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Improving Global Quality of Life
Through Optimum Use and Innovation of Welding and Joining Technologies
9.10.2
Welding industry role
As design and construction continue to evolve, the lessons of redundancy, load carrying capacity, and
reliability, as well as the efficient and effective maintenance of bridges, must not be lost to ensure
uninterrupted service to the maximum extent possible. Now, with the advent of high performance
materials, emerging advanced technologies, and emphasis on strategic goals, the global perspective in the
highway industry has to change towards rapid construction of highways which in turn requires that bridge
components need to be fabricated rapidly, assembled quickly and maintained effectively and efficiently.
This is where welding technology and professionals have a key role in ensuring success in building
infrastructure not just for transporting goods and people but in supporting the industries essential to our
daily needs to national defence and security and beyond. Welded products for bridges alone constitute a
multi-billion dollar global industry and the cost is many times more counting buildings, automobiles, airlines
and industries manufacturing equipment for highway construction, mining, farming, and aspects of our
daily life. Just as bridges are needed to transport goods and people to support industries, these industries
are equally important in building and maintaining bridges. These industries face many needs but have an
essential need to ensure that the welding and joining technology and the welding industry will continue its
support to keep them operating.
The IIW has been working on the global front in partnership with national welding organisations around
the world, such as American Welding Society (AWS) in the USA, with their customers in such industries as
shipbuilding, automobiles, pipelines, steel bridges and manufacturing and supporting industries in fields
relating to fabrication, construction and maintenance of welded components, and welding products. These
industries have been striving to move closer to their vision of improving the quality of their products for
more efficient transportation service around the world. Improving quality and efficiency helps the global
economy, quality of life, and the defence and security of nations.
For example, the researched information and database available from the IIW is a phenomenal resource
for welding professionals in finding improved engineering solutions to such areas as:
Producing quality welded products.
Maintaining long service life of welded components for moderate to very complex structures
Training and qualifying welding personnel.
Due to lack of resources and other factors, however, there is a need to improve the process for disseminating
information from institutions such as IIW and national welding organisations to the practicing engineers and
others around the world.
To illustrate how useful and effective the deployment of available researched information and technology
transfer can be in improving service life of steel bridges, consider the recently imported technology of
ultrasonic impact treatment (UIT) to the USA. It began in 1995 from a presentation by Dr. Efim S. Statnikov
and the discussions in the IIW Commission XIII on “
Fatigue of Welded Components and Structures,
”
for enhancing steel component life by arresting fatigue cracks in components. Recognising how significant
UIT technology could be for mitigating fatigue failures of steel bridge components, the USA imported
this technology. By adopting this new UIT technology, bridge owners have saved considerable time and
millions of dollars, when compared with the traditional methods of repairing fatigue damaged bridges.
The UIT technology is gaining recognition in other countries as well because of the USA leadership
in validating and adopting the technology for welded bridges.
Similarly, sensor technology offers high potential and can help avert failures in bridges by detecting and
monitoring a growing flaw from fatigue, corrosion or other reasons. Many lives have been lost because of
