WENDT, John
von Karman Institute, Rhode Saint Genese, Belgium; wendt@vki.ac.be; http://www.vki.ac.be
Abstract: The continued expansion of international collaborative projects in advanced scientific and technological fields calls for concurrent developments in education which will promote and strengthen such collaboration. Multinational educational and research institutes can play an important role in this respect. This paper presents the von Karman Institute, a multinational training and research establishment focussed on fluid dynamics, as a model to be evaluated by persons charged with the responsibility to develop new high-technology centers of education. The Institute's history, training programs and future plans are reviewed. Lessons learned over many years - social, financial, political are enumerated.
Keywords: education, international, fluid dynamics.
The continued expansion of international collaboration in advanced scientific and technological fields calls for concurrent continued developments in education which will strengthen and promote such collaboration. International educational and research institutes are most useful in this respect, as they provide a common background of learning in a culturally diverse setting to people of different nationalities who will later be involved in international programs. They also provide students and staff with the opportunity to live and work together and, inevitably, to better understand and overcome differences in mentality, language, and points of view. There are, of course, many international student exchange programs, international meetings, and conferences; but none of them can provide the necessary continuous and active contacts and engagements in study and research projects with fellow scientists from many countries which can be offered by an international institute.
By setting forth an historical view of the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics and by relating our perceptions of the Institute's accomplishments, it is hoped that educators in other fields will be inspired to conceive of new international institutes for graduate study and research.
Professor Theodore von Karman's own life and career perfectly suited him to become the founder of the institute which now carries his name. Born in Hungary, educated at the graduate level in Germany, he became director of the Aeronautical Institute in Aachen, the director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech, and then the First Chief Scientist of the US airforce. As a world traveler and research advisor to many nations, it was almost inevitable that he would crown his career as the founder of a number of international scientific associations, including NATO's Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (AGARD), recently reformed as NATO's Research and Technology Organization.
In the mid-1950's, he set about implementing his vision of a training establishment which would being together young scientists and engineers from many countries in an atmosphere of learning, believing as evidenced by his own career, that such a learning experience would have a favorable effect on their philosophy of life and their views and understanding of international questions.
His inspiration led AGARD to examine this idea through a Working Party, which he chaired. The Working Party decided unanimously in favor of the idea and set about to formulate a plan of organization, curricula, and a long-range facility program. A bilateral agreement between Belgium and the United States of America provided the initial funds for the organization and the Training Center for Experimental Aerodynamics, as it was then known, opened its doors in 1956.
The overall responsibility for the Center's operation was vested in a General Assembly, to which were elected leading aeronautical figures, and a Board of Directors, composed of the members of the original AGARD Working Party plus additional internationally known aerodynamicists and educationalists. Both bodies were under the chairmanship of Professor von Karman. Over the years more countries joined in the support of the Institute until at present they number 14 and are expected to increase in the near future. The countries support the Institute according to an agreed formula. The Institute's annual budget is reviewed and approved by a special Ad Hoc Working Group of NATO.
The objectives of the von Karman Institute are to provide citizens of the NATO countries with high-level training at the post-university level in all fields of fluid dynamics and within an international forum. While the applications of fluid dynamics are diverse, they have a common theoretical basis which is that taught at universities to students in selected engineering and science disciplines. The task of the VKI is to build on to that background the ability to conduct original research - both basic and applied - thus enabling the young engineer or scientist to tackle the many problems which impact on our security, our industrial strength and the quality of life. The means by which this task is fulfilled requires the bringing together of specialists, extensive experimental equipment, and large computers in an atmosphere of learning. Many programs have been developed since 1956 to achieve these goals and they will now be reviewed.
When the Institute opened its doors to European and North American students in the autumn of 1956, it offered them a single program of courses and research which evolved over the years into the Diploma Course in Fluid Dynamics. This was and remains now the principal educational activity of the VKI. In the early 1960's, a few highly concentrated courses were introduced and presented to outsiders as well as Institute students; today, ten one-week specialized courses are organized each year and constitute the VKI Lecture Series Program which is attended by hundreds of scientists and engineers from Europe and North America. The Doctoral Program, prompted by an increasing demand for highly trained researchers, represented a logical addition to the Institute's educational programs; the first doctoral degree was awarded in 1963. Young scientists with a specialization in fluid dynamics are also offered special one-year programs to apply and perfect their knowledge in the domain of Applied Research. Recognizing the need to acquaint undergraduate students with the methods and practices of modern research techniques in fluid dynamics, the Institute established in 1976 the Short Training Program. In addition, many special programs are regularly designed for small groups from universities and industries; they serve to place facilities, instrumentation and trained personnel at the disposal of the participants on a scale which would otherwise be unavailable to them. These programs will now be discussed in detail to exemplify the Institute's unique character.
