“We have resumed welding during the past several weeks, and we are making crack-free welds,” he said. Ruenzel said EB has already begun work on the three welding processes approved by the Navy. Were identified in the inspector general’s report. Ross said the Navy is developing a plan of action, subject to review by the service’s top officers, to correct deficiencies that esting continues on a fourth process, the Navy spokesman said.
He said the Naval Sea Systems Command, which is overseeing the tests, has approved the resumption of three welding processes. Ross said a new battery of tests are underway at the EB shipyard to permit use of the materials and processes for HY-100 welding on the Seawolf. Eagar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Deb Carson, a Navy spokeswoman, said she also did not know if the report addressed lubricant contamination on the surface of the Seawolf welding wire, a primary cause listed in a report by a Navy consultant, Thomas W.
“The most logical and probable cause of the damage is the specific combination of welding materials and processes used to produce the welds,” he added. He said HY-100 steel proved stronger but more brittle than anticipated and showed evidence of hydrogen damage. “The investigation concluded that, because HY-100 and HY-80 were almost identical chemically, it was assumed they would behave similarly when welded,” Ross said. The new steel promised yield strength of as much as 100,000 pounds per square inch, compared to 80,000 pounds for the previous type, HY-80, which has been used since the 1950s. Much of the three-month study focused on the welding of HY-100 steel being used for the first time in the hull of the Seawolf. Cann, assistant Navy secretary for research, development and acquisition. While it did not specify which party was responsible for overlooking those changes, EB’s supporters said the statement clearly implied that the Navy was to blame. Consequences of these changes were overlooked because of the strength of the widely held assumption that HY-100 would behave like HY-80,” an earlier generation of shipbuilding steel.” The most judgmental statement in the summary read, “Over time, changes to military specifications were made in response to vendor and shipbuilder concerns, and to accommodate new welding processes. It also cited, again without assigning blame, several missed opportunities to correct welding problems appearing in production tests and after construction had begun. The report summary acknowledged faulty assumptions were made about the strength and pliability of the stronger new HY-100 steel used in fabricating the hull of the first Seawolf, called the SSN21.
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Lieberman, D-Conn.īoth the Groton shipyard and its supporters on Capitol Hill had been hoping, however, that the Navy, as designer of the Seawolf welding specifications, would accept full responsibility for the cracks. “On the face of it, I don’t see any criticism here of EB,” agreed Sen. “There’s no contradiction here to the fact that this was a problem discovered by EB and reported to the Navy in a timely fashion,” said Sen.
The shipbuilder, a division of General Dynamics Corp., is the state’s second-largest private employer. Connecticut’s senators, who have spent the fall beating backĬhallenges to the Seawolf program, said they saw nothing in the summary of the inspector general’s report that reflected negatively on EB.
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