Michael Thambynayagam

Michael Thambynayagam (born September 5, 1949) is an American scientist. His career spans over 25 years in the oil and gas industry, where he has held several technical and managerial positions, including Managing Director of Schlumberger Cambridge Research, England. In November 1985 he was elected Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, United Kingdom. Michael has been granted a number of patents in technologies related to chemical and petroleum engineering and has published extensively in the scientific literature. He is best known, however, for his work on the mathematics of linear diffusion. A compilation of his work, over one thousand analytic solutions to important practical industrial problems, was published in April 2011: The Diffusion Handbook. The book addresses pressure diffusion, which apply to non-deformable porous media filled with slightly compressible fluids. However, the book is also an important reference handbook for practitioners and graduate students in many other disciplines such as conductive heat transfer, mass transfer in dilute systems, and diffusive electromagnetic phenomena, including processes in need of constructing Green functions for solving problems with arbitrary sources.
Early life and education
Michael Thambynayagam was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In 1951 he was afflicted by poliomyelitis and suffered partial paralysis. He attended St Joseph’s College, Colombo and St Patrick’s College, Jaffna for his primary and secondary education. In 1969 he moved to England. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester in 1977. In 1983 Michael immigrated to the United States, and now resides in Sugar Land, Texas with his wife Agnes.
Selected published works
*The Diffusion Handbook: Applied Solutions for Engineers (ISBN 978-0071751841), McGraw-Hill (2011)
*R. Banerjee, R. K. M. Thambynayagam and J. B. Spath A method for analysis of pressure response with a formation tester influenced by supercharging Society of Petroleum Engineers 102413 (2005)
*R. K. M. Thambynayagam and T. M. Habashy Hankel and Webber transforms for Dirichlet, Neumann and Cauchy boundary conditions Quart. App. Maths. LX1 (3), 485-493 (2000)
*B. Lenoach, T. S. Ramakrishnan and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Transient flow of a compressible fluid in a connected layered permeable medium Transport in Porous Med., 57,153-169 (2000)
*J. B. Spath and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Well Test Solutions for Vertically Fractured Injection Wells Transport in Porous Media 29, 27-45 (1997)
*P. A. Goode and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Influence of an Invaded Zone on a Multiprobe Formation Tester Society of Petroleum Engineers Formation Evaluation V11, No 1, 31-40 (1996)
*P. C. Shah and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Application of the Finite Hankel Transform to a Diffusion Problem Without Azimuthal Symmetry Transport in Porous Media V14, No 3, 247-264 (1994)
*P. A. Goode and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Supplement to SPE 20737, Permeability Determination With a Multiprobe Formation Tester Society of Petroleum Engineers Formation Evaluation, V7, No 4, 297-303 (1992)
*F. J. Kuchuk, P. A. Goode, B. W. Brice, D. W. Sherrard and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Pressure Transient Analysis for Horizontal Wells Journal of Petroleum Technology, V42, No 8, 974-979, 1028-1031 (1990)
*D. K. Woodward and R. K. M. Thambynayagam Pressure Build-up and Fall-off Analysis of Water Injection Tests Society of Petroleum Engineers 12344 (1984)
*R. K. M. Thambynayagam, R. K. Wood and P. J. Winter DPS-An Engineers' Tool for Dynamic Process Analysis The Chemical Engineer, V365, No 1, 58-65 (1981)
*R. K. M. Thambynayagam, P. J. Winter and S. J. Branch Film Penetration Model for Mass and Heat Transfer with High Fluxes Trans. Inst. Chem. Engr., 180, 58, 277-281 (1980)

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