Wind engineering a breeze for Horn Professor

By MARIANNA SOURIALL Editor s AssistAnt

An F4 tornado struck a local elementary school in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1989, collapsing the gymnasium in the process. In the same gym were 20 children. A supervisor moved the children into a secure environment after receiving instructions off the weather advisory notification, instructions provided by Texas Tech alumni Kishor Mehta.

Born in India, Mehta completed most of schooling before coming to America in 1954 to receive his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. Under the instruction of his father, Mehta originally was to complete his schooling in America and return to India to start a construction company alongside his father.

“Of course, when I was in

Michigan working on bachelor’s and master’s, he [the father] passed away,” Mehta said. “I had not really known much about construction, but what he had also told me, and I followed that, was once I get my degree, get some experience in construction in the U.S.”

Mehta began working at a construction site in Arizona at the Grand Canyon. It was there Mehta met his wife.

With aspirations of starting a family, the couple moved to Austin where Mehta became a teaching assistant at the University of Texas.

“My professor told me that Texas Technological College in Lubbock was going to start their research program in civil engineering,” Mehta said. “So, I came to Lubbock.”

Following a tornado, Mehta said it became evident that not much was known around the country regarding tornadoes and their impact.

Therefore, civil engineers joined Tech’s new research program studying wind as a primary natural resource. unknown situation because people had done it in wind tunnels, but the wind tunnel wind is always artificial, and you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get.” must be to withstand certain windspeed primarily in accordance with the enhanced Fujita scale in which Mehta made contributions to. we teach and educate them,” Minor said.

“I could’ve gone into mechanical and chemical engineering, and I would’ve been just fine,” Mehta said. “But we got a unique opportunity in Lubbock.”

Throughout Mehta’s time at Tech, several contributions to the wind energy field were made by him. Mehta assisted in creating a safety guide for public offices to use in case of a tornado and to take documentation of damage for future investigation use.

“My particular contribution was that we should have a full-scale building tested in high winds in the field,” Mehta said. “That was an

For 10 years, researchers worked alongside Colorado State university as Tech gathered numbers in the field to be replicated in the wind tunnels at Colorado state. Despite minor conflicts, the data was eventually finalized.

“What is unique about it, the data that we produced in the late 1980s, early 1990s is still being used all over the world by researchers because when they have a new wind tunnel, they want to duplicate the data that was obtained at Texas Tech, at the field site. When they do that, they can say that their wind tunnel is calibrated,” Mehta said.

The work conducted by Mehta assists in determining how strong a building

The goal was to put the Texas Tech wind program on the map and it is now known around the world.

Colleague and civil engineer Joeseph Minor said Mehta projected an image of professionalism that set a standard for faculty and students that enhanced the image of the department.

“He once characterized the role of faculty by saying that we are educating our students to be professional engineers; hence, we should treat them professionally as

Among other accomplishments, Mehta is a Horn Professor in civil engineering and former director of the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center. He was the first person from Tech to be elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering and led several international conferences for wind engineering.

“There is no other country like the United States where it doesn’t matter where you come from. You are recognized because of the work you do and because of who you are, not because of the heritage,” Mehta said. “Even though Lubbock is a fairly conservative city, I have had no problem with the recognition by the people, and I am very happy and thankful for the people of Lubbock.”