WITTE

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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19.10.1889/D - 1.4.1965 Ludwigshafen/D

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Rudolf Witte graduated as a mechanical engineer and in the mid 1920s submitted a PhD thesis to the University of Berlin. He stayed then all through his career with IG-Farben in Ludwigshafen at Rhine River, finally as a technical director.

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Witte's life was dedicated to the measurement of discharge using a variety of hydraulic devices. His 1928 paper relates to the diaphragm method for discharge determination of water, oil, vapor and gas. For all these, the effects of surface tension and viscosity result in deviations from the basic discharge equation. Then, in 1939, he investigated the Venturi pipe introduced originally by Gian Battista Venturi (1746-1822) for local pressure reduction of pipe flow by inserting a local constriction. Again, Witte among others compared accurate data with the basic discharge equation to determine the correction coefficients. The 1953 paper reviews the then currently available standard procedures for discharge measurement mainly of water. Witte was heavily involved in the International Standardization Organization ISO as the chairman of the German VDI Discharge Measurement Group. Besides the prediction of discharge with a suitable hydraulic formula, the definition of the exact geometry of a discharge measuring device was of significance. Exact procedures for arranging an element within a hydraulic circuit were thus described along with materials required and measurement facilities proposed. Witte was involved for over thirty years in these hydraulic activities to be awarded in 1960 the VDI-Ehrenmünze in gold, both for his personal research and the time devoted as a VDI section chairman. The chair was then taken over by his colleague Gerhard Ruppel (1902-1992). Today, diaphragms, orifices and Venturi tubes are no more used for standard discharge determination given that more advanced methods such as the Inductive Discharge Measurement are available.

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_{Anonymous (2003). Dr.phil. Rudolf Witte. Personal communication. VDI Mitteilungsabteilung: Düsseldorf.}

_{Witte, R. (1928). Durchflussbeiwerte der IG-Messmündungen für Wasser, Öl, Dampf und Gas. Zeitschrift VDI 72(42): 1493-1502; 72(52): 1939-1940.}

_{Witte, R. (1930). Durchflusszahlen von Düsen und Staurändern. Technische Mechanik und Thermodynamik 1(1): 34-41; 1(3): 113-120; 1(9): 338-340.}

_{Witte, R. (1939). Untersuchungen zur Normung von Venturirohren. Forschung 10(4): 175-182. Witte, R. (1953). Neue Beiträge zur internationalen Normung auf dem Gebiete der DurchflussMessung. Brennstoff-Wärme-Kraft 5(6): 185-190. P}