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MIG & FLUX CORED WELDING AT LARGE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS,
INCLUDING SHIP YARDS, PIPELINES AND OIL PLATFORMS:

With the global lack of Management interest in the establishment
of MIG and FCAW flux cored weld process controls,
there should always be concern for weld failures.

 

With any global ship or oil platform builder, the flux cored and MIG process will account for the majority of welds. If at these facilities, you could get all the weld managers, engineers, technicians, trainers, QA personnel, and welders together in a classroom, and ask them some fundamental MIG and flux cored weld process control questions, the inconsistent and incorrect answers would be a surprise to anyone with an ounce of engineering common sense. This scenario would have applied in 1978 and it still applies in 2010.

If you gave the weld personnel mentioned, the following weld process control tests (scroll down) on the world's most widely utilized welding processes, I would anticipate that over 90 % of the personnel would get the majority of the flux cored and MIG process control questions wrong. If you watch the majority of MIG and flux cored weld personnel operate their weld equipment they may reveal their self taught skills often influence from their use of the SMAW process, however few of the MIG and FCAW weld personnel will utilize the correct optimum weld techniques and the majority will " play around " with the weld controls.

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Responsibility. Accountability. Ownership!

In the welding industry, it's rare to find a good "hands on weld engineer, supervisor and technician" and when you find one, it will be even rarer if they have been given the full responsibility for the weld operations they are daily involved in.

Note from Ed: The following will tell you something about the general management / engineering apathy and lack of process ownership too often found in ship yards and the heavy fabrication industries. In a ship yard the person responsible for finding defects often gets more respect and higher pay than the person who can prevent those costly weld defects.

The ratio of weld engineers to global welding facilities is extremely low, yet when weld engineers or qualified technicians are hired, thanks to apathetic management perhaps 1 in 10 of the engineers are given the full responsibility for the weld personnel that impact the daily weld quality and productivity.

The lack of "qualified Weld Managers" in North America, Asia and Europe is staggering. If someone wants to hire me, I refuse to look at any job as the plant weld engineer. I inform the company or employment agency, that I cannot control what I don't own, therefore I am only interested in a Weld Manager position in which I have the "full responsibility for the weld quality and productivity attained". As the processes utilized and the shop floor personnel are linked, the individual responsible for the processes must also be responsible for the people that impact the process.

"Qualified Weld Manager" a position sorely lacking in the welding industry, and the prime reason for the global lack of the implementation of Best Weld Practices and Weld Process Controls. My request for process ownership and management accountability often shocks status quo, front office managers and engineers who are not used to full ownership, process responsibility or accountability for the products they build. If you want to know how few global companies are looking for Weld Managers, go to the world's largest job site www.monster.com and in the keyword box, type in two words, "Weld Manager", then type in QA weld manager.

In industries which daily reveal common costly weld issues, a frequent management crutch approach to solving the problems, would often be in the purchase of an unnecessary sophisticated, costly MIG power source, a three part gas mix or a new weld wire.

As optimum MIG welds have been made for five decades with low cost, durable CV equipment, simple two component gas mixes and MIG wires that have not changed in decades. With this in mind surely management has a responsibility to recognize that too frequently their weld issues are simply not an equipment issue, but simply a result of the general lack of their own weld process expertise.

The global MIG and flux cored weld industry is in general a "self taught" industry which evolved from two simple manual processes, Stick and TIG.

With the SMAW / TIG processes there is only "one single primary weld control", so minimal focus was typically applied to the TIG and stick "process requirements", while most of the focus was placed on the weld personnel's "skill levels". In contrast to these processes MIG equipment offers all types of weld transfer modes with short circuit, globular, spray, pulsed, STT, RMD and CMT and don't forget flux cored used on the same equipment. To control these welds all require process expertise for process optimisation, and of course the ability to separate sales BS from what's real.

My question is a simple one. Why would any company want it's weld personnel to utilize their MIG and flux cored weld processes, when that same company has not provided their weld personnel with the consumable and process control expertise necessary to attain consistent, optimum weld quality and productivity?

If you believe your key weld personnel have process control expertise, take a look at the following weld tests and then ask your self, how well would my weld personnel do with this test and would this type of type process expertise benefit our organization?

[] Fundamental MIG Process Control Weld Test

[] Fundamental Flux Cored Process Control Weld Test

[] Solutions to all your MIG and flux cored process control issues are here.


This is the only web site in North America that promotes the management / engineering ownership message. I encourage managers and engineers to use the resources available at this site to implement MIG / flux cored, best weld practices and process controls.

MANAGEMENT Responsibility Accountability and Ownership!

What do many of the large scale weld projects at ship yards
and oil platform construction sites have in
common with the auto / truck industry?

[] Lack of weld process expertise: Like a ship yard, in the auto industry, its not difficult to find managers who will daily struggle with the important processes used in the weld shops, paint shops and press shops.

[] Lack of manufacturing controls: Like a ship yard, in the auto industry, you will find too many parts that have excess weld gaps or part dimensional tolerances which are no where near the design requirements and allowed tolerances. In the these same facilities font look for best weld practices.

[] Inadequate training: Like a ship yard, in the auto / truck plants, you will find the majority of weld personnel have to "play around" with their weld controls and you don't want to sit those welders or engineers down and ask them MIG process control questions.

[] Minimal weld cost expertise: Like a ship yard. in the auto / truck plants, you don't want to ask anyone the cost of a weld. O they will get back to you but it wont be in five minutes.

[] Quality programs developed to find weld defects after the welds are complete: Like a ship yard in the auto industry you will find extensive QA resources directed to find welding defects and limited QA resources or expertise to prevent welding defects.

[] The purchase of useless weld equipment bells and whistles: Like a ship yard in the auto industry management has the false perception that the more sophisticated tech weld equipment the less the weld issues generated


The common denominator between the auto plants and the ship and oil platform yards, is the management's and supervisor's inability to establish and maintain Best Practices and implement Weld Process Controls with their critical manufacturing processes.

Canadian Frigates and
MIG and flux cored weld Issues:

A CANADIAN SHIP YARD WITH WELD PROCESS CHAOS: During the nineteen nineties, I was invited to provide a weld evaluation for an East Coast, Canadian Ship Yard. The yard was building Frigates for the Canadian Navy. At the ship yard I was astounded to find that most of the welding practices could only be defined "as beyond chaos" and the ship yard weld construction could easily be described as Disney Land turned inside out.

The weld engineers and management at the Canadian ship yard had enabled the poor weld practices and did not appear to understand the fundamental MIG and flux cored weld processes utilized. It was also interesting to note, that due to lack of management with balls at the yard, the engineers could not tell the welders what to do and the majority of welders in the yard simply had minimal understanding of the MIG and flux cored processes utilized.


INNCORECT WELD SETTINGS FOR THE CANADIAN FRIGATES. To make the common 6mm, carbon steel fillet welds on the Canadian Navy Frigates, the ship yard welders for some strange reason would use two processes, MIG and flux cored. For the first flat / horizontal weld passes made on the 6 - 9 mm steels, astoundingly they would use MIG with short circuit weld parameters.The short circuit weld parameter used were better suited to welding 1.6 - 2 mm thin gauge sheet metal. The first short circuit pass had to result in cold welds with lack of fusion. Then using the same wire feed and voltage settings, cold flux cored welds were made over the top of the cold short circuit welds leaving extensive lack of weld fusion with slag entrapment. Each day hundreds of welders would use this poor weld practice put down thousands of fillet welds on the Canadian Navy Frigates.


It was difficult for me to believe, that the ship yard management and so called weld engineers allowed the welders to use both MIG and flux cored with unsuitable parameters for the same fillet welds.

It may come as no surprise to learn that I quickly discovered that few in the yard knew what short circuit and spray transfer was, and even fewer understood the working weld parameter range of the E71T-1 flux cored wires utilized.


To produce the common, 1/4 - (6 mm), carbon steel fillet welds on the Navy frigates, the 200 plus ship yard welders would first use the MIG "short circuit transfer" on the flat / horizontal welds on steel parts that typically ranged from 4 to 25 mm thick. In case anyone in the Navy ever reads this site, for their belated information, the short circuit weld transfer settings used to weld the important structural parts of their ships, would normally be used to weld thin sheet metal in the range of 14 to 10 gauge.


When I questioned the ship yard's weld engineers why the welders were using the MIG Short Circuit and globular weld transfer mode, I simply got that confused weld look that I normally get when discussing welding with my wife. The short circuit and globular parameters were used with an 0.045 (1.2mm) wire, set at a wire feed rate of 200 to 300 ipm, 180 to 240 amps and 20 to 23 volts. Without question these welds would result in extensive lack of weld fusion, on carbon steel parts > 4 mm.



To add to the horizontal fillet weld problems at the yard, the short circuit welds were then followed by a second cold weld pass made with an 0.045 (1.2 mm), gas shielded "all position" E71T-1 flux cored wire using the same wire feed settings of 200 to 300 inch/min. The flux cored wire feed settings used for the horizontal fillet welds, were low settings you would typically use for "vertical up welds". For the horizontal fillet welds, a wire feed rate of approx. 500 inch/min and 28 volts would be typical with an 0.045 wire. The fast freeze E71T-1 wires used at low settings had to ensure a massive amount of lack of weld fusion with the horizontal fillet welds.

It's a simple fact, that the MIG and flux cored wire feed settings used in this Canadian yard were poorly suited to attain consistent weld fusion on most of the > 4 mm carbon steel welds made in the flat and horizontal weld positions. Most fillet welds on ships are only subject to a surface weld examination and without question, too many of the welds on the Canadian frigates had to have extensive lack of weld fusion, internal weld slag and porosity. .

To put salt in the Canadian Frigates ship yard management wounds, every weld produced with the low wire feed settings, took 50 to 100% longer than it should have, which likely was not an issue for the ship yard management as the Canadian tax payers paid the welding bills. This Canadian yard spent over a million dollars annually on welder training, again a ridiculous waste of tax payers money as it was certainly not effective.

I delivered my report to the yard management. The report provided the required data for the yard to get it's welds to the quality they should be and also provided them with an opportunity for approx. 3 million dollars annually in weld cost savings. The savings would be generated from the reduction in weld cost rework and dramatically increasing all the weld deposition rates of all welds produced.

I was later informed that the report never got as far as the first manager who reviewed it, then it disappeared. My guess was the manager was too embarrassed to present it to his executive team, or possibly the manager did not want the Canadian Navy Brass to be aware of the weld quality produced and the unnecessary yard over costs generated by the welds.

As the following data shows, poor work man ship and lack of process expertise in ship yards, may do more damage to Canada's and the US navy vessels, than the elusive weapons of mass destruction.

TEACH THEM WELD PROCESS CONROLS
AND IT'S EASY TO GENERATE MULTI-MILLION
DOLLAR COST SAVINGS ANY A SHIP YARD:

During the first four months of 2007, Tom O'Malley and I presented MY unique, manual, flux cored process control training programs to Aker Kvaerner. Aker is an international ship builder located at the the Philadelphia Naval Ship Yard.

The 300 plus welders in the yard used E71T-1 (1.2 mm) flux cored wires to weld all position, vee groove, 12 to 25mm, steel joints with ceramic backing for the open roots.

Like any ship yard, the Aker weld focus was on "welder skills" and most of the management / engineering expertise was with the SMAW process. To work at the yard, all the welders had to pass the all position, flux cored weld qualification tests and weld in accordance with the ABS and the pre-qualified weld procedures. However the welder qualification test had little in common with the weld process control requirements and application variables typically found in any ship yard. A written process control weld test did reveal that all those who passed the weld qualification test, lacked flux cored weld process / consumable expertise and lacked the awareness of the unique requirements to attain consistent optimum weld quality for vee groove, ceramic backed welds. This is common in all ship yards where typically you will find weld rework costs per-ship measured between one and ten million dollars per-ship.


