Farewell, to a free thinker... and a man of letters

Membership voice, a tribute - January - February 2006

Dr Alan Wells, past Director General of The Welding Institute, died at the end of 2005. In this appreciation of his life and work Bulletin taps a rich seam of recollections from friends and colleagues.

On the outside it was the half-glasses, the smouldering pipe, the avuncular wry grin and the conciliatory manner which gave one their first impression of Alan Wells. The mellifluous voice, the incisive mind and a legendary talent for listening were secondary observations.

A meeting with him, often preceded by a whiff of pipe tobacco as you mounted the stairs to his office, demanded assiduous preparation. It was those who knew him well that appreciated his enormous capacity for lateral thought, problem solving, unconfined cerebral alacrity and kindness. Curiously his unassuming style was often thinly disguised as an almost professorial absentmindedness.

By the time he formally retired in the summer of 1988 he had notched up 25 winters at Abington, the last 11 in the top job. His retirement was to be far from leisurely.

In a contemporaneous interview he told Joining and Materials magazine 'I'll be going back to the field I know best...research. But at arm's length to the Institute'. His mentor, predecessor and friend Richard Weck had warned him of the perils of becoming too closely involved with the new appointees at the helm of the Institute.

His relationship with TWI, in the guise of the British Welding Research Association, dates back to 1950, a few months after winding up his PhD in Soil Mechanics. The same year he also formalised another relationship.... with a Miss Rosemary Mitchell. Five children later he believed that his lifetime commitment to engineering, many as the Head of Civil Engineering at Queen's University Belfast played a small part in his offspring's choice of career... a naval architect, a teacher, two biologists and an electronics engineer.

Wells grew up as the grandson of a farm labourer. Father turned his hand to the motor industry and later became chauffeur to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Subsequently he spent many years with the British Oxygen Company making liquid oxygen equipment.

It was largely by discussion with his father that it was agreed that he would leave school at 15 and become a trade apprentice in fitting and machining. He never regretted it.

Since then his career has been little less than outstanding. As a fellow of the Royal Society, Dean of Faculty for four of his years at Queen's, a recipient of the Order of the British Empire and one of the very few non-Americans to have contributed to the US Navy's brittle fracture work, he believed his career peaked relatively early.

In 1954 the Council and the Director of BWRA as it then was, allowed him to accept an invitation to work with Dr George Irwin at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.

'One of the developments that has been attributed partly to Sir Alan Cottrell and his colleagues in Cambridge, and partly to me, is the recognition of the crack tip opening displacement for crack extension' he commented at the time.

The idea emerged during a transatlantic flight in the early sixties. Wells recalled excitedly laying out his plans in front of Irwin on arrival, whereupon it was agreed that he should work on fleshing out the idea while sojourning that Summer. 'We had a paper at Cranfield in the Autumn' he reflected at the time.

But his fondest memories of the Abington experience related to his work on the now established Wells wide plate test. At the time he noted 'We were breaking new ground. Testing the plates required compact 600 ton capacity equipment...it was necessary to cut a good many corners....the loading capsules didn't work at the beginning but one was forced into a furious re-think to get moving quickly.'

'None of us will forget the first successful fracture test' he recalled. 'Wire rope loops were used to stop the ends of the equipment flying apart on failure, but were quite inadequate. They just vanished in a trail of sparks on failure and about half a ton of equipment flew out of the end of the hut between Dr Harris and Dr Weck. But I think they joined in the excitement...treasured memories.'

And his toughest time at Abington? Unquestionably the early eighties. 'It was much easier then than it is today to persuade industry and Government to fund welding technology and research in an expansive manner. It was inevitable. It's happened in most of the parallel organisations.'

The early eighties presented Wells with the task of giving papers on Energy conservation in welding and The meaning of fitness for purpose and the concept of defect tolerance to the South African Institute of Welding and the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Did that present a moral dilemma for Alan Wells?

'One of the features of being an engineer is that one learns to be extremely detached in one's daily duties...eliminating emotional judgements' he reflected at the time. 'One keeps political and moral views to one's self'. It was a stance he was to maintain when travelling to several lands where he disapproved of the political dispositions of its governors.

When, after 13 years in Belfast, Wells returned to the Welding Institute, as Director General he asked rhetorically in his 1977 staff address 'Like Alice's queen will it take all the running that we can do to stay in one place?'

Alan Wells adhered rigidly to a piece of advice given to him by Dr Harry Taylor, two directors general his senior, when he himself accepted the job of DG. 'Never make unnecessary enemies' he told him. Wells believed it to be salutary advice. 'And I believe it's stood me in good stead'.

Upon retirement he delighted in the prospect of accepting travel invitations to Vienna, Hobart and Czechoslovakia, as it then was. But a deeper intellectual challenge lay in wait......the satisfaction of investigating failures, catastrophes and, as he called them, casualties.

He reflected with great concern upon the first failure he attended, an oil storage tank.....and later a fracture under hydrostatic test of one of the Sizewell power station boilers. 'Then there was Westgate bridge which failed in Australia......it was my task to clamber, in rather sombre circumstances, over the wreckage.'

Shortly after retirement his distinctive figure cut a dash on the nightly news when covering the UK's Clapham rail disaster investigation.

When pressed at his retirement as to how, given the chance, he would replay the past eleven years he paused. Eventually a mischievous grin migrated across his face, as he contemplated what he called 'a daunting question'.

