An investigation into pressure vessel fatigue cracking caused by a tack weld

Arnab Gupta is an Inspection Specialist with the inspection and corrosion team at Kuwait Oil Co. He has more than 28 yr of service in both upstream and downstream industries in the oil and gas sector. His expertise lies in asset integrity, failure investigations, risk-based inspection and the development of inspection strategies for process plants. Prior to joining Kuwait Oil Co., Mr. Gupta worked with Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd.’s Visakhapatnam refinery in India. He holds API certifications in risk-based inspection, damage mechanisms, piping inspection, pressure vessel inspection and refractory. He is also certified as a NACE senior corrosion technologist. Mr. Gupta earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University in India.

Mohammad Al-Muwail is a Senior Inspection Engineer with the inspection and corrosion team at Kuwait Oil Co. He has 20 yr of experience in field inspection, examining pressure vessels, piping and storage tanks.

Ruth Donnelly works for the materials and structural integrity department at The Welding Institute (TWI). Dr. Donnelly joined TWI in 2004, and has spent time working both as a project leader and as a teacher, preparing students to earn diplomas in welding engineering at the TWI training school. During this time, she spent nearly a decade in project management, including failure investigations, with a focus on ferritic steels.

Joanna Nicholas has been involved in failure investigations of steel structures for more than 20 yr. During her career, she has developed additional experience in hydrogen cracking, HAZ hardness prediction, in-service welding, mooring chain and nickel steels. Ms. Nicholas is a certified international welding engineer, a chartered engineer, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining, and a Fellow of TWI.