The Aker ship yard contracted with Ed to reduce the weld rework costs. All the welders and supervisors in the yard participated in Ed's unique Flux Cored Weld Process Control Training Programs. The training program focused on flux cored Weld Process Controls,consumable knowledge and optimum weld process techniques for all position, vee groove welds with ceramic backing.

In a time of MIG and flux cored welder shortage, when many companies find it difficult to interrupt their daily productivity, management take note. Ed's unique weld process training program required only eight hours, "four hours classroom and four hours hands on". In a few weeks the training for the 300 plus welders was complete and the ship yard QA department personnel started to analyse the weld results.


Three months after Ed's flux cored weld process control the training, the ship yard NDT results indicated a 50% reduction in the required weld rework per-ship. The ship yard management reported that the reduced weld rework, labour and NDT costs, would result in a minimum weld cost savings of approx. 4 million dollars per-ship.


THE SHIP YARD WELD COST BENEFITS FROM ED'S FLUX CORED TRAINING PROGRAM NOW AVAILABLE ON A CD IN THE TRAINING PROGRAM SECTION OF THIS SITE;

Examine the real world ship yard weld cost reduction and weld benefits attained from Ed's unique process control training program. Every facility that employs a large amount of weld personnel is worried about the man hours lost from the weld shop.

The training program required 300 x 8 man/hr. = 2400 man hours at an approx. overhead cost of $30/hr Base labour cost for the ship yard training was $72,000. To this add the actual training / material costs was approx. $100,000. Total training costs for the 300 welders $172,000.

Process Control Weld Cost Savings Per-Ship, approx. Four Million dollars. Actual Costs generated with Training approx. $172,000.

An unreported fact from the Aker yard was the changes that Ed created established in the development of new weld procedures that generated a dramatic increase in the gas shielded flux cored wire feed rates, (increase in weld deposition rates). The new procedures increased the daily weld productivity potential per-man in a range from 20 to 40%.

Some of you may wonder what's the difference between this type of weld training program and the MIG and flux cored weld training you could expect in any North American, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, European ship yard or any manufacturing facility?


For decades conventional training in ship yards or manufacturing plants has focused on the welders skills, especially their SMAW (stick) welding skills. The reality is the SMAW process has nothing in common with the process and weld technique requirements for MIG or flux cored. It's not unusual for weld personnel to have weeks of hands on training at the ship yards and then at the training completion find that when it comes to MIG and flux cored welds, the welders will;

[a] Play with the MIG weld equipment controls and rarely dial in optimum FCAW settings for the
Vee groove root, hot pass, fill pass and cap passes.

[b] Utilize the FCAW / MIG weld controls in a very limited manner. One setting for all welds is a common global practice.

[c] Not utilize optimum weld techniques required for the MIG and FCAW process. Typically inappropriate SMAW weld techniques were common with the MIG and flux cored process.

[d] Lack of engineer, supervisor and welder awareness of the weld deposition rate potential for common welds. This of course limits the daily weld productivity potential the welders could achieve.


The FCAW process training provided at Aker was developed by myself over a 25 year period. It's available in CD format. As with all my process training programs, this program enables each individual to achieve weld process optimisation for the FCAW consumables utilized and for the all position, vee groove, ceramic backed, or open root applications. For the welder who took the eight 8 hour process control training, the program enabled that individual the ability to instantly set optimum parameters for the consumable, and weld joint variables,which provided instant dramatic improvements in their weld ability.

As you can see, on the left picture we have a weld made by an individual at the yard that had poor skills, used poor techniques and poor settings. These two vertical up 15 mm vee groove, weld samples using E71T-1 flux cored wires and straight CO2, were made by the same welder at the completion of the one day training training.

On the left before and on the right after the 8 hours of process control training.

Even when the welder had good FCAW skills, the process control training increased the welders weld quality and productivity capability. What was also important was each welder became aware of the unique flux cored weld parameters and technique requirements necessary "to address the variable root gaps over the ceramic backing material". Ceramic is rarely used outside ship yards and welding oversized root gaps across a none conductive ceramic requires unique process and technique requirements. The weld training provided the optimum ceramic FCAW techniques and the root weld results were dramatic, with all weld personnel attaining an instant reduction in lack of weld fusion, slag entrapment and porosity defects. To add to welding costs, with many root welds in a ship yard, the welder will weld the root and then grind most of that root once the ceramic backing is removed.

The improvements by all the welders was immediately noticed by the ship yard QA management who daily measured the dramatic improvements evident with NDT and radiographs and the allocated man hours required for weld rework. By the way, few global ship yards or manufacturing facilities "examine the cost effectiveness of the training programs they develop". Instead of an eight hour training program, many yards would not think twice about providing a forty hour welder training program. For 300 welders in a North American facility, that 40 hours training with labour and associated training costs would be approx. $500,000. Plus the facility will have lost 12000 production hours.


Many thanks to the Aker Kvaerner management for recognizing the Best Practices / Process Controls training necessary for their organization, and special thanks to Tom O'Malley the owner of Excell. Tom's company is the prime weld products supplier to the Philadelphia Naval Ship yard. Tom provided the facilities and equipment for the training. Tom also assisted Ed with the program in both the classroom and hands on training. Tom is one of those rare owners of a weld supply company that actually spends many hours per-week evaluating weld processes equipment and consumables.

Ed took > 2000 hours to develop the FCAW program. The flux cored weld process control program is now available in CD Power Point format for approx. $395 plus shipping.

US Virginia class submarine welds.

Weld quality issues caused
by a lack of Weld Management

Electric Boat and Newport News share the construction workload for Virginia-class submarines under a team agreement. Together, they produce one $2.5 billion submarine a year.

The US Navy said it is too early to estimate the cost or describe plans to fully correct the welds on the Virginia-class submarines. The problem is being blamed on “Weld Process Control Weakness” at Northrop Grumman Newport News in Virginia.

Some welders and fitters used different welding materials than the consumables prescribed to hold portions of the 2.5 billion dollar boats together.

The incorrect filler material utilized had trace amounts of copper which can lead to cracking of the joints.

In perhaps the most sweeping yard action, all welders and welding foremen are required to attend a mandatory, eight-hour training session over the next few weeks. The yard also has since prohibited welders from carrying multiple filler materials to reduce mistakes, and it now forbids them from correcting their errors without supervision. The yard will take "appropriate actions against welders" found to have made errors, Dellapenta said. She didn't specify what those actions would be.

Note from Ed . I found no mention of management, engineering or navy accountability or responsibility for the weld issues in the reports I read. From my simple perspective, it requires no analysis to figure out what went wrong in welding these submarines.When you have weld control issues in building a ship and welders are using what they please, you simply have a lack of QA, supervision, engineering and management control. Those managers and engineers responsible simply need to look in the mirror to find the root cause of the lack of that weld process control.

Weld Problems with the USS Nimitz.

On the USS Nimitz, only one weld out of approximately 100 tested passed the NDT.

 

U.S. OFFICE OF SPECIAL COUNSEL TRANSMITS REPORT SUBSTANTIATING WHISTLEBLOWER’S ALLEGATIONS OF DEFECTIVE WELDS ON U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIERS’ LAUNCH AND RECOVERY SYSTEMS

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 3/13/03
CONTACT: JANE MCFARLAND
(202) 653-7984

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) today transmitted to President Bush and the Congress, an investigative report substantiating a whistle blower’s allegations that unqualified welders, at the Naval Air Depot in North Island, California, had improperly performed “critical” welds on the catapult hydraulic piping systems of four U.S. aircraft carriers.

Note from Ed. "The ironic point is, you would not want to ask fundamental MIG or flux cored weld process control
questions of the welders who are supposed to be qualified with these processes"

The hydraulic systems are used to power various control devices and motors related to aircraft carriers’ launch and recovery systems. Nonconforming welds were found on the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Constellation, currently stationed in the Persian Gulf; the USS Nimitz, currently headed to the Gulf; and the USS John C. Stennis. Weld failures, although unlikely, could have resulted in the loss of aircraft and in injuries during launch procedures. The investigation also found that the jet blast deflector cylinder vent piping onboard a fifth aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, had also been improperly welded.

The whistle blower, Kristin Shott, a welder with over twelve years of experience, alleged to OSC that North Island Depot Voyage Repair Team (VRT) welders were not qualified for the work that they performed. Compounding the problem, she alleged that the Depot’s weld inspectors, tasked with inspecting the welders’ work, were also unqualified. Special Counsel Elaine Kaplan concluded that there was a substantial likelihood that the information Ms. Shott had provided disclosed a substantial and specific danger to public safety, as well as violations of military welding standards. By law, when such a substantial likelihood determination is made with respect to a whistleblower’s disclosures, the agency involved, in this case the Department of the Navy, is required to conduct an investigation of the disclosures and report its findings and any planned corrective and/or disciplinary actions to the Special Counsel.

The Special Counsel transmitted Ms. Shott’s disclosures to former Secretary of the Navy, The Honourable Gordon R. England. The Office of the Naval Inspector General (OIG) investigated the allegations for the Secretary. In reporting back to OSC, former Navy Secretary England concluded the investigation “exposed serious shortcomings in the quality assurance program at the Naval Air Depot.” Specifically, the investigation found that the North Island VRT welders performed critical shipboard welding processes on Navy ships that they were not qualified to perform, the weld inspectors who performed the “nondestructive testing” inspections of the welds were not properly certified, and the VRT lacked a viable quality assurance program. The former Navy Secretary noted that “Carrier Battle Ships are our front-line of national defence” and that “the events described in the report of investigation establish how easy it would be to render these assets ineffective.”

In February 2002, upon learning of the preliminary results of the investigation, senior management at the North Island Navy Air Depot immediately suspended all shipboard welding operations and testing inspections at the base, pending the training and qualification of welders and inspectors. Shortly thereafter, North Island Depot welders and inspectors were sent to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) for Naval Sea System Command qualification and recertification training. In addition, teams from PSNS inspected welds performed by VRT welders in order to discover and repair critical nonconforming welds.


On the USS Abraham Lincoln, the PSNS team found that approx. only. 2 of 100 welds passed their inspection. On the USS Nimitz, only 1 of 100 welds passed. The team also found the VRT welders had performed nonconforming welds on the USS Constellation and USS John C. Stennis’ catapult hydraulic systems and on the USS Carl Vinson’s the jet blast deflector cylinder vent piping. The agency report explains that most of the nonconforming welds failed inspection because they were undersized.


Note from Ed. Undersize welds typically also means welds were applied at faster weld speeds producing less weld energy than those welds originally prequalified. If the smaller sized welds were subject to UT or radiographs, the undersize issue would likely have been just one concern and lack of weld fusion, excess weld slag and porosity would have been added to the list.

Repairs to the catapult hydraulic piping systems on the USS Lincoln were completed in April 2002; on the USS Nimitz, in May 2002; on the USS Constellation, in June 2002; and on the USS Stennis, in November 2002. Repairs on the jet blast deflector cylinder vent piping onboard the USS Vinson were completed in December 2002.

The agency reports that $468,000 taxpayers dollars was spent on weld repairs for three of the aircraft carriers. The report did not include the repair costs for two of the carriers – the USS Stennis and USS Vinson.

