Navy ship recuperator heat exchanger failure

Billion-dollar Rolls-Royce / aerospace-company program for a fuel-economy heat exchanger on surface ships. Designed in Southern California, tested in England. Supposed to last 100,000 hours; lasted ~100 seconds. Failure cause: one-dimensional thermal model instead of full 3D, no transient startup analysis. Twisted like a pretzel within two minutes. Tom served on the failure review board.

The Navy has similar problems. I worked on a recuperator for surface ships. The carrier actually has the fuel for all the frigates and destroyers and cruisers. When you're being deployed, because you're concerned about the threat of a nuclear blast up in the atmosphere, you actually deploy for a hundred miles or more. So your small ships are out there 100 miles away from the carrier, and they have to come back to the carrier to refuel. The small ships burn diesel fuel, and they've got to come back. It turns out they can spend thirty percent of the time just going off station, okay.