The Diploma Course has comprised, since its inception in 1956, a combination of formal lectures, laboratory sessions, and an individual research project offered to candidates who already have a university degree. In the early years, the objective was to provide aeronautical engineers and scientists with a specialized training in fluid dynamics, with particular emphasis on experimental aerodynamics. To answer an evolving demand from industries and research centers in the sponsoring countries, additional courses were developed in such areas as turbomachinery, hypersonics, physics of gases, etc. Eventually, entirely new specializations were created to capitalize on the resources of the Institute as represented by its facilities and faculty; e.g. wind engineering, energy conversion, heat transfer, the numerical treatment of the equations of fluid dynamics, and so forth. At present, a student attending the Diploma Course in Fluid Dynamics follows an initial series of common lectures and then chooses one of the three areas of specialization corresponding to the present VKI departments: Aeronautics/Aerospace, Environmental and Applied Fluid Dynamics, and Turbomachinery. The individual research project remains the cornerstone of the Diploma Course; nearly two-thirds of the academic year is devoted to it. This confirms the objective of the course which is "Training in research by research". From 1956 to the present, nearly 1100 engineers and scientists have received the VKI Diploma.
In the early 1960's, the opportunity to provide more advanced training in research at the doctoral level was recognized. The facilities were able to accommodate additional researchers and the faculty would benefit by conducting more advanced work. The close relationship existing between the VKI and the Belgian Universities would permit the doctoral candidate to present his or her thesis to one of their applied science departments.
Candidates typically enter this Program after completing the Diploma Course. The first doctoral degree was awarded in 1963 and since then more than 100 candidates from 12 countries have successfully defended their theses before faculty juries not only at Belgian universities, but also at universities in many other countries.
The benefits for the VKI and its sponsors as a direct result of this program are considerable: the atmosphere of advanced research at the doctoral level filters down into the Diploma Course activities, enhances the ability of faculty members to undertake applied research studies and provides high quality scientific material for external dissemination.
During the five first years of operation, the courses taught at the VKI were presented exclusively to members of the Diploma Course : since these courses were distributed throughout the academic year, it was not possible for members of private industries or research institutes to benefit from them. So as to serve better such organizations, the Institute prepared two short courses in 1962 which were open to outsiders on payment of a fee, as well as to VKI students. From this modest beginning, the VKI Lecture Series have grown into a major program typically consisting of ten to twelve courses which are attended by approximately 400 persons annually from Europe and North America. The lecturers are internationally recognized experts and the widely acknowledged excellence of this program has done much to promote the Institute. The VKI has also implemented a mechanism whereby organizations may purchase the annual proceedings of the Lecture Series. Thousands of individual notes have been distributed throughout Europe and North America, and some have been published as books.
In 1976, the Institute established a program wherein qualified undergraduate students from universities throughout the NATO nations may become acquainted with the work of the fluid dynamicist through participation in a research project at the VKI. The duration of the program is typically two to three months. On average, 50 students from 40 universities participate in this program each year.
Following the trend toward applied research and in view of the general absence of high level training in this area, the VKI established a program in 1978 which aims at providing young engineers (for example, graduates of the VKI Diploma Course) and experienced professionals with an opportunity to develop the skills needed to solve complex fluid dynamic problems of an industrial nature. Typically 25 persons per year join this program for periods of three months to one year.
With the objective of making available the Institute's capabilities to a larger number of interested persons or institutions, many Special Programs have been initiated. Some have continued over a period of years, others have been organized only once for a specific group. The most heavily attended program has been designed for students completing their work for the engineer's degree at Belgian universities; they are offered the opportunity to carry out at the VKI an individual or team research project which serves as their diploma thesis. The number of attendees has varied between 10 and 20 per year since the opportunity was first offered in 1963.
As summarized above, the institute is engaged in a variety of academic activities, but it also performs fundamental and applied research. Research is felt to be of great importance to achieving our objectives as it enables the Institute's scientific staff to keep abreast of recent developments, to maintain close contacts with the international scientific and industrial communities and, last but not least, to expose students to the practical problems of interest to industries and government research organizations. An example of how a funded research theme has impacted the educational program follows.