To ensure that future compliance with Naval Air Sea System Command quality and certification requirements is permanently sustained, the agency report states that the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division (Carderock), intends to conduct an initial welding and testing audit of Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) organizations, to be followed by an audit every two years thereafter. The agency informed OSC that Carderock intends to conduct welding and testing audits at three East Coast Naval Stations during the final week of March. However, audits have not yet been scheduled for NAVAIR’s West Coast locations, including the North Island Depot, nor has funding been received at this point by Carderock to allow these audits to take place.


NAVY PUNISHMENT: The agency report concluded that four supervisors and one Naval Officer had performed their duties in a negligent manner. It found that the North Island VRT first-line supervisor was aware that the VRT employees were not properly certified, yet he failed to aggressively pursue this issue through his chain of command and continued to assign VRT welders work that he knew they were unqualified to perform. As a result, he was suspended for three days. A Non-Punitive Letter of Caution was issued to the Naval Officer who oversaw the quality assurance program. Two civilian VRT supervisors and one civilian quality assurance supervisor were counseled and orally admonished.

Copies of the report from the Department of the Navy can be obtained by contacting OSC. The closure letter to the President is available at OSC’s web site under E-Library.

Note from Ed. No shipyard management or engineers were found responsible. I wish I had a job like these guys I would go and play golf every day.


US News follow up: The life of a whistle-blower isn't easy, however. Shott, 38, a Navy welder based at the North Island Naval Air Depot in San Diego, has also filed a reprisal complaint against the Navy. She was demoted and denied a supervisory promotion, she says, after filing her initial complaints in 1999. "My career has been destroyed," she says. "I am no longer doing critical welds." The Navy insists that it did not punish her, but the Office of Special Counsel doesn't agree. "Because of her whistle-blowing," it said last month in a letter to her attorney, Navy officials "improperly" removed her from an elite weld repair team and denied her a promotion.

Note from Ed. Of course the ship yard shot the whistle blower in the back, after all she affected the profits they would have made that year. Reference Shott's career, she can get a welding job elsewhere. As for her doing "critical welds" consider all the welds on a ship to be critical. And what's this BS about a so called "elite weld repair team". All weld personnel in a yard should have the same ability to make a sound weld or a sound weld repair. Management should figure out why its not providing the right process tools for simple weld processes and In the welder qualification focus has to be on weld personnel having the process, consumable and technique expertise to do the welds right the first time.

Was the ship's demise from a freak of nature or a freak weld?

MOST DESIGNERS ASSUME THAT THE SHIPS OR OIL PLATFORMS THEY
DESIGN, ARE BUILT TO THE WELDING SPECIFICATIONS PROVIDED. FEW ARE.

Ongoing Weld Management
problems at Newport News:

Weld inspector’s lies may affect 9 US Navy ships.

By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Monday June 1, 2009

More than 10,000 welded joints on at least eight submarines and a new aircraft carrier might need to be re inspected after the discovery by Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding that one of its inspectors had falsified inspection reports. According to an internal report obtained by Navy Times, the issue came to light May 14, when a welding inspector at the company’s Newport News, Va., shipyard told a supervisor that a fellow inspector was initialing welds as “OK” without performing the inspections. Confronted by the supervisor, the offending inspector admitted to falsifying three weld inspections, all that same day.

Company officials rapidly began an internal investigation and notified the Navy’s supervisor of shipbuilding of the situation, according to the report. On May 20, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service began its own investigation. Northrop Grumman declined to reveal the employee’s name, citing the ongoing personnel investigation. A company official did say May 28 that the employee initially had been suspended, then fired.

According to the report, a quick company review of the inspector’s work showed that 12 other joints inspected by the employee that evening were satisfactory. But the ramifications of the falsified inspections rapidly grew beyond a single night’s work.

“We have to go back and check everything this guy has ever touched,” said one industrial source.

The employee had been certified to perform inspections in June 2005 and, according to the report, a review of the shipyard’s welding database showed that in the ensuing four years he inspected and signed off on more than 10,000 structural welding joints on at least nine ships.

Company officials said May 27 that the investigation of the employee’s work could mean that all the joints would need reinspection or re-evaluation.

3 ships in service. According to the report, the ships worked on by the inspector included the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Missouri, California, Mississippi, Minnesota and John Warner, and the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush. Bush, North Carolina and New Hampshire are in service; the other subs are in various states of construction at Newport News and at the General Dynamics shipyards in Groton, Conn., and Quonset, R.I.

The two shipbuilders share equally in building the submarines. Each shipyard builds specific sections of the submarines and transports the sections to the other yard. The shipbuilders alternate in assembling the hulls.

The inspector performed most of his work on the New Mexico (2,133 welds inspected), Missouri (3,169), California (2,002) and Mississippi (2,177). The employee inspected only 23 welds on New Hampshire and two on North Carolina.

A little more than 10 percent of the submarine welds were hull integrity, or SUBSAFE, joints involving critical parts.

The inspector also performed 229 piping joint inspections on submarines.

There are many thousands of welds on each 7,800-ton submarine — more then 300,000, according to an Electric Boat Best Manufacturing Practices Web site.

But making sure that welding work is done correctly can be a matter of life and death.

“People take this really, really seriously,” said one industry source. “Why? Because people don’t want another Thresher. Nobody takes a chance.” The submarine Thresher sank in April 1963 when it was forced to dive below its crush depth and the hull imploded. All 129 men aboard the sub perished.

“The quality of our work is something we take very seriously,” Northrop spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell-Jones said in a May 28 statement to Navy Times.

Previous Newport News management problems.
Newport News is still smarting from a welding filler issue that arose in fall 2007. Shipyard workers had used the wrong type of welding filler material on many pipe welds, and the company and the Navy were forced to re-examine a number of submarines, aircraft carriers and surface ships built or repaired at the shipyard. Northrop changed a number of workshop practices as a result.

Both the Navy and Northrop Grumman emphasize that there is no relation between the weld filler issue and the latest problem with the inspector.

Northrop Grumman has developed an inspection plan of the offending inspector’s work that will focus on hull integrity and SUBSAFE joints as a priority, followed by non-SUBSAFE joints, according to the internal report.

The nature of the NCIS investigation is unclear.

“I can confirm that NCIS is investigating allegations made against a weld inspector, but I cannot get into case specifics,” NCIS spokesman Ed Buice wrote in a May 28 e-mail to Navy Times. “NCIS does not comment on the details of on going investigations.”


HAVE WE LEARNT NOTHING ABOUT SHIP WELDING IN THE LAST SIX DECADES?
March 29/07 From Ed Craig:

Designers and metallurgists will typically look to the ship's design, steel compositions, environment, water temp, weather and the formation of rust for the causes of many catastrophic ship failures, few of these individuals seem to take into account that on any global built ship you will find more bad welds then sound welds and on many critical joints the joints root gaps may be oversize thus creating more weld passes and more weld heat into the ships plate than the designers anticipated.

Oversized root gaps result in welds with larger than anticipated Heat Affected Zones changing the ships plate structural / mechanical properties associated with those welds.

Oversized weld joints contain more weld passes producing more internal weld defects. An increase in weld defects with a weaker plate HAZ is not a combination any organization should accept.

On every merchant and naval vessel, the common poor control of weld joint dimensions lead to undersized and over size weld joints. The poor edge preps on these joints may often have vee groove edges with irregular oxide surfaces. Cold plate temperatures, lack of interpass controls, poor weld parameters and poor weld techniques and the consumables used will lead to extensive lack of weld fusion, weld slag inclusions and weld porosity. As only a small portion of a ship welds are subject to NDT both the navy and merchant navy would do well to put a renewed focus on the weld process control training at the yards. Remember it's just as easy to produce optimum welds as it is to produce poor welds.

The amount or type of weld defects found in ship construction
has hardly changed in the last six decades.

In the 1940's bad SMAW (stick) welds, weld consumable issues, poor steels and poor weld practices were responsible for numerous Liberty ship catastrophic failures. Sixty years later we have achieved what? We have a superior flux cored, TIP TIG and MIG processes and we use superior steels, yet due to apathetic (this is the way we have always done it) weld management , ships and oil platforms are still at risk for catastrophic failures.

 

For those looking for the structural security from the double hull construction that will occur in the next decade, keep in mind that unless ship yards change their approach to weld process control training, the double hull ships will simply enable double the amount of bad welds.

 

SHIP DESIGN IS IRRELEVANT
WITHOUT SOUND WELDS:

2006: Each week one or two ships sink, many as a result of weakened
structures from corrosion but how many as a result of failed welds?

The Six Sigma Crutch comes to ship yards and large weld fab shops even after it has failed with the majority of manual and robot MIG and flux cored applications found in the global automotive and truck plants and these are industries in which engineers are in abundance, industries in which you would think process controls would be simple to implement.

While the QA manger focuses on the ISO paper work, the lack of
process control expertise in his ship yard, leaves many of the
ships welds in a precarious situation

 

 

Be an expert in the process and consumables utilized.

 

Ed Craig. 03/2007:

A ship yard may use half to a million pounds of flux cored weld wire each year, however its rare to find a ship yard that has management and engineers who have established Best Weld Practices or implemented effective Flux Cored Weld Process Control Training for it's play around with the weld controls work force.



Are ship yard managers and supervisors aware of the following?

For decades the global shipyard focus has been on the welder's "stick welding skills".The majority of global ship yard welders that weld with the flux cored process lack flux cored weld process control and consumable expertise. Too many weld personnel will daily use the unsuitable techniques and skills they learnt with the lower weld energy, lower weld deposition stick welding process.

The flux cored process, variable size root gaps and the placement of weld across none conductive ceramic backing requires unique considerations and specific instructions for the all position, root, fill and cap weld passes. A visit to any global ship yard, would reveal that few welders, supervisors or "engineers" are aware of the flux cored process and ceramic requirements necessary for consistent weld optimisation.

2008: It's a sad comment in a time when MIG and flux cored weld defects inundate ships and oil platform construction, that at many global ship yards ,welding apprentices will spend more time practicing with stick electrodes than they will with MIG and flux cored consumables. It's also a weld reality that many weld instructors when providing MIG and flux cored training, will teach the apprentices inappropriate stick welding practices and techniques. I believe that many of the welding instructors who teach ship yard apprentices flux cored or MIG welding, simply lack weld process control expertise and would have a difficult time answering the following MIG and flux cored questions in the process control weld tests.

[] Fundamental MIG Process Control Weld Test

[] Fundamental Flux Cored Process Control Weld Test

Visit Ed's Unique, MIG and Flux Cored Weld
Process Control Training Resources

The new Navy ship, the San Antonio, is only 400 million over budget

APATHETIC ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT? WHO CARES?
AFTER ALL TAXPAYERS WILL FOOT THE BILLS.

NORFOLK - The new amphibious ship San Antonio failed to complete a series of sea trials in late March, and faces $36 million in repairs during the next three months. The San Antonio has been plagued by mechanical and structural problems since the Navy took ownership two years late, in July 2005. Northrup Grumman Ship Systems in Pascagoula, Miss, built the ship at a cost of $1.2 billion, roughly $400 million over budget.

 

 

<1960: 5000 liberty ships built, 1000 catastrophic failures.

> 2000: Forty years later, with superior steels and superior weld processes,
many ships without explanation, will get torn apart like a wet paper bag.

The weld failures on this ship occurred in the locations in which
the welds should have been sound, as they would have be subject to NDT.

 

Thanks to the too common, global, lack of "weld process management and engineering ownership," every merchant or naval vessel built since the introduction of gas shielded flux cored wires to ship yards in the late 1980's, will have extensive, unnecessary weld defects which can ultimately result in unanticipated, premature catastrophic consequences.

