Wu Zhonghua

Wu Zhonghua
Wu Zhonghua and wife Li Minhua, c. 1943
Native name	吴仲华
Born	(1917-07-27)27 July 1917 Shanghai, China
Died	19 September 1992(1992-09-19) (aged 75) Beijing, China
Alma mater	Tsinghua University, National Southwestern Associated University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for	General theory of three-dimensional flow for turbomachinery
Spouse(s)	Li Minhua
Scientific career
Fields	Engineering thermophysics
Institutions	Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Tsinghua University, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	吳仲華
Simplified Chinese	吴仲华
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wú Zhònghuá Wade–Giles Wu Chung-hua

Wu Zhonghua (Chinese: 吴仲华; 27 July 1917 – 19 September 1992), also known as Chung-Hua Wu,^[1] was a Chinese physicist and professor of Tsinghua University. While a researcher at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA), he pioneered the general theory of three-dimensional flow for turbomachinery. This and his other theories have been used in the designs of many aircraft engines, including Pratt & Whitney's JT3D and JT9D, Rolls-Royce's RB211 and Spey, and General Electric's F404. He returned to China in 1954 and became the founding director of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics (IET) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He and his wife Li Minhua were both academicians of the CAS.

Early life and education

Wu was born on 27 July 1917 in Shanghai, with his ancestral home in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. He attended Shanghai Gezhi High School until age 16, before moving to Nanjing and graduating from Jinling High School.^[2][1]

In 1935, he entered the Department of Mechanics of Tsinghua University in Beiping (now Beijing). After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the university evacuated Beiping and moved south to Changsha, Hunan Province. Together with other students of Tsinghua's mechanics department, he received a year of military training at the newly established Army Mechanized Force School in Hunan. However, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Hunan, his university was forced to evacuate again to Kunming in southwest China, where Tsinghua and several other universities exiled from Beijing combined their resources to form the temporary National Southwestern Associated University (Lianda). Wu resumed his studies and after graduating in 1940, stayed at Lianda as a faculty member. In 1943, he married Li Minhua, a fellow physicist and Tsinghua/Lianda alumna and faculty member.^[2]

Career in the United States

In late 1943, Wu won Tsinghua University's Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and went to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where he and his wife both became PhD students. Wu specialized in the internal combustion engine, and Li also studied engineering. Li gave birth twice in the US, and the couple took turns looking after the children.^[2]

Wu earned his PhD in 1947, and Li hers a year later. They both joined the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) after graduation.^[2] In 1950, he pioneered the three-dimensional flow theory for turbomachinery,^[3] which was considered a major breakthrough in the development of turbomachinery.^[2]

With the outbreak of the Korean War, relations between the US and the newly established People's Republic of China turned openly hostile, and Wu and his wife decided they could no longer work for the US military.^[2] He resigned from NACA and became a professor at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1951.^[4] In 1954, they resolved to return to China. To avoid suspicion of the US government, the family flew to Britain in August ostensibly for vacation, and from there they travelled through Switzerland and Austria to Czechoslovakia, and finally arriving in Beijing at the end of the year via the Soviet Union.^[2]

Career in China

Statue of Wu Zhonghua at Jinling High School

In Beijing, Wu was appointed professor and deputy head of the Mechanics Department of Tsinghua University, and established China's first turbomachinery program at Tsinghua in 1956.^[2] The following year, he established a research lab in turboengines and internal combustion at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He was elected as an academician of the CAS in 1957. When the University of Science and Technology of China was established in 1958, he served as the head of the Department of Physics and Thermal Engineering.^[2]

In 1958, Wu was persecuted for criticizing the Great Leap Forward, but was rehabilitated the next year.^[2] He was appointed Deputy Director of the Institute of Mechanics of the CAS in 1960, and held the position until 1980.^[1] Many scientific research programs were cancelled during the Great Famine, and he was later sent to the countryside for three years to receive "Socialist Education".^[2] When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Wu was protected by Premier Zhou Enlai and the PLA Air Force, and survived the turmoil unscathed, but his research ground to a halt.^[2]

After the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, the CAS established the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics (IET) in 1980, which had originally been planned for 1963, and Wu became its founding director.^[2] After Sino-American relations were normalized in 1979, Wu led a group of Chinese scientists to visit the United States for the first time since he returned to China in 1954.^[2]

Wu won the National Prize for Natural Sciences Second Class twice, in 1957 and 1982. He was awarded the Major Discovery Prize by the CAS in 1975. He was elected to the Standing Committee of the 6th (1983–1988) and 7th National People's Congress (1988–1992).^[2][4]

Scientific contributions

While working at NACA in 1950, Wu published the paper "A general theory of three-dimensional flow in subsonic and supersonic turbomachines of axial-, radial-, and mixed-flow types",^[2][4] which pioneered the three-dimensional flow theory.^[3] He reduced three-dimensional flow problems to problems of iterating two solutions of two independent variables. The relaxation or direct matrix method was used for subsonic flows and the method of characteristics for supersonic flows.^[3]

After returning to China, in the 1960s he developed a body-fitted, nonorthogonal curvilinear coordinate system to improve computational accuracy. At the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, he and his colleagues developed shock-fitting and artificial compressibility methods for solutions in two- and three-dimensional transonic flows.^[3]

Wu's theories have been used in the designs of many aircraft engines including the Teledyne CAE J69, Pratt & Whitney JT3D, Rolls-Royce Spey, Rolls-Royce RB211, Pratt & Whitney JT9D, and the General Electric F404.^[3]

Retirement and death

Wu retired in June 1987, and was diagnosed with liver cancer soon afterwards. He was treated by the famous surgeon Wu Mengchao in Shanghai, and the operation was initially successful.^[2] In 1990, Wu Zhonghua and his wife were invited to live and teach at Clemson University for four months, and he gave a series of lectures at the NASA Lewis Research Center.^[3]

In 1992, Wu's cancer relapsed and metastasized to his lungs. He was hospitalized in August and died on 19 September 1992 in Beijing, aged 75.^[2][3][4] Soon after his death, NASA published Report 4496 (1993) on his general theory of turbomachinery. He reviewed the final draft of the manuscript while in hospital.^[3]

On Wu's 90th birthday in 2007, the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics established the Wu Zhonghua Scholarship Fund in his memory, which rewards outstanding graduate students and researchers in engineering thermophysics.^[5]

References

External links

• "A General Theory of Three-Dimensional Flow in Subsonic and Supersonic Turbomachines of Axial-, Radial, and Mixed-Flow Types" (NACA TN 2604) by Wu Zhonghua