Andrew Norris - BE, PhD

Andrew Norris graduated from The University of Auckland with a BE in mechanical engineering in 1986. In 1987, Andrew accepted a scholarship to Cornell University in the USA and moved to Ithaca New York and after enduring sub-zero winters, grad student housing and writing a thesis, graduated in 1993 with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering.

In June 1993, Andrew went to work for the Institute for Computational Mechanics in Propulsion (ICOMP) at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland Ohio. NASA Glenn is one of the three NASA research centers, and specialises in propulsion systems, both for atmospheric and space vehicles.

The work Andrew is involved in is quite varied, but involves the field of turbulent combustion theory and modeling. For the last few years he has been working on the National Combustion Code (NCC), a massively parallel computer code used to simulate the heat and flow conditions in combustors and combustion chambers. This code has been developed at NASA Glenn, and is used to support in-house research efforts as well as act as a test bed for new modeling techniques. Andrew's work on this code has been in the development of models and numerical techniques for the chemical kinetics of combustion and also in the interaction between the turbulent flow field and the reaction kinetics.

In addition to development work, Andrew also is involved in application of the code. Most recent was the full, 3D numerical simulation of the GE90 Jet engine from inlet to exit using a 1024 processor computer at NASA Ames.

Andrew lives in Oberlin, Ohio and apart from sailing and skiing, has taken up mountain biking. Living in Ohio this entails travel to such locations as Marin County in California and also Moab, Utah where Andrew rode the Slickrock trail and also had his first and hopefully last encounter with Guiness Lite. He also spends time developing the Lego skills of his two daughters, Gwynevere and Cordelia, who show great promise as future engineers.