Boston Navy Yard chrome-moly to stainless transition joint

Tom's earliest major consulting success. Destroyer steam-system weld between chrome-moly tube and stainless steel; six weeks of failed attempts using the Inconel filler the Navy spec required. Tom's intervention was a joint-geometry change (machine a different groove profile to put the root pass in a lower-restraint position), which reduced residual stress and let the weld pass dye penetrant inspection. Used as the structural worked example of the microstructure/stress/hydrogen Venn diagram — diagnosis was welding metallurgy, solution was residual stress.

So let me give you an example of this Venn diagram — this is one of my earliest cases. Microstructure, stress, hydrogen. I was 28 or 29 years old, a young faculty member trying to feed my family on the salary of an assistant professor.