With optimum FCAW weld consumables and a grinder, the gas shielded flux cored process is perfectly able to produce optimum, all position quality welds on any steel applications as long as those applications have weld joints that meet the design criteria. The bottom line is the FCAW welds on a ship or oil platform should be the strongest part of the ship rather than the too frequent weakest link.



For decades, on many mega projects, while engineers and welders did not think twice about playing around with the MIG and flux cored weld controls, in the quality department, the typical costly QA / CWI primary function has been to find fault after the weld completion, and these individuals often lack the expertise to prevent the weld defects .




WHEN YOU LACK WELD PROCESS CONTROL EXPERTISE, YOU LACK THE ABILITY TO CONTROL THE COSTS OF THE WELDS. Visit any engineering office at a ship yard or oil platform and provide ten engineers or managers with the MIG and flux cored data for a 6 mm fillet weld. Then ask these 10 individuals to provide you the cost of a 6 mm fillet weld one meter in length. You might want to do this early in the day, because instead of the few minutes for most it will take many hours

Note from Ed. Sometimes I feel that my comments on this site may be seen by many to be too critical, however there is a reason this site is called "weld reality" and I don't just criticize, I provide highly effective solutions. To those who are interested in weld best practices and process controls or weld cost simplification, click here.



For those weld shop managers and engineers that are rearing up in defensive exasperation of my global lack of process control expertise claims made on this web site, please remember that too many of you will this year have to deal with excess weld budget costs, derived from poor weld production efficiency, additional NDT costs, and extra weld rework costs. The weld issues will of course lead to tight production schedules which make the weld situation worse as you now have to drive production before quality. And lets not forget it's your lack of process ownership and your hand's off management approach which will ensure you continue to work too many hours and loose too much sleep in concern of the future liability consequences from your welds that might fail.

 

Of course human life has to the first concern,
however there are other consequences from failed welds.

Every person who makes a weld decision, should learn weld process
controls and understand the requirements the prevention of defective welds

In the good old SMAW (stick weld) days, steel ships broke apart due to weld induced low hydrogen cracking, steels with poor chemistry and design ignorance of mechanical properties and cold temperatures.

Since the 1980's the majority of ships have been built from high quality,low carbon steels and welded with low hydrogen MIG and flux cored consumables. You would have thought these two important attributes would have resolved the catastrophic ship failure issues that occur in >2008.

Lets face it, welds on low carbon steels, are typically supposed to surpass the strength and ductility of the base steels and if the welds are applied correctly, the welds are not supposed to fail. Many ships and oil platforms have plate and pipe unaffected by rust or laminations. During unforeseen circumstances or severe weather these steel parts will stay intact while the welds tear apart like a wet paper bag.

03/ 2007: Is it possible that the global ship building flux cored, lack of best weld practices and process controls are partially responsible for many of the catastrophic failures that sink numerous ships each year?

It's a weld reality that the QA departments in many ship yards / oil platform yards, will place minimal focus on the quality standards that are supposed to be applied to the daily weld edge preparations.

The picture on the left is the edge prep (made in 2007) for a flux cored weld made at a ship yard. The weld was made on an oil tanker.

It's a weld reality, that many of the vee groove welds made on global ships and oil platforms will be made on questionable weld joints with excess root gaps and contaminated, wet surfaces. Weld joints like this would not be allowed in any other industry.

It bears repeating as it's a weld reality, that unacceptable, over sized weld gaps and poor weld buttering practices on vee groove weld joints add to the scope of the potential defects and also apply excess heat to the weld's HAZ. The added weld defects and excess weld heat with it's affect on the HAZ grain structure was not accounted for by the engineers who designed the ships.

It's a weld reality in ship yards and other mega oil and nat gas projects that the unacceptable variables will happen to the weld joints and welds and those variables were not considered in the pre qualification weld procedures utilized. When the weld personnel are not supplied with the process control training necessary to deal with the variables, the welders play with the controls and defective welds occur.

It's a weld reality that Weld Quality Standards will have a different meaning for each company that builds ships
or oil platforms.

 

 

With all the money Ed makes from welding, his dream,

" is to one day to have enough money to own a "house boat".

I wonder how many ship yard, oil rig builders, managers, supervisors and engineers would last in their organization, if every weld they were responsible for was given a UT or Radiograph examination?

This welder worked in the ship yard for three years.

 

If you are a weld decision maker, examine your product liability and weld rework annual cost consequences, and ask your self, "should our employee's understand the process control requirements for the processes and consumables they daily use"?

 

SHOULD THE SO CALLED CRITICAL WELDS BE MANUAL OR AUTOMATIC?

In many of the ship welding facilities I visit, I note that manual welders were making long fillet welds, when low cost, easy to set up, automatic weld carriage equipment would provide superior weld quality.

In the encouragement for FCAW or MIG weld automation, one of the problems ship and oil platform companies have, is that due to lack of weld process expertise, many welders do not know the correct data to dial in for A common 3/16 - 1/4 or 5/16 fillet. Ask 10 welders in a yard what is the MIG or flux cored wire feed and weld travel rate settings for these welds and you will get 10 different answers.

Ed has assisted ship yards in the USA and Canada. He has worked with Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Polish Italian. English, Korean, Japanese, Yanks and Canadians and and don't forget those tenacious thick skinned, highly intelligent, canny Scottish weld personnel.

His experiences with these hard working, great welding characters indicated that the majority played around with their weld controls and none had ever received MIG or flux cored weld process control training, especially when dealing with ceramic backed welds and the flux cored process. From this experience, Ed developed thicker skin, an increased sense of humour and also developed the following MIG and flux cored, CD. Process Control Training Resources. These programs are applicable to all position, open root, steel and ceramic backed, pipe and plate, fillets and vee groove welds. Ed's MIG and Flux Core Weld Process Control Training resources

08/2007: WHEN YOU HAVE UNIQUE WELD MANUFACTURING PROBLEMS AS FOUND IN SHIP AND OIL PLATFORM PRODUCTION, YOU NEED TO EVALUATE THE VARIABLES THAT IMPACT WELD QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY THEN PROVIDE THE UNIQUE WELD SOLUTIONS. THIS LOGIC CAN BE APPLIED TO ANY INDUSTRY THAT USES FLUX CORED OR MIG ON CRITICAL APPLICATIONS:



Is the ship yard management aware that the majority of their weld work force don't understand the flux cored or MIG process and that's why they too frequently will play around with the weld controls?

Is the ship yard management aware that the weld equipment, process and consumables used in their yard is rarely used at it's full quality and productivity potential?

Is the ship yard weld management aware of the uniqueness of it's ceramic backed weld applications and that the process control training provided for ceramic root variations is rarely adequate?

Is the management aware that when those new welders or the sub contractor welders walk into their yards most will have never seen a ceramic backed root or a root gap > 6 mm?

Is the ship yard management aware that if their welders had received the correct process training that >50% of the grinding and welding that's typically used on over size, ceramic root gaps could be eliminated generating millions of dollars in annual cost savings?.

Is the ship yard management aware that a stick (SMAW) welder with 20 years experience typically only brings incorrect techniques and bad weld practices to the MIG and flux cored process?


PART OF WELD PROCESS TRAINING IS DEALING WITH WELD VARIABLES: While the ship yard management complain that their weld over cost per-ship is one to three million dollars, are they aware that difficult, oversized ceramic backed vee groove applications require much more weld data than that provided in the weld procedures or for welder qualification and typically this process data is never provided to their weld personnel.

[] With mega projects, variable, undersize size vee grooves are too common. Apart from playing with the weld controls, what process control and technique training has the welder received to attain consistent side wall weld fusion in the narrow groove welds?

[] In ship yards, thanks to lack of management / engineering focus on providing weld joints that are in compliance with the design, its not uncommon to find weld joints with variable root weld gaps from 8 to 25 mm. How does the welder react to the techniques and parameter changes required when welding across a ceramic root gap, and the procedure calls for a 6 mm root gap and the welder is left with an 18 mm root gap.

[] How does the welder react when the weld procedure does not require preheat but the steel is wet or cold.

[] How does the welder react when they have to put in twice as many welds that are specified in the procedure but there are no interpass temp controls or information about additional weld passes?

The ship and oil platform welders are daily offered unique challenges by fabrication supervisors who frequently know little about the flux cored or MIG process, supervisors who deliver weld joints that are simply not acceptable. To make their job a little more complex, ship yard welders often have to make the challenging welds on the poor oversized edge preps in 20 mph winds, 50 feet up on a scaffold, at minus 20 degrees.



THE FOLLOWING ARE A FEW WELD VARIABLES FOUND ON SHIPS AND OIL PLATFORM PROJECTS. THESE VARIABLES ARE THE REASONS WHY WELDERS REQUIRE THE ABILITY TO SELECT OPTIMUM WELD PARAMETERS FOR VARIABLES THAT CAN IMPACT THEIR WELD QUALITY OR PRODUCTIVITY POTENTIAL.

[] narrow, inconsistent vee grooves,
[] variable and excess root gaps,
[] unique weld requirements for ceramic backed roots with variable gaps,
[] poor and erratic weld edge preparations,
[] welding on primer, paint, rust and cutting oxides,
[] welding in an inconsistent daily changing environment,
[] difficult weld access and long weld lengths,
[] extensive vertical and over head welds,
[] ship yard fitters who have never been educated on the cost consequences, the quality liability potential or difficulties of welding their poor weld joints,
[] supervisors, managers and engineers making flux cored and MIG process and equipment welding decisions, when the reality is, their weld knowledge never got past a E7018 stick electrode.

 

PREVENTING HYDROGEN CRACKS: What about those ships being built with the higher strength and low alloy steels? My gut instinct tells me that if a ship yard cannot control the weld issues that occur with low carbon steels, that ship yard will not provide any better controls on the higher strength or low alloy steels.

In the good old days when welders deposited a leisurely three or four pounds of stick electrode a shift, they would be concerned about the sponge like stick electrodes with the flux on the electrode surface, attracting moisture. The stick electrodes would be protected (sometimes) in a heated storage oven or electric portable heater.

Today MIG and flux cored welders on large projects should be depositing a minimum 20 - 25 pounds of weld wire a shift, (few do). The reality is during the construction of many ships and oil platforms, that due to poor weld supervision and lack of focus on potential weld deposition rates, most welders will typically deposit only 10 to 15 pound of flux cored weld per shift.


Due to lack of logical weld practices, few weld facilities ask the welders to date and time tag new wire reels utilized, so the flux cored wires could be out in the damp or humid conditions for who knows how long.

In contrast to stick welding, which has the flux on the surface of the electrode, a primary benefit of the flux cored wire is the wire's flux is protected by an outer steel sheath. Some wire sheaths have a straight butt seam and it's easy for them to allow moisture through the seam, other wires like the one in the picture have seams that are designed with a little more consideration for keeping moisture away from the flux. You get what you pay for with these products in the way they are manufactured, the control of the flux and the way they are protected in their packages. The bottom line is like any other steel product, these consumables don't have a long shelf life before rust on the wire surface becomes a concern.

Gas shielded flux cored wires are low hydrogen products, however the flux in these wires or the wire surface can readily be be contaminated with moisture, and it's the prevention of moisture into the weld that is the key to the prevention of hydrogen cracking.

Ed's flux cored, process control training program available on a CD also deals
with the sound practices necessary for all weld defect prevention.

 

WHAT IT TAKES TO GET HYDROGEN CRACKS STARTED:

[] High strength steels.

