Horst J. Richter

Horst Richter served as a member of Thayer School's regular faculty from 1975 to 2007. He has also taught and/or did research at the University of Aachen (Germany), at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, and at the Helmut Schmidt University (Hamburg). He was Thayer School's first director of undergraduate studies and later served for three years as the Chair of the Engineering Sciences Department. At Thayer School he has taught thermodynamics, systems, fluid mechanics, two-phase flow, heat and mass transfer, and a course on the technology of sailing.

Guided by the uniting principles of thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and two-phase flow, Richter has done research in areas as diverse as emergency cooling for nuclear power plants, diesel engine fuel injection, fluid flow in orbiting satellites, and performance of thermal processes such as combustion and fuel cells and their use in power plants. He also worked with Professor Emeritus Paul Queneau in modeling of the Queneau-Schuhmann-Lurgi (QSL) reactor—a modern, environmentally-clean reactor for continuous direct metalmaking.

More recently, Richter is interested in computational fluid dynamics as a tool to analyze thermal spraying techniques or to study fluid flow around the sails of racing yachts.