Ronald G. Larson is George G. Brown Professor of
Chemical Engineering and Alfred H. White Distinguished University Professor at the
University of Michigan, where he holds joint appointments in macromolecular science and engineering,
biomedical engineering, and
mechanical engineering.[1] He is internationally recognized for his research contributions to the fields of
polymer physics and
complex fluidrheology, especially in the development of theory and computational simulations. Notably, Larson and collaborators discovered new types of
viscoelastic instabilities for polymer molecules and developed predictive theories for their flow behavior. He has written numerous scientific papers and two books on these subjects,[2][3] including a 1998 textbook, “
The Structure and Rheology of Complex Fluids”.
Larson received a B.S. in 1975, an M.S. in 1977, and a Ph.D. in 1980, all in chemical engineering from the
University of Minnesota. Before joining the
University of Michigan in 1996, he was a Member of the Technical Staff at
Bell Laboratories from 1980-1996. Larson served as the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Michigan from 2000-2008. He is currently the George G. Brown Professor and Alfred H. White Distinguished University Professor of
Chemical Engineering, and is a core member of the Biointerfaces Institute.
Larson is an expert in the theory and simulations of
rheology,
fluid mechanics, and
transport phenomena. His research contributions are in self-assembling
soft matter, especially
polymers,
colloids,
surfactant-containing fluids,
liquid crystalline polymers, biological
macromolecules such as DNA, proteins, and
polyelectrolytes. Larson (along with
Susan Muller at
UC Berkeley and
Eric Shaqfeh at
Stanford) is known for the discovery of fluid mechanical
instabilities of polymeric fluids in curved streamlines due to polymer stretching.[4] These type of streamlines, commonly found in
Taylor-Couette flows, are of great importance to the polymer processing industry. Analogous instabilities have been known for over a century for ordinary fluids such as air and water, and these instabilities drive common phenomena such as
weather patterns, as well as
vortices and other phenomena in common industrial flows of liquids. He has developed molecular
constitutive equations for entangled polymers, as well as many predictive theories for nonlinear rheology of branched polymers, polymers unraveling in shear and extensional flows, polymer drag reduction, shear-induced alignment transitions in
block copolymers, slip and cavitation in
polymer solutions and melts, and arrested tumbling of
liquid crystalline polymers.[5] These methods have been used worldwide by researchers to understand and predict the flow properties of polymeric fluids.
A. Datta, V. S. Tanmay, G. X. Tan, G. W. Reynolds, S. N. Jamadagni, & R. G. Larson. Characterizing the rheology, slip, and velocity profiles of lamellar gel networks. Journal of Rheology64(4), 851 (2020).[14]
Y. Wei, M. J. Solomon &, R. G. Larson. A multimode structural kinetics constitutive equation for the transient rheology of thixotropic elasto-viscoplastic fluids. Journal of Rheology62, 321 (2018).[15]
L. C. Hsiao, S. Jamali, E. Glynos, P.F. Green, R.G. Larson, & M.J. Solomon. Rheological state diagrams for rough colloids in shear flow. Physical Review Letters119, 158001 (2017).[16]
X. Tang, P. H, Koenig &, R. G. Larson. Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate Micelles in Water: The Effect of the Force Field. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B118(14), 3864 (2014).[17]
H. Hu & R.G. Larson. Marangoni effect reverses coffee-ring depositions. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B110(14), 7090 (2006).[18]
T. C. B. McLeish & R. G. Larson. Molecular constitutive equations for a class of branched polymers: The pom-pom polymer. Journal of Rheology 42(1), 81 (1998).[19]
R. G. Larson. Instabilities in viscoelastic flows. Rheologica Acta31(3), 213 (1992).[20]
R. G. Larson, S. J. Muller & E. S. G. Shaqfeh. A purely elastic instability in Taylor-Couette flow. Journal of Fluid Mechanics218, 573 (1990).[4]
^Larson, Ronald G. (28 January 1999). The Structure and Rheology of Complex Fluids (Topics in Chemical Engineering): Larson, Ronald G.: 9780195121971: Amazon.com: Books. Oup USA.
ISBN019512197X.