[] Large root gaps, plate misalignment, anything that results in excess weld stresses.

[] Lack of control on the steel surface contaminates.

[] Lack of control with preheat and interpass temp controls.

[] Lack of history and protection for the flux cored weld consumables used.

[] Lack of awareness of the potential for moisture in the welding gases utilized

[] Lack of process and weld technique knowledge that could help minimize the effects of moisture

[] Lack of concern for the quality of the weld gases used. Many cylinders and pipes supplying MIG and flux cored weld gas mixes, will contain excess moisture

BY THE WAY AS THE ABOVE PICTURE INDICATES, THAT 9 mm DIFFERENCE IN THE ROOT GAPS, MEANT FOR THE WELD DEPARTMENT, >70 PERCENT MORE WELD, >70 PERCENT MORE CONSUMABLES AND >70 PERCENT MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR WELD REWORK, NOT SOMETHING THE FITTERS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT THAT ALLOWED THIS WILL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT.




WITHOUT BEST WELD PRACTICES AND PROCESS
CONTROLS, THE CRACKS ARE BOUND TO HAPPEN.

It's inevitable that on that on that one billion dollar naval vessel,containing high strength steels, that when that vessel leaves the docks, it will leave with hydrogen cracks.

To add misery to misery, the cracks will typically be in the weakened weld's heat affected zones, along side welds that are bound to contain lack of fusion, slag inclusions and extensive porosity.

Mass Destruction does not require weapons

The navy may assist on missions looking for a elusive six feet ten inch tall terrorist, or looking for so called weapons of mass destruction, however if I was a sailor out at sea, I would be more nervous about the weld integrity on the ship I call home.

INVESTIGATION OF FRACTURED STEEL PLATES
REMOVED FROM WELDING SHIPS.

Corporate Author : PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV UNIVERSITY PARK

Personal Author(s) : Williams, M. L. ; Meyerson, M. R. ; Kluge, G. L. ; Dale, L. R.

Pagination or Media Count : 102

Abstract : Samples of fractured plates from 72 ships were examined, and various laboratory examinations and tests were made on 113 plates selected from these samples. Information regarding the structural failures involved was obtained from the cooperating agencies, and the failures were analysed on the basis of this information combined with the results of the laboratory investigations. The ship weld failures usually occurred at low temperatures, and the origin of the fractures could be traced, invariably, to a point of stress concentration at a geometrical or metallurgical notch resulting from design details or from welding defects.

Note from Ed: Fifty six years have passed since the above reports. When will ship yards get control of the common welding processes they utilize?

 

THE SUPERSTRUCTURE ON FFG 7 CLASS SHIPS HAS EXPERIENCED EXTENSIVE CRACKING. THE CAUSE OF THE CRACKING HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE A COMBINATION OF HIGH DESIGN STRESS COUPLED WITH POOR WELD QUALITY.

IS THE HIGH COST OF U.S. NAVAL SHIPBUILDING
FINALLY CATCHING UP WITH THE NAVY LEADERSHIP?


Author Tim Colton, September 3, 2004.

The authoritative Washington newsletter "Inside the Navy" reports that the Navy's budget request for FY06 will include only four new ships that will still cost $6 billion. The four ships are: one SSN at a budget-busting $2.5 billion; one DD(X) at a mind-boggling $1.5 billion; one LPD at a ludicrous $1.0 billion; and one T-AKE at a relatively modest $0.4 billion.

The high costs are no real surprise. Naval shipbuilding costs have been out of control for about 15 years now and the Navy has brought it on itself. First, it essentially eliminated competition by forcing more than half the shipbuilding industrial base, including critical suppliers, out of business. Then it created a contracting environment in which the few remaining shipbuilders not only have no incentive to reduce costs but are actively encouraged to increase costs. Finally, it has driven per-ship costs up even further by specifying ever more complex ship designs: there is no bell or whistle that the Navy doesn't want to have at least three of on every one of its new ships. There are other factors at play here but these are the most significant ones. The net result is that we now have a Naval shipbuilding industry that is the most expensive and the most incompetently managed in the world and we have now, not coincidentally, completely lost our ability to build deep-draft, competitive priced merchant ships.

I have to keep reinforcing this broad allegation with a fundamental fact: in the 1970s, productivity in US big-ship shipbuilding was measured to be about half that in Japanese shipbuilding; today it is around a quarter. (So much for the National Shipbuilding Research Program.)

I also have to keep pointing out that the problem isn't with U.S. shipyard workers: our successful small yards demonstrate that. The problem also isn't with U.S. shipyard facilities: they are all just as good as the older European and Japanese yards. One problem in the yards is with U.S. shipyard management. There's way too much of it and it doesn't seem to have a clue what it's doing.

But the real problem is the U.S. Navy itself. The Navy dug this hole and can't find its way out. The Navy talks about "acquisition reform" but what it means by this is spreading the appropriation of funds for individual ships over multiple years. This would not, of course, have any impact whatever on the high cost of ships: it would merely obfuscate the accounting of that high cost. We do, indeed, need acquisition reform: we need rigorous cost-benefit analysis of every new ship system; we need elimination of all but the most critical change orders; we need firm-fixed-price contracts, with incentives for cost reduction and schedule acceleration and penalties for cost overruns and delays; we need to reintroduce competition by requiring prime contractors to competitively procure x% of each contract from the second-tier shipbuilders; we need detailed audits of indirect costs and non-allowance of about half of them. And much more besides.

Author Tim Colton, September 3, 2004.



SHIP YARD MANAGEMENT: While some ship yard managers and Navy personnel brag about their expertise and experiences with stick electrodes and ignore their inability to handle the weld optimisation requirements of the two control primary weld processes, MIG and flux cored, some of these head in the clouds individuals will look to bringing robots, hybrid and laser processes for future ship yard welds.

I had a good laugh in 2005 when I read in the AWS magazine about ship yard managers looking at CO2 laser welds for ship applications. This is the industry and management that for decades struggled to implement or control the simple to use, two control, flux cored process. These are the same managers who think it's normal that their weld personnel should play around with MIG or flux cored weld controls. These are the managers who have a difficult time getting their weld personnel to feel comfortable with Bug-O welds, (automatic MIG or flux cored welds made from a carriage on a track). These are the managers who rarely understand the cost of a weld and who seem to lack the ability to provide edge preps and weld gaps that meet the design specifications.

IF ONLY A SHIP YARD WAS RUN LIKE A SHIP: Ship yard management would do well to compare themselves with the way efficient ships or submarines are run. A captain or engineer on these vessels typically has the ability to operate or take apart most things on the ship. I am not suggesting that today that this comprehensive, technical expertise should be part of this generation's manufacturing managers or engineers job description. I am suggesting that in 2008 the global weld industry would benefit from a compromise in which managers and engineers have less reliance on salesmen and show more ownership interest in the equipment responsible for building their products.

To get manufacturing management and engineers back into the equipment process control loop, an important first step would be for these individuals to show the workers that when they open their mouths on the subject of welding, they can provide welders on the shop floor something most don't have "weld process control knowledge".

If you are looking for excellent MIG and flux cored weld process knowledge?
a good start would be this here.

The Brits Screw the Canadians.

Canada has complained about four secondhand submarines bought from Britain which it says are in need of extensive repairs. The Canadians are likely to demand compensation from the British Ministry of Defence who said the four diesel subs were fully operational before they were sold.

One of the vessels, the submarine Victoria, is currently in dry dock in Halifax. The MoD had said it was fully seaworthy and fit to dive but the Victoria leaked hydraulic fluid during it's voyage home. That vessel also had a dented hull and the Canadians dived to full depth unaware of the risk. The dent was discovered later during a check up. (it seems the sub ran into a double decker bus)

There is also an investigation under way into the possibility of a crack in a valve on top of the submarines. The potential problem came to light after the Royal Navy found such a crack on a submarine sitting in Britain waiting to be delivered. Exhaust valves on all four subs must now be taken apart. The repair bill is already approaching $1m (approximately £500,000) and BBC correspondent Tom Carver says Canada will probably demand compensation.(Perhaps as compensation the british could send over a container load their national food, curry and chips)

Britain no longer uses diesel subs. In a statement, the MoD said the four diesel subs were fully operational before they were sold. The problems have caused embarrassment for the UK, which had mothballed the four vessels before the Canadians bought them for about £332m (C$750m). Leak alert

The list of submarine problems include;

[] A dent in the Victoria that will cost up to half a million pounds to repair. (To fix the subs they will have to take the funds out of the socialized health care program).

[] Bad high-pressure critical welds in three of the four subs. (If the high pressure welds are bad what do you think the rest of the welds not subject to stringent inspection will be like?).

[] A bad fuel tank in one sub. (It's only oil and they can steal more from Scotland).

[] One sub was leaking. (I'd image that is bad news in a submarine).

[] Cracked valves in the diesel generator that would cause flooding if they failed.
(Everyone likes to bitch about the small details).

THANK GOD THE CANADIAN NAVY HAD HOCKEY STICKS.

The Canadian HMCS Windsor was carrying out a training exercise off the coast of Nova Scotia when a hydraulic system failed, causing a leak. The submarine was returning to shore when the submarine sprung a second, more serious leak after a highly trained crew member turned a switch the wrong way. About 2,000 liters of water flooded into the compartments. When the Windsor first made it's way to Canada last year, CBC television filmed the journey. But during the trip the submarine leaked hydraulic fluid, the radar mast leaked and had to be fixed with masking tape and a rubbish bag, the sonar broke and another faulty piece of equipment on the sub had to be un jammed with a hockey stick. The submarine's hockey team is short a hockey stick and the poor welds on Canadian submarines will be a good match for the poor welds on Canada's frigates, (see story at top of page).

BAD WELDS CAN KILL:

 

Authors KITUNAI, Yoshio (Japan Crane Association)
KOBAYASHI, Hideo (Yokohama National University)

On March 27th, 1980, the semi-submersible platform Alexander Kielland suddenly capsized during a storm in the North Sea, because one of its five vertical columns supporting the platform was broken off. 123 workers among the 212 people on board were killed in the accident.

The investigation showed that a fatigue crack had propagated from the double fillet weld near the hydrophone mounted to the tubular bracing D6. As a result, the five other tubular bracings connecting to the vertical column D broke off due to overload, and the column D became separated from the platform. Consequently, the platform became unbalanced and capsized. After the accident, the offshore design rules were revised and some countermeasures were added to maintain a reserve of buoyancy and stability for a platform under a storm.

Incident At around 6.30 pm on March 27th, 1980, the semi-submersible oil drilling platform "Alexander Kielland" capsized near the Norwegian Ekofisk oil field located at a latitude 56 degrees 28 minutes north and a longitude of 3 degrees 7 minutes in a storm with window velocities from 16 to 20 m/s, temperatures of 4 to 6 C, and wave heights of 6 to 10 m, because the platform's columns broke off. Within seconds, the platform tilted between 35 and 45 degrees. After 30 minutes, the platform turned upside down

Cause (1) Fracture features
A circular hole was introduced to the underside of the D6 bracing, and a pipe, which is called a hydrophone, was mounted into the circular hole by welding. The hydrophone was 325 mm in diameter with a 26 mm wall thickness. The hydrophone was welded using a double fillet weld with a weld throat thickness of 6 mm. A drain of the bracing D6 had to be installed at a location 270 mm away from the hydrophone.

