British Welding Institute founding

Friction stir welding developed there as a research curiosity around 1975; commercialized for aluminum around 1990.

No, friction stir welding had not been developed. Actually it had been developed as a research thing about 1975 at the British Welding Institute. It was still sort of a curiosity. For aluminum it wasn't until about 1990 that Boeing built some parts of the space shuttle with it — not the main space shuttle but some of the external tanks or something. Boeing built some aerospace components with friction stir welding of aluminum. People have tried steel. The problem with steel for friction stir welding is you just don't have a stirrer rod with high temperature strength. There's really no good material that will go to the types of temperatures you need without just wearing away very rapidly. They have done it with titanium, but titanium is very reactive with a lot of metals and you can't tolerate the impurities that you get in there. Aluminum is the sweet spot for friction stir welding.

Brief reference to Frank Coe's mid-1960s book emerging from BWI research on the Liberty ship failures.

Let me also hand around — there are lots of books, this is a single-page sheet of carbon equivalents, and I'm going to talk about carbon equivalents. There are lots of books from the 1930s, and 1940s was the first edition of Stout and Doty I think, on how to weld steels without hydrogen cracking. In the mid 60s Frank Coe came out with his book from the British Welding Institute, sort of based on the research they did because of the Liberty ships at the British Welding Institute. There are a number of things, but finally, starting about ten or fifteen years ago, the American Welding Society, which publishes the structural welding code — that's been around since about 1920.

Post-WWII institutional response to ship fractures. Weck (founder) and Wells (research head, who wrote Tom's tenure letter) both named. Cited as the largest welding research center in the world short of the former Soviet Union.

One was a guy named Richard Weck, who became Sir Richard Weck. He was riding his bike from Cambridge through a town called Abingdon close to Cambridge, and he found some land there, and he decided he wanted to build what used to be called the British Welding Institute. Now it's called The Welding Institute. Short of the former Soviet Union, it's become the largest welding research center in the world. Richard Weck funded it. He was a jerk — he's passed away now, but why not say bad things about people who are dead and can't fight back. Alan Wells was doing the research on brittle fracture of these ships, and Alan was a great gentleman; he wrote a letter for my tenure. Alan Wells became head of the British Welding Institute.

They lost — of the 4,694 welded steel merchant vessels built by the Maritime Commission in World War II, 970 suffered casualties involving fractures. 24 vessels sustained a complete fracture of the strength deck — this is both strengths and shear strakes. One vessel sustained a complete fracture of the bottom. Eight vessels were lost; of these, four broke in two, four were abandoned after fracture occurred; four additional vessels broke in two but were not lost, et cetera. So the whole world wanted to know, and three places started doing research on brittle fracture of steels and welded construction. In Britain, they formed the British Welding Research Institute, which is now the Welding Institute, just outside Cambridge. In the United States, they had two places. One was the Naval Research Laboratory, and the other was a place called MIT — Building 4 and 8, actually Building 8 mostly.

Founded in response to the WWII brittle-fracture problem; today one of the premier welding research centers. Alan Wells became director general; wrote Tom's tenure letter.

This problem resulted in the formation of the Welding Institute in Great Britain, which is one of the world's premier welding research centers today, and the development of fracture mechanics by George Irwin, who was head of the mechanics division in the Naval Research Lab. George Irwin is now called the father of fracture mechanics. The report actually said: 4,694 welded steel merchant vessels were built by the Maritime Commission in World War Two. 970, nearly twenty percent, suffered casualties involving fractures. By casualties they mean ship casualties. 24 vessels had sustained a complete fracture of the strength deck, like the Schenectady and the Esso Manhattan. One vessel sustained a complete fracture of the bottom. Eight vessels were lost, 26 lives were lost. Incidence of fracture occurs under a combination of low temperatures and heavy seas being high stress.

Richard Weck pedals through Abingdon, decides where the institute should be; gets it built. Alan Wells succeeds him, develops crack-tip opening displacement (CTOD) toughness measurement in the 1950s. Wells writes Tom's tenure letter.

After World War II there were three places that decided they needed to study brittle fracture of steel. One was — there was a guy, Richard Weck, who later became Sir Richard Weck. He was a postdoc at the University of Cambridge. He was pedaling his bicycle around Abingdon in the countryside, and he decided this was where he wanted the British government to build him a welding institute to study welding and fracture. And they did. Today the Welding Institute in Britain is one of the premier institutes for studying fracture mechanics, particularly welded structures. They get most of their money out of oil companies who have billion-dollar rigs and don't want them to break. Because if they do, look what happened to BP — cost them 25% of their net assets. They're not the company they once were, because of a major failure.

Richard Weck pedaled his bicycle through Cambridge to Abington and decided that's where British welding researchers should be — founded 1947 or so as the third major postwar weld-fracture research center.

The guy who was Mr. Steel before that was Morris Cohen. He was an assistant professor here after World War II, when they had all the welded ships cracked. There were three places that did the study based on this stay-dry report on Show HBU. One was MIT and Morris Cohen on brittle fracture of steels. Another was the Naval Research Laboratory, a guy named Pellini at the Naval Research Laboratory. We'll talk about Pellini — when he retired from NRL back in the 80s, he came and spent the last couple years as a lecturer here on course 13, which has ended now, and retired on Cape Cod. The third place was started in 1947 or so by a guy Richard Weck, who was a young engineer in England, pedaling through Cambridge. He was riding his bicycle into this little town called Abington — he decided this is where the British welding researchers should go. So the three places in the world that really studied the fracture of steel in the late 1940s, which is one of the things that caused all these ships [to fail], along with poor quality steel.