Professor Michael Casey FASME, FIMechE
PCA Engineers are very sad to report the sudden passing of Mick Casey, a much-valued friend and colleague over many years. Mick passed away in his adopted city of Zurich after a short stay in hospital where he was able to spend time with his two children, Martin and Hannah, of whom he was immensely proud.
A Fellow of both the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Mick has been a well-known and much respected authority on turbomachinery throughout his career, working both in academia and in industry. His enthusiasm and knowledge helped and inspired many engineers and students around the world. Always keen to publish and disseminate, Mick authored over 150 technical papers, including both experimental and theoretical aspects, several of which won prestigious awards, including the ASME Best Paper award in turbomachinery (2013, 2014 and 2022). He was awarded the prestigious IGTI Gas Turbine award in 2024 for the best paper across the 2022 Turbo Expo technical publications. Mick was the lead author of a well-received technical book entitled ‘Radial Flow Turbocompressors’ published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.
Proud of his origins, Michael Casey grew up in rural Lincolnshire, UK and, after excelling at grammar school, he was awarded a first-class degree in Engineering Science at Oxford University in 1970. He continued in Oxford to complete his D.Phil. thesis on ‘Cavitation inception on hydrofoils’ in 1974.
He held postdoctoral positions in Durham and Cambridge Universities in the UK and then worked as an engineer and manager for nearly 30 years in various international engineering companies (WS Atkins, Sulzer Turbo, Rolls Royce plc, and Sulzer Innotec), working mainly on energy systems, turbomachinery design methods, applications of CFD and experimental methods. Many of his early technical papers derived from experimental work at Sulzer Turbo in the 1980’s and these remain as important references today. He returned to the UK in the late 1980’s, moving from industrial compressors to aero gas turbines, to lead the Axial Fan and Compressor Research group at Rolls-Royce plc. He returned to Switzerland as head of Sulzer Innotec, in 1993, the research arm of the Sulzer organization at that time.
From 2003 to 2011, he was Professor of Thermal Turbomachinery in Stuttgart University, Germany and at the same time formalized his relationship with PCA Engineers. After retirement from Stuttgart University, he continued to act as a consultant and director for PCA, resigning as a director in 2023 but continuing in his work on 1D and 2D methods for centrifugal compressor design.
His vociferous, yet kind and engaging manner will be sorely missed in the turbomachinery sessions at ASME Turbo Expo and especially by ex-students and colleagues in Switzerland, Germany and at PCA Engineers.