A Special Rheology Symposium in Honor of Professor Roger Ian Tanner, on the Occasion of his 82nd birthday was co-organised by the Department of Mathematics of the University of the Aegean and the Hellenic Society of Rheology, with Kostas Housiadas being the chair and Georgios Georgiou the co-chair, at Vathi, Samos, Greece on 5 – 10 July 2015.

Professor Tanner selected publications:

R.I.Tanner (2000), Engineering Rheology, 2nd Edn, Oxford University press 559pp.
The book was written in Sydney and has had two editions plus a paperback edition; it continues to be well cited (about 900 citations at 3/12/2014)

R.I.Tanner (1970) A Theory of Die-Swell, J.Poly. Sci Part A2, 8: 2067-2078
This paper gives a widely-used analytical connection between normal stresses, shear stresses and extrudate swell. Its findings have been well confirmed by experiment (285 citations in ISI database).

R.E.Nickell, R.I.Tanner, B.Caswell (1974) The Solution of Viscous Incompressible Jet and Free Surface Flows Using Finite Element Methods, J. Fluid Mech. 65: 189-206
This paper was the first to show how to solve extrusion, jet and free-surface problems using finite element methods. These methods were widely adopted (230 citations in ISI).

N.Phan-Thien, R.I.Tanner (1977) A New Constitutive Equation Derived from Network Theory, J. Non-Newt. Fluid Mech., 2: 353-365
ARC funded (Large Grant 1976-78) This PTT model limits the elongational viscosity predicted; many earlier models did not. Widely used by researchers and industry,it has about 470 citations (Google)-often no reference is given.

X-L Luo , R.I.Tanner (1988) Finite Element Simulation of Long and Short Circular Die Extrusion Experiments Using Integral Models , Int. J. for Numerical methods in Engineering 25: 9-22
ARC funded (Program Grant 1985-1990) This was the first paper that gave a sufficiently realistic computation to compare (successfully) with extrusion experiments (93 ISI citations).

E.J.O’Donovan,R.I.Tanner (1984) Numerical Study of the Bingham Squeeze Film Problem.J. Non-Newt. Fluid Mech. 15: 75-83
ARC funded (Large Grant ) This paper pointed out some flaws in earlier theoretical arguments about the existence of unyielded regions in Bingham flows. It has been very widely cited (134 citations).

A.Jabbarzadeh, J.D.Atkinson, R.I.Tanner (2000) Effect of the Wall Roughness on Slip and Rheological Properties of Hexadecane in Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Couette Shear Flow Between Two Sinusoidal Walls. Phys. Review E 61: 690-699
ARC funded (Large Grant A10009078) This paper applied Molecular Dynamics calculations to the rheology of thin-film lubrication and explained the increase of load with thin lubricant films and the effect of wall roughness. (91 citations).

Y.Fan, N.Phan-Thien, R.I.Tanner (1999) Galerkin/Least-square Finite Element Methods for Steady Viscoelastic Flows. J. Non-Newt. Fluid Mech. 84: 233-256
ARC funded (Large Grant A10009145) This paper gave some very accurate numerical solutions to certain viscoelastic flow problems and they are now a widely used benchmark for subsequent computations by others (78 citations).

M.Keentok,A.G. Georgescu,A.A. Sherwood,R.I. Tanner (1980) The measurement of the second normal stress difference for some polymer solutions. J. Non-Newt. Fluid Mech. 6: 303-324.
ARC funded (66 citations).This paper is the basic experimental technique used in the present proposal for measuring accurately the second normal stress difference.

S-C Xue, N.Phan-Thien,R.I.Tanner (1998) Three-dimensional numerical simulations of viscoelastic flows through planar contractions.
ARC funded. J. Non-Newt. Fluid Mech. 74: 195-245.This pioneer paper describes the finite volume formulation. Unlike many finite element schemes, the finite volume formulation is stable at higher Weissenberg numbers.

Professor Tanner with his own words

I work on the fluid mechanics of suspensions of rigid and flexible particles in fluids. The research is applicable to many industrial processes – minerals, food, blood for example.

I do experimental and computational work plus theoretical modelling (where possible) to predict the flow properties of materials.

We have worked with the software firm Moldflow on the design of injection moulds for plastics and a book has been written; We were pioneers in the use of computational fluid mechanics to study plastics processing We invented several widely used mathematical descriptions of the connection between stresses and deformation for non-Newtonian fluids (The PTT model for polymers, the damage function model for bread dough).

https://sydney.edu.au/research/opportunities/supervisors/1763