Kevin Kendall facts for kids

Kevin Kendall is a British physicist who has made important discoveries about how materials stick together and break apart. He earned his first degree while working as an engineering apprentice. He became very interested in how surfaces interact during his Ph.D. studies at the University of Cambridge.

He developed a new way to measure the real area where two solid objects touch. This led to new ideas about why things stick together (adhesion) and why they fracture. His work helps solve many problems in industries, especially in the chemical industry, where tiny particles often stick together very strongly. His book Crack Control explains many of these ideas.

Early Life and Education

Kevin Kendall first went to school in Darwen. After his mother passed away in 1950, his family moved to Accrington. He attended St Annes Accrington and then St. Mary's College, Blackburn, finishing his A levels in 1961.

After his father died in 1960, Joseph Lucas Gas Turbine Ltd. offered Kevin an apprenticeship in Physics at Salford CAT (which was a college). He earned his degree in 1965. This allowed him to work for a year on rocket modeling. In 1966, he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He spent three years studying at the Cavendish Laboratory. There, he successfully analyzed how sound waves travel through metal and other contacts. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1970. His supervisor was David Tabor.

Discoveries in Adhesion

In 1969, Kendall joined British Railways Research in Derby. They were developing the new Advanced Passenger Train (APT). This project involved solving problems with how train wheels stick to rails and how they rust.

While studying how tiny particles from rusty train brake dust stuck together, he found that common testing methods were wrong. He published his first paper showing that "crack theory" must be used. This theory explains how cracks spread, similar to what Griffith had shown for glass cracks in 1920.

This work connected him with Ken Johnson and Alan Roberts at Cambridge University. They were studying how smooth rubber balls stuck together. Kendall quickly found the mathematical solution that fit their experiments. Their joint paper was published in 1971. It became one of the most referenced papers in the Royal Society Proceedings A.

This major breakthrough helped Kendall take time away from industry. He worked at Monash University in Australia and then at Akron University in the USA. During this time (1972-1975), he solved several long-standing problems about composite materials:

• Why materials like Fiberglass are tougher than their brittle parts, like glass fibers and plastic.
• How a crack can change direction along a weak boundary between materials.
• How lap joints (where two pieces overlap and are joined) fail. People had used lap joints for 5000 years, but the solution to their failure was only found in 1975.

Kendall later summarized these findings in his first book, The Sticky Universe, in 1997.

Industry Innovations

Kendall believed that industry was key to new technology. He joined Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Runcorn. There, he invented new processes and materials. One of his patents was for a new way to mix cement. By adding about 1% of a special polymer, he created a new product. This product was much stronger and tougher than regular mortar. This invention led to better ceramic processing. It also helped create improved superconductors and fuel cells. Kendall and his ICI team received an award for this invention. This was important because of the energy crisis at the time.

Another discovery in the 1970s was about grinding fine particles in ball mills. People had noticed for thousands of years that particles stop getting finer after a certain point. Kendall explained this limit. He found that when particles become very small, cracks stop spreading because the material starts to flow instead of breaking.

Kendall received the Adhesion Society award for excellence in 1998. He started a company called Adelan in 1996. He returned to the industry after starting this company. Since 2021, he has been the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The company's goal is to replace burning fuels with hydrogen-fuel-cell power. This aims to help avoid the climate crisis.

University Research and Green Energy

In 1989, ICI decided to focus on medicines. Kendall took early retirement and joined his colleague Derek Birchall at Keele University. In 1993, they worked with Ceram Research. They used his patents on ceramic processing to develop new products. This included Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs). Kendall invented fine cell tubes for these fuel cells. These tubes allowed the fuel cells to start up quickly. This led to many academic papers and two highly referenced books.

In 2000, Kendall moved to the University of Birmingham. He built a large group in Chemical Engineering. They worked on hydrogen and fuel cells. In 2008, he and his colleagues opened the first UK green-hydrogen station. This station refueled five fuel-cell-battery taxis. Even after retiring from teaching in 2011, he continued to promote clean energy transport. He showed that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles use 50% less energy than similar cars that burn fuel.

Kendall also applied his ideas about adhesion to cancer cells, viruses, and tiny particles. His work has been cited over 27,000 times by other scientists. This is very unusual for someone who spent much of his career in industry.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993. He continues to support the green hydrogen revolution. He runs a fleet of hydrogen-fuel-cell battery vehicles in the Birmingham Clean Air Zone.