As a result of examination of the welds of the D6 bracing, some cracks related to lamellar tearing were found in the heat affected zone (HAZ) of the weld around the hydrophone. Traces of paint coinciding with the paint used on the platform were recognized on the fracture surface of the fillet weld around the hydrophone in the bracing D6. These paint traces show that the cracks were already formed before the D6 bracing was painted. Examination of the fracture surface also showed that the fatigue cracks propagated from two initiation sites near the fillet weld of the hydrophone to the direction circumferential to the D6 bracing. Moreover, the fatigue fracture surface occupied more than 60% of the circumference of the D6 bracing (Fig. 7), and beach marks were formed on the fracture surface, which was about 60 to 100 mm away from the hydrophone. Striations with spacing of 0.25E-3 to 1.0 E-3 mm were observed in patches on the fracture surface of the D6 bracing.

(2) Characteristics of the welds of the hydrophone
Considering of the importance of the strength of the D6 bracing, welding of the drain into the bracing was carried out carefully according to the design rules. In the case of the installation of the hydrophone, however, a circular hole was made on the D6 bracing by gas cutting, and the surface of the hole was not treated by some process, such as a grinding. After cutting, a pipe, which was made by cold bending and welding using a plate with 20 mm thickness, was mounted into the hole of the bracing, and the pipe was attached by welded around the hole by double fillet welding with a throat thickness of 6 mm.

When the hydrophone was installed by welding, the weld defects, such as incomplete penetration, slag inclusion, and root cracks, were introduced in the welds, because of the poor gas cutting and welding practices. Moreover, lamellar tearing related to inclusions in the material used was found near the HAZ of the hydrophone. The stress concentration factor, Kt, of the fillet weld of the hydrophone was in the range of 2.5 to 3.0, which is higher than the average value of Kt of 1.6 for a fillet weld performed under normal conditions.

(3) Chemical composition and mechanical properties of materials
The chemical composition of the materials was found to be within the specified limits. A comparison of the mechanical properties between the specification and the test results for the fractured materials is shown in Table 2. The yield strength of the D6 bracing in the longitudinal direction is slightly lower than the specified minimum values. In case of the hydrophone, the Charpy impact energy is lower than the required value of 39 J at -40 C. Moreover, the reduction of area of the hydrophone for the through-thickness direction is markedly reduced because of the large amount of weld inclusions.

(4) Stress on the D6 bracing
Considering the wind and wave data before the accident, the stress amplitude on the D6 bracing was estimated to be in the range of 131 to173 MPa. This result shows that the stress levels of the D6 bracing were relatively high as compared to the other horizontal bracing in the platform. The fatigue life of the D6 bracing with the hydrophone was calculated to be in the range of 0.7 to 5 years.

(1) Although the D6 bracing was one of primary components of the platform, little attention was given to the installation of the hydrophone into the bracing. Hence, a crack with a length of about 70 mm was introduced in the fillet weld around the hydrophone, before the D6 bracing was painted.

(2) Fatigue cracks propagated from two initiation sites near the fillet weld of the hydrophone in the direction circumferential to the D6 bracing at the early stage of the life of the platform.

(3) The five other bracings connected to the column D broke off due to overload, and the column D was separated from the platform. Consequently, the platform became unbalanced and capsized

(4) Inspection of the D6 bracing had not been carried out.

Countermeasures Based on the accident report, redundancies of stability and structural strength, and lifesaving equipment for the offshore oil drilling platforms were obligated by the Norwegian Maritime Directorate (NMD). Amendment of the MODU (Mobile Offshore Drilling Units) Code was carried out by the International Maritime Organization, and standards for stability, motion characteristics, maneuverability, watertight doors, and structural strength of the oil drilling platforms were strengthened. Knowledge Comment Installation of attachments, such as the hydrophone, on a stressed component by welding often introduces a cause of fatigue failure. In order to improve the fatigue resilience of structures, it is important to avoid unnecessary welding and attachments. Attachments can reduce stressed components to the lowest design class.
Authors KITUNAI, Yoshio (Japan Crane Association)
KOBAYASHI, Hideo (Yokohama National University)

Her Majesty's Tired Tireless
Threatens Mediterranean

By John LaForge and Bonnie Urfer

 

GIBRALTAR-The near reactor meltdown aboard Britain's submarine Tireless, its spill of radioactive cooling water into the Mediterranean, and a risky, experimental and possibly illegal repair operation in a densely populated area, have brought thousands of outraged Gibraltar and Spanish residents into the streets.

Since May 19, the 280-foot Tireless with its failed reactor has been docked near the center of Gibraltar, population 29,165. According to the British Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Tireless' reactor failed May 12 while patrolling between Sicily and North Africa. One or more welds in the sub's primary cooling system cracked and began leaking hot, pressurized and radioactivity contaminated water into the sea. Authorities initially claimed there was no danger of a radiation spill, but later admitted the leakage. Neither the Navy nor the MOD has said how much of the deadly wastewater was spewed.

Two major papers, the Sunday Times and the Guardian, have reported that Tireless came within "a few minutes" of a reactor meltdown when the high-pressure coolant began rushing out of the system. One Navy spokesperson said, "Once the fault had ripped through, it could not be isolated from the rest of the system." The Navy asserts that the reactor was properly shut down, but while Tireless was towed into the Bay of Algeciras the leak continued until, "Shortly after arriving [May 19] in Gibraltar the leak was temporarily sealed" (according to a Nov. 23 report by the hastily-assembled government Nuclear Safety Advisory Panel). Captain Dis Carneay quickly announced that Tireless would return to Britain for repairs. But on June 26 the MOD announced that repairs would take place at Gibraltar. No explanation was given for the change, except to say (in Nov.) that moving the sub "would introduce new, higher risks to the submarine, its crew and, possibly, to coastal communities." The decision to repair Tireless in Gibraltar violates Royal Navy procedure. The "Z" berths at Gibraltar are only for "recreational" stops. "These berths are not cleared for the maintenance or repair of the nuclear plant," according to Navy regulations. Gibraltar's berths have no permanent health physics department, no radiation monitoring organization and no disaster evacuation plans-all of which are required for the "X" berths built in Britain specifically for "refit, repair or maintenance of nuclear-powered warships.

Seven months later, the Tireless' worn out, leaking reactor still rests 1,800 meters from the desalination plant for Gibraltar's water supply. The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has protested that the geography of Gibraltar makes evacuation in the event of a radiation disaster difficult: the only land exit to the north could easily be within the contaminated area. The Tireless uses a U.S.-designed pressurized water reactor built by Rolls Royce. In the reactor, primary cooling water flows directly over the extremely hot reactor fuel and then is pumped to a generator where it heats secondary water to create steam. Because the primary coolant circulates inside the reactor, it makes direct contact with intensely hot uranium fuel cladding, becoming radioactive.

When fuel cladding is damaged, cooling water is further contaminated with extremely deadly fission products, including plutonium-241, iodine-129, cesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60 and nickel-59 among others. If the Tireless' fuel cladding were damaged, some of these long-lived poisons would have poured into the sea for over a week. (Iodine-129 is dangerous for 150 million years; nickel-59 for 75,000.) Based on assurances by the MOD, the Advisory Panel claims that the cladding remains intact.

It took until the end of June for Tireless' reactor to cool down enough for inspection. The "2-mm wide crack" in a weld is said to be near the reactor vessel; the length of the crack was not divulged. The Navy has decided to completely remove a section of the heavy pipe and send it to England for study. Still, the machinists didn't start the cutting and removal of the cracked ducting until Nov. 24. If the job was undertaken as announced, the three-day operation involved extremely dangerous and novel experiments:

1) Primary coolant was to be drained from the system for up to three weeks, leaving the reactor fuel at risk of overheating. The deliberately increased risk of a reactor meltdown was found by the Advisory Panel "to be acceptably low." (The Navy even convinced the panel that the fuel system is able to survive a complete loss of coolant.)

2) Some 24 cubic meters (6,340 gallons) of this primary cooling water was to be transferred to shore. And because Gibraltar's Z berth is not equipped with rad waste storage facilities, a containment system was cobbled together ad hoc. (The system will itself become contaminated waste.) The radioactive wastewater has already been on Gibraltar longer than the MOD's risk assessment suggested.

3) The section of failed welds was to be removed with a rig designed, built and tested for the first time. To replace the cracked pipe, the Navy intends to employ a welding method never used on nuclear reactors, a system that even the Advisory Panel found worrisome. "The Panel recognizes that having a direct path from the reactor to the outside environment places total reliance on the continued integrity of the fuel cladding to contain the fission products."

4) Finally, pressure testing of the primary loop, and restart of the reactor involve additional risks of leaks and fuel overheating.

Fleet withdrawal finds half the subs at risk. In late October, the British Navy recalled all of the Tireless' sister ships for reactor inspections. Defence Minister John Spellar admitted in the House of Commons that the reactor flaws on the Tireless might be "generic." A partial review of 12 Trafalgar and Swiftsure Class subs found six at risk of the same cooling system WELD cracking. Five subs were cleared of the flaw, including HMS Triumph. Triumph, however, was on patrol and couldn't have undergone a thorough safety check since that requires a reactor shutdown. The above article was written by;


The Progressive Foundation -- Nukewatch

Email: info@nukewatch.com
Website: www.nukewatch.com

"The most important thing we could do is…outlaw nuclear weapons to start with, then we outlaw nuclear reactors too. … I'm not proud of the part I played… I think we'll probably destroy ourselves." From Jan. 28, 1982 statement to U.S. Senate by Adm. Hyman Rickover, "father" of the U.S. nuclear navy."

 

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

WELDS KILL.

History of USS Thresher (SSN-593)
Related Resources:

 

In company with Skylark (ASR-20), the USS Thresher put to sea on 10 April 1963 for deep-diving exercises. In addition to her 16 officers and 96 enlisted men, the submarine carried 17 civilian technicians to observe her performance during the deep-diving tests. Fifteen minutes after reaching her assigned test depth, the submarine communicated with Skylark by underwater telephone, appraising the submarine rescue ship of difficulties. Garbled transmissions indicated that--far below the surface--things were going wrong. Suddenly, listeners in Skylark heard a noise "like air rushing into an air tank"--then, silence.

Efforts to reestablish contact with Thresher failed, and a search group was formed in an attempt to locate the submarine. Rescue ship Recovery (ASR-43) subsequently recovered bits of debris, including gloves and bits of internal insulation. Photographs taken by bathyscaph Trieste proved that the submarine had broken up, taking all hands on board to their deaths in 5,500 of water, some 220 miles east of Boston. Thresher was officially declared lost in April 1963.

Subsequently, a Court of Inquiry was convened and, after studying pictures and other data, opined that the loss of Thresher was in all probability due to a casting, piping, or weld failure that flooded the engine room with water. This water probably caused electrical failures that automatically shutdown the nuclear reactor, causing an initial power loss and the eventual loss of the boat.

Thresher is in six major sections on the ocean floor, with the majority in a single debris field about 400 yards square. The major sections are the sail, sonar dome, bow section, engineering spaces, operations spaces, and the tail section. Owing to the pressurized-water nuclear reactor in the engine room, deep ocean radiological monitoring operations were conducted in August 1983 and August 1986. The site had been previously monitored in 1965 and 1977 and none of the samples obtained showed any evidence of release of radioactivity from the reactor fuel elements. Fission products were not detected above concentrations typical of worldwide background levels in sediment, water, or marine life samples.

 

Cold Water Sinks TITANIC.

Iceberg Gets Bum Rap in TITANIC Sinking

8 ships with structural problems.
From Marine Log Home Page:

RINA says "small structural failure or leak" likely caused Erika sinking

Italian classification society RINA, Genoa, says its initial findings on the causes of the sinking of the Maltese-flag tanker Erika during a major storm in December point to a small structural failure or leak low down in the hull structure. This was followed by cracking that eventually led to the collapse of the hull.

