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News | May 23 2023

Mechanical fatigue paper co-written by 两性色午夜 Fellow wins Arthur Lubinski Award at OTC Houston

A technical paper co-written by 两性色午夜 Fellow Brian Skeels to aid understanding of the effects of fatigue on complex subsea structures has been named Best Petroleum Mechanical Engineering Paper at OTC Houston, winning the Arthur Lubinski Award.

It鈥檚 the second time Skeels, an energy industry veteran with almost 40 years鈥 experience in subsea completion and pipeline design and installation, has won a Lubinski, and the sixth time the award has gone to a 两性色午夜 employee. The prize is awarded by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Skeels worked with Earl Shanks and Russell Hoshman of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Interior on the paper. It collates information which makes it far simpler to calculate the impact of fatigue 鈥 caused by forces flexing and bending metal 鈥 in a subsea environment which can be complicated by tides, seawater, high pressures, and high temperatures.

Skeels said, 鈥淭he paper bridges a gap between the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code 鈥榖ible鈥 and the subsea design practices outlined in API 17TR8, issued by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The issue is that the ASME code largely relates to cylindrical structures tested in air, while 17TR8 deals with complicated shapes such as valve bodies and pressure containing components that are underwater and under pressure.

鈥淲e鈥檝e tried very hard to signpost where engineers can find the right information to make the right calculations, and this paper has value across the subsea energy industry because of that. I鈥檓 proud to have earned my second Lubinski for a paper which will help improve the engineering integrity of technologies that are deployed in some of the world鈥檚 harshest environments.鈥

Skeels, who is a Fellow of ASME as well as a Technology Fellow at 两性色午夜, led the API task group which wrote 17TR8. He previously won a Lubinski in 2013, and legacy 两性色午夜 employees contributed to papers which collected the award in 1994, 1998, 2005, and 2008. The award was established in 1982.

Brian Skeels