MARTINELLI

ITALY (see also List of Individuals)

\

27.4.1914 Lucca/I - 9.1.1949 Oakland/USA

\

Raymond Martinelli graduated in 1938 as a mechanical engineer from the University of California, Berkeley, and there submitted in 1941 a PhD thesis. He was first associated with the Shell Oil Company as a research engineer and was in parallel a professor at the University of California. Also, he served as a designer in the Douglas Aircraft Company. During World War II he was associated with projects of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics NACA, and the Army Air Forces. He then moved to the laboratories of the General Electric Company in Schenectady NY as a research engineer. He passed away at a young age due to an illness. Martinelli was a Member of Tau Beta Pi, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, the Mohawk Association of Scientists and Engineers, and ASME.

\

Martinelli was the recipient of ASME's Melville Medal in 1947 for a paper in heat transfer of molten metals. His name became known through a paper in collaboration with Lockhart relating to isothermal two-phase flow in pipes. Based on the 1944 study in which the static pressure drop of two-phase flow involving air and eight different liquids in a relatively small pipe was considered, and where the main flow patterns in such a flow configuration were defined, the 1948 paper was a definite contribution mainly to process engineering. The results of Lockhart and Martinelli are still in use today although the large amount of advanced studies based on modern instrumentation. Their work refers to the additional headloss of pipe flow as compared to a onephase flow when adding a second fluid. In applications of hydraulic engineering, air-water flows are of relevance. Lockhart and Martinelli demonstrated that this phenomenon is governed by a parameter χ equal to the square root of the ratio of the pressure drop in the pipe if the liquid flowed alone to the pressure drop if the gas phase flowed alone. This integral approach is currently much refined by investigating the phenomena in correlation to the flow type and the definition of flow pattern maps.

\

_{Anonymous (1948). Raymond C. Martinelli. Mechanical Engineering 70(1): 68-69. P Anonymous (1949). Raymond Constantine Martinelli. Mechanical Engineering 71(4): 376. Lockhart, R.W., Martinelli, R.C. (1949). Proposed correlation of data for isothermal two-phase, two-component flow in pipes. Chemical Engineering Progress 45: 39-48.}

_{Martinelli, R.C., Boelter, L.M.K., Taylor, T.H.M., Thomson, E.G., Morrin, E.H. (1944).}

_{Isothermal pressure drop for two-phase two-component flow in a horizontal pipe. Trans. ASME 66(2): 139-151.}