be changed quasi-statically.
This was an epoch-making work which clarified the physics of boiling phenomena first. It has been highly
appreciated in the international academic world of heat transfer. Also, it has become a guideline to heattransfer engineering for the design and control of combustion boilers and/or steam generators, and as such it
has laid the foundation of modern energy technology. The Nukiyama Curve appears in every textbook of heattransfer today. Nukiyama is a great person in the international academic world of heat transfer.
In 1956 Nukiyama retired from Tohoku University, and was granted the title of Professor Emeritus. He
served as the President of the Heat Transfer Society of Japan in 1963~64. He received the Max Jacob
Memorial Award in 1968. In 1983, he passed away in Sendai, Japan.

*) : Journal of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, vol. 37, no. 206, pp. 367-374, June 1934. The English
translation was published twice in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, in vol. 9, pp. 1419-1433, 1966
and in vol. 27, pp. 959-970, 1984.