RINA says its investigations prove that the calculated residual strength of the vessel at the time of the casualty should have been sufficient to withstand normal operation of the vessel in the prevailing weather. The residual strength was within IACS limits.

Initial investigations show that the hull structure initially failed at some point low in the hull, and that complete failure occurred only after cracks had propagated from that source.

RINA is continue its investigations to determine the cause of that initial failure and the results of the subsequent actions of the master, owners and other parties involved. RINA will focus on several potential causes of the initial failure, including:

[] possible poor loading or poor ship handling by the master;
[] poor workmanship during WELD repairs, perhaps at the Adriatic yard in Bijela, Montenegro, during August 1998;
[] failure of WELDS due to poor design or workmanship during building,
[] the possibility that Erika struck a floating object.

RINA has appointed Three Quays Marine Service and Studio Tecnico Navale Ansaldo to conduct further independent investigations covering: design and construction of the Erika and its seven sister ships. "Eight sister ships of the Erika class were built, under two different class societies, and have been classed by five different IACS classification societies at some time in their lives. All of these ships have suffered structural problems. Three of them, other than the Erika, were serious. No information on this history of problems was available to RINA," he says.


Side Note: It appears that in the case of the Prestige and the Erika tankers that the structural failures occurred a few months after welding repairs were carried out on the hulls. This would suggest that welding could be a factor in the structural failures.

ON A SHIP? IF THE BAD WELDS
DONT GET YOU, MAYBE THE RUST WILL:

 

THE NEW SUPERTANKER PLAGUE
By Richard Martin

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blame it on super-rust, a virulent form of corrosion that has destroyed hundreds of ships and could sink the oil industry.
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On December 7, 1999, the oil tanker Erika set sail from Dunkirk, France, bound for Sicily, carrying 10 million gallons of heavy fuel oil. A few days later, the ship headed south around the coast of Brittany and cruised directly into a powerful storm.

The Erika battled swells of more than 20 feet as it steamed across the Bay of Biscay. Soon the ship began to list, and 11-foot cracks appeared in the deck and hull. The Erika was breaking apart. A helicopter evacuated the crew just before the vessel split in half and sank in 400 feet of water, spreading tarlike petroleum across more than 250 miles of the Loire-Atlantic coastline — Europe’s largest oil spill in two decades.

Built in Japan in 1975, the Erika was typical of today’s older tankers. Sailing under the flag of Malta, it was managed by an Italian operator and chartered by a Bahamian company headquartered in Switzerland. Its Maltese owner was itself owned by two Liberian firms. Deemed seaworthy by Registro Italiano Navale — one of many organizations, known as classification societies, responsible for inspecting and certifying commercial vessels — the Erika had passed every inspection over the year prior to its sinking.

The final report on the disaster, issued in January 2000 by the French investigative agency Bureau d’Enquetes sur les Accidents en Mer, concluded that severe corrosion had weakened the Erika’s hull, causing the ship to flex in the storm and eventually to fracture.

The volume of oil moving by ship is soaring. And in traditional tankers, accelerated corrosion is engineered right into the body of the vessel.

The Erika was neither the first nor the last tanker to succumb unexpectedly to corrosion. Each year from 1995 to 2001, an average of 408 tankers broke apart at sea or barely escaped that fate, according to the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, known as Intertanko. The leading cause was collision, but nearly as many suffered “structural / technical failures” — often a euphemism in industry circles for excessive corrosion and bad welds .

Ships have been corroding since the late 18th century, when wooden hulls were first covered with copper to protect against worms. Mariners have recognized the threat to steel tankers in particular since the 1950s, and classification societies have established a regime of inspections and maintenance to keep corrosion at bay. But the system has failed. Ships that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build are falling apart on the open sea, endangering the lives of crew members and spilling millions of gallons of oil each year.

For instance, the Nakhodka went down two years before the Erika sank. This 27-year-old tanker broke apart off the coast of Japan, spilling 1.3 million gallons of crude and killing one sailor. The Japanese Ministry of Transport found that portions of the ship’s hull had rusted 20 to 50 percent. In December 2000, the Castor, carrying 8.7 million gallons of unleaded gasoline across the Mediterranean, developed cracks in its deck and had to be drained of its cargo in a risky ship-to-ship maneuver.

Preliminary findings in the Castor case rocked the industry. According to the American Bureau of Shipping, the classification society that certified the vessel, the Castor had fallen prey to “hyper-accelerated corrosion” — swiftly dubbed “super-rust” in the trade press. The ABS downgraded its assessment to “excessive corrosion” in its final report, issued this past October. Nonetheless, that document noted that the vessel’s steel had disintegrated at rates of up to 0.71 millimeter a year — more than seven times the “nominal” rate expected by the bureau. (The ABS declined numerous requests for an interview. David Olson, the Colorado School of Mines professor who served as the “independent” metallurgist for the Castor report, also refused to comment.)

Super-rust was initially explained as an unprecedented phenomenon, a highly evolved form of corrosion neither foreseeable nor preventable. The truth is less mysterious: Hyper-accelerated corrosion is the inevitable result when unforgiving chemistry meets the harsh economics and tangled industry politics of transporting fossil fuels.

Rust attacks steel from the moment the metal encounters moisture. To keep that from happening, ship owners paint steel surfaces with corrosion-resistant coatings. The coatings break down with age; conventional maintenance protocols dictate that tankers be recoated periodically. If all this is done properly, any ship should carry cargo for 30 years or so and then retire to the scrap yard without incident.

But first-class ship maintenance has become increasingly rare in recent decades. Since the 1970s — when the Erika, Nakhodka, and Castor were built — profit margins in the tanker business have fallen steadily. Today, tankers change hands two or three times before they’re taken out of service. Temporary owners of second — or third — hand ships tend to be less interested in maintaining their vessels than maximizing the return on their investments. What’s more, the classification societies lack the authority to enforce rigorous standards. These nongovernmental agencies depend for revenue on their clients: shipbuilders, owners, and operators, who can and often do shop their business to competing societies. For instance, the Erika’s owners switched to Registro Italiano Navale after the French agency Bureau Veritas, which had certified the ship for the previous five years, refused to overlook its deterioration. The Erika went down just 18 months later.

So far, super-rust has destroyed only old ships at the end of their useful lives, allowing many in the industry to maintain that the problem is contained. This complacency has become increasingly dangerous in the face of evidence that the latest generation of tankers is even more vulnerable than its predecessors. Ever since the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989 — the worst spill in US history, dumping 11 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound — shipbuilders have focused on constructing tankers that would be impervious to grounding and collision. The solution has been to wrap a second hull around the first; the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 mandates that, by 2015, all tankers operating in the US have double hulls. This innovation has prevented dozens of spills, but it has inadvertently propelled corrosion to unheard-of levels.

Tales of double hulls rusting far more rapidly than expected began to circulate in the early ‘90s, not long after the first such vessels entered the water. The 5-year-old Mobil tanker Eagle, for example, spent almost three months dry-docked in Singapore in 1998, reportedly having her cargo tanks treated for corrosion. According to Seatrends, a leading trade magazine, the Eagle had leaked oil into the space between its inner and outer hulls. (Contacted earlier this year, an ExxonMobil spokesperson repeated the company’s assertion that the ship docked in Singapore for “routine maintenance” and that no leakage had occurred.)

Fearful of government regulation, the shipping world has attempted, as Seatrends editor Ian Middleton put it in a 1999 editorial, to “keep a lid” on such incidents. But inspections keep turning up severe corrosion in new tankers. A 2000 Intertanko report concluded that excessive rust is afflicting double hulls within two years of launch. Without a serious shift in industry practice, it won’t be long before the first double hull goes the way of the Erika.

Rust arises from an intricate subatomic dance in which water’s oxygen and hydrogen atoms snatch electrons from atoms of iron. Because saltwater conducts electricity better than freshwater, the iron in steel oxidizes more quickly in seawater — up to 0.10 millimeter per year, as foreseen in classification-society manuals. Given enough time, this process can eat through even the thickest hull.

The way corrosion attacks the interior of a tanker, however, is more insidious. It can be seen most vividly in the cargo tanks, which line up along the ship’s backbone beneath the deck, and in the ballast tanks that cushion the cargo tanks along their outer edges. In these areas, steel deteriorates at five, ten, even thirty times the nominal rate.

In the ballast tanks, which are normally filled with seawater when the cargo tanks are empty, water conducts electrons between plates on either side, and between separate areas of a single plate — that is, the tanks become huge, if weak, batteries. The increased electrical activity hastens the metal’s degradation. To combat the problem, shipbuilders have traditionally installed bars of reactive metal like zinc or aluminum inside the tanks. The added metal becomes a “sacrificial anode,” which corrodes in place of the ship’s steel. Known as cathodic protection, this method has become less popular as paint manufacturers have developed rust-resistant coatings over the past 20 years or so. In the absence of cathodic protection, however, corrosion sets in when coatings break down. Shoddy repairs can also play a role. In the Castor, corroded plates discovered during inspections were replaced with new plates of uncoated steel, turning the uncoated metal into a sacrificial anode. Thus, the patches rusted even faster than the original metal had.

The processes that drive ballast-tank corrosion hasten the familiar action of oxidation. What happens in cargo tanks, on the other hand, involves more ruinous chemical and biological forces.

At the top of the cargo tanks, the vapor space between the oil’s surface and the underside of the deck traps highly acidic gases — products of the reaction between petroleum, oxygen, and water — that condense against the metal. The deck flexes at sea, causing degraded steel to flake off the ceilings of the tanks, exposing more bare steel for the acid to attack. Examining this area isn’t easy. Scaffolding must be constructed inside empty, unlit tanks, and even then inspectors can view only small portions up-close.

At the bottoms of the tanks, in the water that settles under the oil, corrosive bacteria thrive. Consuming hydrocarbons, microbes like Desulfovibrio desulferican produce acids that dissolve the tanks’ floors and lower sides at rates as high as 2 millimeters per year. Some microorganisms even feed on the coatings that protect the tanks from rust. Essentially, a tanker is a gigantic floating petri dish for a peculiarly vicious sort of steel-eating sludge — the ultimate metallivore.

Super-rust in aging single-hull vessels can be blamed on an industry in denial. In double hulls, accelerated corrosion is engineered right into the ships themselves. The extra layer of steel gives rust many more square feet of surface area to attack, much of it hidden in cramped, inaccessible crawl spaces. What’s more, these crawl spaces form an insulating layer that keeps the internal temperature much higher than it would be in a single-hull tanker. Corrosion rates tend to double with each 20-degree Fahrenheit increase.

At the same time, manufacturing efficiencies have reduced the thickness of hulls and decks. Guided by software modeling, designers put plenty of steel where it’s needed for strength, while reducing it in the rest of the structure. The advent of high-tensile steel — stronger than conventional steel but no more rustproof — has allowed naval architects to further pare down the metal structure.

These developments have led many shipbuilders to trade corrosion-resistance for lower cost. Every ounce of steel saved in the construction of a new ship translates into greater profits for the builder and reduced fuel bills for the owner. Between 1970 and 1990, the amount of steel used to construct a tanker declined by almost one-fifth, according to Tankers Full of Trouble, a 1994 book by Eric Nalder based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle Times series. Modern tanker walls are only 14 to 16 millimetres thick, compared with 25 millimeters a generation ago. Assuming a microbial corrosion rate of 1.5 millimeters a year, rusted-out pits would reach halfway through those hulls in five years.