Research in this area has been under way in the Aeronautics Department at VKI since 1984. First, under the sponsorship of the Association of European Airlines (AEA), it was demonstrated by full scale wind tunnel tests that important losses of lift coefficient at take-off could result from the use of deicing (Newtonian) or anti-icing (non Newtonian) fluids on grounded aircraft. These losses are due to the formation of wind-induced waves on the fluid layer protecting the wing from icing, which increase the aerodynamic roughness of the wing surface, resulting in a thickening of the airflow boundary layer. The CWT-1, a wind tunnel cooled by LN2, was built to study the motion of a de/anti-icing fluid layer on a flat surface when subjected to an accelerating airflow simulating an aircraft take-off, and an original blockage method was devised to measure the instantaneous displacement thickness of the boundary layer over the moving wavy fluid surface. Under further sponsorship by three AECMA (Association Européenne de Constructeurs de Materiel Aeronautique) companies, this simple measurement in the CWT-1 could be correlated to the fluid-induced lift loss of a real aircraft wing at take-off. This led to the definition of an original VKI methodology to assess the aerodynamic acceptability of a de/anti-icing fluid. Thus the measured displacement thickness is compared to that measured over a dry plate, and over a plate covered with a reference Newtonian fluid. The two latter measurements allow the determination of an aerodynamic acceptance limit. Definition of such a limit was carried out in close collaboration with the aircraft firms. This research resulted in the establishment of AEA, ISO and SAE standards to assess the aerodynamic acceptability of a de/anti-icing fluid, and the VKI CWT-1 was officially recognized by the AIA (Aerospace Industries of America) and by the AECMA as an authorized test site for the aerodynamic certification of aircraft de/anti-icing fluids.
Industrial testing of commercial fluids according to such standards was conducted for a number of European, North American, Japanese and Russian fluid manufacturers or users. The introduction of the VKI test procedures resulted in recent years in notable improvements of the aerodynamic behavior of commercially available fluids.
This activity, initiated to respond to a specific industrial request, both for certification of existing products, as well as for the development of new products with improved characteristics, led to further fundamental research. This was aimed at analyzing the test procedures used for the certification tests, and at studying the behavior of a layer of deicing or anti-icing fluid subjected to an airflow, including consideration of surface instabilities, surface wave formation, fluid transport, the effect of the fluid waves on the airflow, and of the required nonintrusive measurement techniques.
These studies, including the development of the measurement techniques and the wind tunnel, have involved both actively and deeply members of our doctoral, diploma course and short-training programs who have contributed in an important way to the successful resolution of an important safety problem in aeronautical engineering and have learned the methodology and scientific techniques which are the basis to problem resolution.
If the VKI experience is to serve as a model for the creation of centers of education and research in other scientific fields, then a critique of the VKI experience is appropriate.
Certain aspects of VKI's development were instrumental in guaranteeing our survival during the formative years. Firstly, there is no question but that Professor von Karman's international reputation and powerful personality contributed immeasurably to the successful launching of the operation. Secondly, a specific well-defined subject area -experimental aerodynamics- was agreed upon as representing a subject of considerable international interest. Thirdly, the untiring efforts by key individuals within AGARD and the overall guidance offered by NATO contributed greatly to our early success. Appropriate groups within NATO provided the diplomatic skills and experience in financial affairs, which were indispensable at that time for our orderly development. Fourthly, a suitable site for the center was already in existence, and the host country agreed to make it available. Thus, buildings, grounds, some specialized equipment, and technically trained personnel were immediately put at our disposal. The savings in time which otherwise would have been expended in assembling these essential elements was obviously considerable. Although this point was extremely important in influencing the choice of Belgium as the site for the Institute, other factors, some of which were not even fully appreciated at that time, played their part as well: the standing of Belgium in advanced technologies was not so high as to promote the "economic capture" of VKI's graduates, and yet its level of industrialization was such that it could provide a ready supply of skilled machinists, technicians and industrial engineers to cope with the most advanced requirements of a technological institute; the close proximity of great universities and national libraries, and local languages which did not present any major obstacles to the students. Finally, the General Assembly and Board of Direction, composed as they were of internationally recognized researchers and educators provided valuable advice regarding our curricula, research endeavors, and future planning.
The comprehensive range of modern facilities and associated equipment provides an important and obvious asset to the Institute's educational program. Not only do these facilities allow students to work more effectively on "real" problems, but they also enable contract research to be undertaken by the Institute. The presence of such research exposes the students to practical problems in which the sponsoring countries have an interest as was illustrated in the previous section. In addition, it provides a means to improve the overall cost-effectiveness of the organization. However, the delicate balance between education, fundamental and applied research is not easy to maintain. Under severe budgetary conditions, as when international support reaches a low ebb in its unending fluctuations, there might exist a temptation to give higher priority to routine contract research which is inappropriate to an educational establishment. We believe we have been able to overcome this temptation at VKI, even during our most difficult periods, but this success may be partly attributed to the relatively small size and resulting flexibility and low inertia of our operation combined with an increasing reputation for high quality research requiring a deep understanding of the fundamentals.
