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RESEARCH & INNOVATION
of documents, publications and books on their work. By 2014 the IIW’s database for
technical documents contained almost 15,000 references going back to 1948, a substantive
contribution from the many experts from the 56 countries that made up IIW at that time.
The 1990s had, in fact, coincided with a period in which life extension and fitness for
purpose became clarion calls for extending the life of critical plant beyond its design life.
The fundamentals in doing assessments of this nature were not widely understood and IIW
produced an authoritative reference book
IIW Guidance on Assessment of the Fitness for
Purpose of Welded Structures
, which was 322 pages in length and served as the preferred
reference for many in the engineering community who were concerned with determining
the integrity of welded structures.
IIW frequently promoted its interest in issues such as this through its
conferences, spreading the word, so to speak, and life assessment was to
figure greatly at the IIWConference during theAnnual Assembly in Glasgow
in 1993 that had as its main theme,
Extending the Life of Welded Structures
.
The relevance of life extension in the context of welding advancement was
never completely to disappear and the theme of the 2012 International
Conference in Denver, almost 20 years later, was aptly
Welding for Repair
and Life Extension of Plant and Infrastructure
.
From a different perspective, Commission II
Arc Welding and Filler Metals
(C-II), chaired by Dr Damian Kotecki (USA), was a Commission that used ingenuity
and resourcefulness to resolve the lack of availability of standard specimens (secondary
standards) for the calibration of instruments to measure the amount of delta ferrite in
stainless steel weldments – the previous stocks of specimens having been exhausted due to
industry demand. Due to prohibitive costs in manufacturing new specimens, Commission
members agreed to participate in a series of ‘round robin’ tests on centrifugally chill-cast
specimens produced by Russia to establish the quality, homogeneity and suitability of these
samples for secondary standards. Before production could start the economic position in
Russia deteriorated significantly and an infusion of capital of around
USD 65 000 was required to finance the project.
‘Where would Commission II get such a sum of money?’
implored Kotecki. ‘The solution was simple’, he said, following
a suggestion by Dr Tad Boniszewski (UK). Commission II wrote
letters to the various filler metal manufacturers asking for loans,
interest-free and unsecured, except for a promise to repay the loans
as soon as possible.
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‘Would these companies do this?’ was the
question on many lips. They did, and a total of USD 68 500 was
raised from 10 electrode manufacturing companies, plus a donation
Adolf Hobbacher