Dr. Don J. Wood
Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky
The late Don J. Wood, who passed in 2022, was a Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University of Kentucky and the CEO of KYPIPE, LLC. He received the Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and authored of over 110 technical papers dealing with steady-state and transient flow. He co-authored the AWWA Engineering Division 2007 best paper – AWWA Journal, titled, “The Need for Comprehensive Transient Analysis of Distribution Systems.” He received the 2004 Simon Freese Environmental Engineering Award and presented the award-winning lecture titled, “Waterhammer Analysis – Essential and Easy” at the 2004 EWRI Congress. He received numerous other awards, including the national ASEE Western Electric Outstanding Engineering Professor and the ASCE Huber Research Prize in addition to many teaching awards such as the Outstanding Engineering Professor and the Lutes Teaching Award. In March 2011, Dr. Wood was awarded the prestigious Honorary Diplomate, Water Resources Engineer (Hon.D.WRE) title. These awards were presented largely in recognition of his work in developing state-of-the-art techniques in pipe network flow modeling. Dr. Wood was the creator of the powerful node/loop method for steady-state pipe network analysis. He developed the widely-used KYPipe program for steady-state flow and pressure analysis in large piping networks that carry water and other liquids. He was also the creator of the computationally-efficient and accurate wave method for analyzing transient flow and the principal developer of the widely-used Surge program for modeling transient liquid flow in piping systems. Both of these commercial software packages are used extensively worldwide. He was also the senior author of a recent text on transient pipe flow.
Dr. Wood taught short courses on steady-state and transient pipe system modeling at numerous locations worldwide. He was also very active in consulting activities for engineering consulting firms in the area of transient flow including transient analysis of sprinkler systems. In addition, Dr. Wood developed the GoFlow software package for the analysis of fire protection sprinkler systems.
