Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas - Austin, 2021
  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas - Austin, 2017
Professional Affiliations
  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) – Member
  • National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) – Member
  • National Association of Fire Investigators (NAFI) – Member

Robert Kennedy, PhD, EIT, is a Thermal Sciences consultant at Exponent with five years of experience evaluating battery energy storage systems (BESS), fire safety systems, and thermal-fluid systems. Dr. Kennedy helps designers, manufacturers, system integrators, and legal teams to address challenging problems in aerospace, defense, industrial, consumer products, and energy sectors.

Dr. Kennedy led several projects involving BESS, thermal control systems, and fires prior to entering consulting. He applies engineering fundamentals, including heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and thermodynamics to analyze real-world hardware from the piece-part to the full system. Furthermore, he utilizes his product development background to identify the root causes of failures, such as design and manufacturing defects. Based on the technical facts of the case, he develops conclusions and clearly communicates his findings to the larger team.

Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)

During his graduate program, Dr. Kennedy characterized catastrophic Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) thermal runaway in cell arrays, including heat and gas release, propagation rate, and mitigations. His research has been used to better understand the challenges surrounding Li-Ion BESS and subsequently size safety mitigation systems. Since then, he has developed BESS for aerospace applications that are mass and volume optimized while simultaneously being passively propagation resistant (PPR) to single cell thermal runaway failures. He has also developed containment enclosures for both bulk battery storage and BESS capable of mitigating the intense heat and effluent release from thermal runaway. In all cases, Dr. Kennedy has been directly involved in the modeling and analysis efforts, and designing and running the subsequent destructive fire tests to verify mitigation performance, reliability, and above all else, safety.

Fire Safety Systems

In tandem with his research on Li-ion battery fires, Dr. Kennedy's graduate program also included combustion, fires, explosions, and associated experimental and modeling techniques. He leverages this knowledge to develop fire-resistant designs for preventing incidents, detection systems for alerting personnel to fires, thermal injury prevention mechanisms, and suppression systems, including portable and automatic fire extinguishing systems.

Thermal and Fluid Systems

Dr. Kennedy's uses the engineering fundamentals of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and thermodynamics to analyze thermal and fluid systems across a range of applications. He has designed and developed mass and volume optimized hardware for human spaceflight, including heat sinks, cold plates, heat exchangers, evaporative cooling systems, radiators, multi-layer insulation, safe touch temperature surfaces, and ice prevention systems for gaseous propellant flow. In addition to modeling and analysis, he is also well versed in building out testbeds and conducting test campaigns for evaluating thermal-fluid system performance, reliability, and operating ranges. While much of his experience has targeted aerospace applications, the knowledge and skills he has crafted are directly extensible to high power challenges, including data center cooling, electric vehicle powertrains (in tandem with the EV battery), and other industrial process equipment.