Louis Jean Baptiste Bergeron (10 March 1876 – 23 February 1948) was a French entrepreneur, engineer and inventor. Bergeron was born in

Lagnieu Lagnieu (; frp, Lagniœ) is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France. Geography Lagnieu is located in the south of the department of Ain, on the right bank of the Rhone, 50 km northeast of Lyon and 37 km south of Bourg-en-B ...

. In 1900, he started work as an electrical engineer and made a career in the Farcot company in St Ouen, a factory of steam engines and high-power electrical machines. In 1918, together with Beaudrey, he co-founded the company Beaudrey-Bergeron, which later, after a friendly split with Beaudrey, became Bergeron S.A., now part of

Alstom Alstom SA is a French multinational rolling stock manufacturer operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling, and locomotives, with products including the AGV, TGV, Eurostar, Avelia ...

. He is remembered for his practical, mathematical methodology to study

water hammer Hydraulic shock (colloquial: water hammer; fluid hammer) is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid in motion, usually a liquid but sometimes also a gas is forced to stop or change direction suddenly; a momentum change. This phenomenon com ...

in hydraulic pipe systems which he also showed to be useful in the study of electromagnetic voltage/current surges in electricity systems. His last work ''From water hammer in hydraulics to lightning surges in electricity'', published posthumously, became a reference work in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. In electrical engineering, application of so-called "Bergeron equations" allows the calculation of

travelling wave In physics, mathematics, and related fields, a wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities. Waves can be periodic, in which case those quantities oscillate repeatedly about an equilibrium (res ...

phenomena in "long" conductors using numerical analysis. Hermann W. Dommel used these "Bergeron equations" in the

EMTP EMTP is an acronym for Electromagnetic Transients Program. It is a software tool used by power systems engineers to analyse electromagnetic transients (generically "EMT") and associated insulation issues. It is also a trademark for the commercial v ...

(electromagnetic transient program) software in the late 1960s.

References

1876 births 1948 deaths People from Lagnieu French electrical engineers 20th-century French inventors 20th-century French businesspeople Place of death missing {{France-engineer-stub

See also

References