Even without a spill, the consequences of an internal breach leaking oil into a double hull could be catastrophic. Asked what might result, shipbuilding consultant Rong Huang gives a one-word answer: “Explosion.”

Polar Resolution.

All ships look old unless they’re freshly painted. At the Avondale Shipyard, upriver from New Orleans, the only unblemished metal surfaces are rails that support rolling dockside cranes and the gleaming blue sides of the state-of-the-art tanker Polar Resolution. Every other steel surface in the yard is dusted with flash rust, a ruddy patina that appears almost as soon as the steel is exposed to air. This superficial oxidation is sandblasted away before the metal is painted and coated. Some surfaces, however, never get coated at all. These unprotected areas invite the risk of destruction from within.

Contracted by Polar Tankers, a division of Phillips Petroleum, the Polar Resolution is one of four $230 million ships designed for the iceberg and reef-strewn run from Valdez, Alaska, to Puget Sound. The 895-foot vessel has not only a two-layer hull but duplicate engine rooms, navigation systems, and propellers. Its 12 cargo tanks hold 42 million gallons of oil. When its sister ship, Polar Endeavor, set sail last spring, Professional Mariner magazine named it Ship of the Year.

A series of ladders and stairways descends steeply to the floor of the Polar Resolution’s empty cargo tank number five. The walls rise 100 feet to the main deck. A band of light streams from the hatch high above. From the inside, the tank is like a vast steel cathedral, a shrine to man’s thirst for oil.

The tank floor is covered with epoxy. But overhead, the vapor space is uncoated — contrary to classification-society recommendations.

This expanse of bare metal is a stark emblem of the industry’s failure to face up to the hazard of corrosion. With each disaster or near-disaster, authorities have launched an investigation. When corrosion has been implicated, the result has been a litany of recommendations that hardly varies from year to year: Coat the vulnerable surfaces of the ballast and cargo tanks, inspect them frequently, and remove substandard tankers from service. But these guidelines are honored mostly in the breach. According to the ABS report on the Castor, the ship’s last inspections “failed to adequately represent the condition of the vessel’s structure.” In other words, the investigators missed the damage.

Supertankers are the biggest moving structures ever built, yet the system for constructing, inspecting, and certifying them is a relic of the 19th century. At one time, the classification societies were adjuncts to the marine insurance business. Today, they call themselves the self-regulating arm of the shipping world; the avowed mission of the ABS, for instance, is “to serve the public interest as well as the needs of our clients by promoting the security of life, property, and the natural environment.” In practice, the societies serve the shipowners. The leading organizations, which include the ABS, Lloyd’s Register in London, and Det Norske Veritas of Norway, are staffed by conscientious experts, but they work within a system where no one is answerable for the condition of the ships. There is no FAA for tankers.

What’s more, the tanker industry is overrun with so many holding companies, limited-liability partnerships, and owners-of-record that even determining who bears ultimate responsibility for a ship can be difficult. Authorities investigating the Erika found the owner’s capital structure so opaque that it was nearly impossible to figure out who controlled the company. Following the inquiry, Paul Slater, chair of shipping conglomerate First International Group and a member of Intertanko’s Communications Committee, declared the current inspection system “monstrously outdated.”



LPD-17 SAN ANTONIO Class Challenges
(formerly LX Class)

The LPD 17 program was said to represent the Navy's best case of capitalizing on acquisition reform. Examples included:

Early industry involvement to solicit ideas on design, production and cost reduction;
teaming of shipbuilders and combat systems integrators to pool organizational strengths;
developing a "teaming for life" concept where the winner of the LPD 17 will have the opportunity to provide the Navy with life cycle support;
reduced Mil-Specs requirements to only those few that are absolutely essential.

But the construction program for the LPD-17 was a troubled one. The 1996 selected acquisition report estimated that a 12-ship program would cost an average of about $830 million per ship. Eight years later, that cost had grown by more than 50 percent--to an average of about $1.3 billion per ship, CBO estimates. The Navy's 2004 selected acquisition report estimated that a 12-ship program would cost about $1.2 billion per ship, on average. As of 2004 the Navy attributed 14 percent of the cost growth to additional inflation, 28 percent to the restructuring of the procurement schedule, 29 percent to the complexity of the design and to higher labor and overhead rates, 25 percent to the challenges of integrating the ship's systems and the materials used, and 4 percent to additional outfitting costs.

NAVAL AND CIVILIAN MANAGEMENT
POINT THEIR FINGERS.

According to the program office the LPD 17 Amphibious Transport Dock, which was delivered to the Navy in July 2005, experienced numerous quality problems of varying degrees that significantly impacted the ship’s mission. These problems contributed to a delay of 3 years in the delivery of the ship and a cost increase of $846 million. According to Navy program officials, some of the problems are typical of those of a first ship of class production. Many of the problems can be attributed to systems engineering, manufacturing, and supplier issues.

In June 2007, the Secretary of the Navy sent a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Northrop Grumman expressing his concerns for the contractor’s ability to construct and deliver ships that conform to the quality standards maintained by the Navy and that adhere to the cost and schedule commitments agreed upon. Northrop Grumman’s Chairman acknowledged that the company was aware of the problems and is working on improving its processes.

Many of the system engineering problems on the LPD 17 can be attributed to the software-based design tool used by the contractors. The contractor selected a 3-D model to fulfil Navy requirements, the Integraph software package, which had been used in large construction efforts but not fully adapted for shipbuilding. It was intended for workers to design systems and extract drawings from this 3-D model. The modification of this design tool, at the same time the ship was under design, caused delays in the release of production drawings. According to the program office, Northrop Grumman experienced some difficulty in acquiring and training qualified personnel to use the system.


Consequently, the program experienced higher than expected engineering hours due to a large number of design drawings that required rework. Design rework also affected the sequencing of work being done on the ship as well as the accuracy of that work. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems officials stated that completing design work after beginning ship construction affects both the work schedule and the quality of work.

The LPD 17 encountered a problem with the isolators on titanium piping. The isolators are used to separate different types of metals to keep them from corroding. The problem was discovered in 2006, about a year after the launch of the first ship. According to DOD program officials, the titanium piping is used throughout the ship because it is lighter than the traditional copper-nickel piping and has a longer service life. However, it has not been used much in naval surface ships or by the American shipbuilding industry, and therefore required new manufacturing and installation processes. According to the program office, these processes were being developed as Northrop Grumman Ship Systems was building the ship. In addition, designs for the piping hangers, which hold the piping in place, as well as tests of the isolators were subsequently delayed. When the titanium piping on the ship was changed, the hanger design had to be modified as well. The final hanger design was not completed until about 90 percent of the titanium piping was already on the ship, which resulted in additional rework and schedule delays.

(Note from Ed. Titanium. They should have used TIP TIG

The LPD 17 Class has had problems associated with its steering system as well. Hydraulic fluid contamination occurred during system flushing. System flushing is completed in order to clean out a system and involves running fluid throughout the piping. Additionally, there were problems in keeping air out of the system. After investigation, several steps were taken to mitigate these issues including installing additional filters, modifying the flushing procedures, and modifying the system design.

The ship encountered problems with faulty welds on P-1 piping systems, a designation used in high-temperature, high-pressure, and other critical systems. This class of piping is used primarily in hydraulic applications in engineering and machinery spaces. P-1 piping systems require more extensive weld documentation than other pipes as they are part of critical systems and could cause significant damage to the ship and crew if they failed. Welds of this nature must be documented to ensure they were completed by qualified personnel and inspected for structural integrity. Further investigation revealed that weld inspection documentation was incomplete. As a result, increased rework levels were necessary to correct deficiencies and to re-inspect all the welds. Failure to complete this work would have increased the risk of weld failure and potentially presented a hazard to the ship and crew. According to the program office, a contributing factor was turnover in production personnel and their lack of knowledge on how to complete the proper documentation.

Note from Ed. Welds of this quality are made every day in the power industry with 100% success. If people are not doing their job, not qualified to do the job or leaving their jobs, then its time to hire qualified managers who can rectify these situations.

The program also experienced problems with non-skid applications, a type of coating used on the ship. The non-skid application is different from traditional surface coatings in that it creates a rough surface when it has dried. This is particularly important on a ship because it provides increased traction when wet as opposed to traditional surface coatings. One problem the program encountered with this particular type of coating was in preparation. When applying non-skid application, it is important to have a clean surface free of dirt and debris. Additionally, high humidity levels found along the Gulf Coast, where the ship was built interfere with the bonding process and require dehumidification. These conditions have been difficult to consistently achieve in a construction environment. As a result, the non-skid would not adhere properly and began to peel away. As of November 2007, no change in process has occurred.

Note from Ed. If a process requires specific instructions, training, best practices or
conditions for it's successful application, it's up to management to provide them.

L.A Buildings and Earthquakes
and why I won't discuss the use of Self Shielded Flux Core Wire

This story has it all. Lincoln Electric and their incredible defence of their unsuitable self shielded flux cored weld consumables. Politicians and corporate management and the common lack of accountability The selection by inexperienced California engineers of questionable weld consumables for the majority of the construction projects. Cleveland voters sending donations to California politicians. USA Tax payers stuck with the welding related bills. Lobbyist, Lincoln and FEMA connections. A generous grant of millions to a company that did not ask for it. The possibility of future buildings designed to with stand an earth quake waiting to collapse and let's not forget, the deaths that occurred and the casualties that will occur in the next L.A earthquake. If this was a movie I would call it;

"The greatest Weld Story Ever Told" it should be called,
"The Fox who was asked to guard the Lincoln Hen House"

Note: The self shielded flux cored wire consumables recommended by Lincoln and Chrysler, have cost the Auto / Truck Industries millions each year on unnecessary weld rework. For auto / truck Self Shielded flux cored wire problems, click here.

The Beijing Olympic Birds Nest.

WILL IT BE A BIRDS NEST FOR THE
SPECTATORS OR A SPIDER'S WEB?

Written by Ed Craig.
Posted www.weldreality.com.
Aug. 2. 2008.

The five hundred million dollars, Beijing Olympic stadium, is wrapped with a unique high strength steel box cocoon that weighs approx. 45,000 tons. At the end of July, two weeks before the 91000 seat stadium was ready to host the 2008 Olympics, I watched a Discovery Channel program about the stadium construction. The steel bird's nest design is without question a wonder to behold, however having a slight interest in fabrication and welding you know where my focus was. Click here for the rest of this story.

 

Conclusion from Ed.


WELD SHOPS WILL NOT CHANGE WHEN MANAGED
BY MANAGERS OR ENGINEERS WHO DON'T BELIEVE
IN WELD PROCESS OWNERSHIP.


Of course there are many ship and oil platform yards that are in control of the weld processes utilized, however in the majority of these construction facilities, manufacturing and design apathy is like a cancer that has spread throughout this important global industry. Living with poor past practices and ignoring the present design and manufacturing flaws and opportunities, is so common that many managers would do well to place a large sign in front of their ivory towers that states. " DON'T COME INTO THIS OFFICE WITH A NEW IDEA WHICH WOULD REQUIRE WE TAKE OWNERSHIP, WE INTEND TO MAINTAIN OUR APATHETIC, DO NOTHING STATUS QUO".


Design issues, thinner, high strength steels with rust concerns and lack of welding / manufacturing process controls are a triple recipe that will combine into tremendous liability consequences for many. All I can add, is this site offers those that want change, an important tool that provides an important step in the opportunity to establish Best MIG and flux cored Weld Practices and Weld Process Controls.

Have you visited Ed's Bad Weld Sections?




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