Kalsi Engineering, Inc. (KEI)™ hosted a dinner at their Sugar Land facility on November 4, 2015 to honor and celebrate long-term employee Dr. Bahir Eldiwany. The dinner was attended by Dr. Eldiwany, his wife Magda, son Mina, daughters Mary and Michelle and their husbands, and the officers and employees of Kalsi Engineering.
Dr. Kalsi and two long-term employees gave prepared remarks on Dr. Eldiwany that combined sincere compliments, fond reminiscences, and inside jokes. In addition to his many years of faithful service and significant technical contributions, Dr. Eldiwany was recognized for his exemplary personal traits that include meticulousness, technical rigor, passion, and “bull-dog-like” tenacity that often lead to spirited technical discussions, which can resonate throughout the office area!
Dr. Eldiwany arrived in the U.S. from Egypt in March of 1978, after serving four years as a First Lieutenant in the Egyptian Air Force and earning a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. He then earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston (UH) with an emphasis in solid mechanics.
Dr. Eldiwany was introduced to Kalsi Engineering by a UH professor who was familiar with both parties and saw the potential for a good fit. Although Dr. Eldiwany had lucrative offers from larger companies, he chose Kalsi Engineering because he believed the work there would be more interesting and rewarding. He also reasoned that he could work with Kalsi Engineering for a few years, gain some good experience, and then move on to another company. Now, three decades later, Dr. Eldiwany is still with KEI.
During his tenure here, Dr. Eldiwany became an industry pioneer in the area of quarter-turn valves and developed the EPRI/NMAC Butterfly Valve Applications Guide and Butterfly Valve model for the EPRI Performance Prediction Program. Both products represent the Nuclear Industry standard used to resolve U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) concerns over the ability of Motor-Operated Valves (MOVs) and Air-Operated Valves (AOVs) to function under design-basis accident conditions as described in Generic Letter 89-10 and Generic Letter 96-05. These same methods are being used to satisfy the design-basis verification requirements of ASME OM Code Mandatory Appendix III for MOVs and Appendix IV for AOVs.
Dr. Eldiwany has also made significant contributions in the area of thrust bearings, mechanical testing, elastohydrodynamic analysis, finite-element analysis (FEA), and solid mechanics. Please join with us in congratulating and honoring Dr. Eldiwany for his many faithful years of service. We are privileged to have him as our colleague.