The small size of the Institute lends other advantages as well. It preserves a close relationship between students and faculty and, even more importantly, induces close relationships between the students themselves. Since no single nationality is present in large numbers, little tendency exists for "national" groups to form and a truly international student body develops.
Although our major programs - the Diploma Course, the Doctoral Program, and the Lecture Series - would appear at first glance to be nearly independent of one another, in fact they operate very well in concert. In particular, the Lecture Series are open to our students and thus they have the opportunity to meet and carry on discussions with the dozens of international experts who participate in these programs each year. This opportunity would almost certainly be unavailable to them regardless of their country of origin had they chosen to attend a purely national university.
The official languages of the Institute are English and French. However, it must be admitted that over the years English has come to be used almost exclusively in our teaching programs. We have not found that simultaneous translation techniques are compatible with an educational atmosphere and we feel that the advantage of using a single language ("broken English", as von Karman often called it) far outweighs the slight and only temporary difficulties experienced by some of our students.
Another problem arises in connection with student recruitment: the difficult question of criteria for admission. In view of the extremely wide spectrum of degrees and diplomas of higher education, it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, for the Institute's staff to determine whether a candidate has an adequate background to be able to benefit from our program. The obvious solution, which we have adopted, consists in asking responsible individuals in each participating nation to aid us in the selection procedure. We have found that the advantages of this system far outweigh the eventual inconveniences.
We have always endeavored to maintain a truly international staff, with good representation of the participating nations. The Institute was built on an existing purely Belgian research organization and the internationalization of the staff thus developed gradually. It is not surprising; therefore, that Belgium is better represented than other nations on the teaching staff. Furthermore, as the non-Belgian members naturally tend to be less permanent, the percentage of Belgians in the senior positions tends to be proportionately higher. This process is likely to occur in any setting and should be kept in mind. In our case, these senior Belgian staff members are closely connected with Belgian universities and thus they have been able to promote an excellent spirit of cooperation with these universities. This is particularly useful for postgraduate students of any nationality who intend to prepare a thesis at VKI in order to obtain a Doctor of Science degree at one of the Belgian universities.
One major problem in our development has still not been solved to our complete satisfaction; namely, the complications resulting from the fact that our financial support comes from 14 individual NATO countries rather than from a single source such as NATO itself. The problem of obtaining a satisfactory funding arrangement with a large number of countries is obviously a strongly increasing function of this number; pessimists might be tempted to expect some sort of exponential dependence. If VKI were an integral part of a large multinational organization, its budget would be but a single item in the budget of the parent assembly. The obvious result would be enhanced long-term stability and a better climate within which to perform long range planning, as it would then be much more difficult for a single country to vary its financial contribution as it pleases. The arguments favoring the "single parent" idea may to some extent be countered by the fact that the "multiple parent" concept generally has given the VKI more freedom of action i.e. our future is perhaps more of our own making. Nevertheless, on balance, we feel that the enhanced stability engendered by a single parent represents a superior arrangement.
Having fulfilled the original objectives set by Professor von Karman and the Board of Directors, the Institute must continue to set new goals so as to retain its dynamism. On the educational side, we see a demand for training in defense conversion ; i.e., helping governmental and industrial organizations in the field of defense to convert some fraction of their staff into consulting engineers in non-defense fields. Two experiments have already been conducted and were found to be very successful. They emphasized the methodology of technical problem resolution and the mechanisms of interacting with clients who often have only a partial understanding of the theoretical basis of their problem area.
On the political side, Professor von Karman's original dream of bringing together, within the framework of high-level education, persons from countries which only a few years earlier were at war with one another is now being extended. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been invited to join the VKI and thus to offer the possibility to their young researchers of a period of training within the multinational environment of the Institute. Officials and university leaders in these countries have been enthusiastic about this approach and we anticipate welcoming these countries into the VKI family in the near future. The lessons we have learned over many years - social, political, financial, diplomatic, technical - will serve us well in achieving this new objective.
The VKI can legitimately claim that it is a successful experiment in international engineering education. The efforts of many persons and groups - our staff, our Board of Directors, the industries which have shown confidence in our ability to work with them, and the many university professors who have sent their best and brightest to our training programs - are responsible for our present status.
This paper was meant to summarize what we are, how we came about, and what lessons we learned along the way. Hopefully, others will take profit from our experiences.