'It's too close for reflection...ask me in two years' time' he smiled.

Bevan Braithwaite writes...

Alan was always a delightful friend and colleague, courteous, interested and astute. His precise and measured manner cloaked a fiercely inquisitive mind that seemed able to offer a solution to problems in any technical field. His solutions were elegantly simple, his wide plate rig being a good example. When I arrived at the BWRA in 1961 it was clear that he was held in some awe - quite apart from his other achievements.

Here was the man that had devised a high temperature pressure cycling rig where the pressuring medium was molten lead, and as a sideline had just constructed a spherical boiler for his home in Linton by pumping up a cubic tank until it deformed into a sphere! This was not the only innovation in Alan's heating system. Instead of radiators, a large copper pipe fed with steam wound its way up the house; the steam gradually condensing and running back down the pipe as water.

My first real contact with Alan was in the design of the test frames in the Richard Weck Laboratory - the supporting hangers were a typical Wellsian solution to achieve an infinite life in a fatigue machine. We then spent much time together on an abortive lightweight pipeline friction welder. His elegant concept was not matched by my detailed design, and the result was a spectacular high-pressure hydraulic explosion. Alan loved a big bang!

I remember him with great affection, and for his idiosyncrasies. His car would park with its bumper about two millimetres from the office block wall, never touching, always precisely judged. His jumper often containing holes made by burning ash from his pipe, was worn whatever the weather with his suit. My enduring image of him is leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, fingers on the bridge of his nose, deep in thought.

Peter Houldcroft writes

In the spring of 1958 I was privileged to accompany Alan Wells on a tour of industry in the northern USA and Canada.

Requiring visas we went together to the US Embassy in London. After waiting in a queue I was dealt with quite expeditiously but Alan was led off by a security man to see a more senior under-secretary. He returned later looking rather crest fallen. 'She gave me a hard time' he said. It appeared that a few years previously Alan had made enquiries about a resident's permit and although he had not pursued the matter his letter had remained on file. Ever vigilant, the US authorities had picked this up and he was suspected of being a potential illegal immigrant. But we both got our visas and duly departed, Alan to the US Navy and I to my friends at Rensselaer Polytechnic.

We met up in Toronto. Here I was to discover that Alan was already a world expert of some distinction and greatly respected. The hospitality showered on us was overwhelming. Between the works visits and the hospitality we had very little time to ourselves and it turned out to be one of the most gruelling visits I remember. Towards the end we had to make a long train journey to Montreal. The train was due to arrive at 1.30am when we felt we would be free to find our hotel and quietly get a bed and much needed rest. As the train pulled into the station, however, we were dismayed to find that there was a reception party waiting for us on the platform.

Alan continued to build his reputation and not always on topics that were exclusively a result of BWRA research. When he left BWRA to become Professor of Civil Engineering at Queen's University Belfast he was making the national news with a scheme for creating tunnels under the sea. When he returned to TWI to become Director General he was again much in the news as a result of his suggestions on wave energy and his invention of the 'Wells turbine'. Ingeniously it turned in the same direction regardless of the direction of the fluid passing through the turbine.

In his time Alan did much to enhance the stature of the Institute. A modest man he did not seek notoriety and he dealt with everyone including the staff with unfailing courtesy.

Frank Coe, writes

I first met Alan Wells when I joined BWRA in 1958 and he was Deputy Director to Dr Weck. At first I thought he was very quiet and almost reluctant to comment and offer suggestions on the work I had been set. I soon discovered that it was his style to reflect on every matter very carefully and take time to find exactly the right words to phrase a response and offer an opinion. This meant that his advice was always carefully measured and that much more valuable. He became, for me, someone to turn to for wise counsel, and this taught me that patience is vital when searching for the correct outcome in scientific matters.

In fact I can only remember him acting with great speed on one occasion. In 1960 BWRA had been working in collaboration with other RAs, BCIRA, BISRA, BNFMRA on procedures for analysing hydrogen in metals. One of the RAs had published results which Dr Weck thought did not give sufficient credit to BWRA and, as was his custom, had written in extremely strong terms to say so. Fortunately he had passed me a copy. I felt that the letter could damage our relations with other RAs, and since he was away, I took it to Alan to explain my fears. He read it quickly and before I could say more, shot out of the office to retrieve the letter before it reached the post!

Many years later I discovered another aspect of his remarkable character - namely his willingness to make marathon journeys by car, often to and from Scotland or Northern Ireland. On one occasion we were together at an IIW meeting in eastern Europe. The return ferry crossing via Ostend had been booked and I was anxious that we should allow adequate driving time to reach the coast.

In contrast, Alan had calculated that by selecting the route and sharing the driving we could easily cover the remaining 700 miles on the final day. Needless to say, he was correct - but only just. Thereafter, for TWI staff, 'doing an Alan Wells' became the code for marathon journeys. My abiding recollection of Alan Wells is of a rare intellect and a real gentleman.

John Harrison writes

In 1951, when Alan joined BWRA, it had become clear that a serious problem facing the further development of welded construction was that of brittle fracture, publicised by failures of US Liberty ships. Alan made two major contributions to the understanding of this problem and consequently to its virtual elimination. From the late 1960s through to the 80s, a whole raft of major engineering constructions were completed - offshore structures, refineries, pipelines and bridges. That these were commissioned safely was due, in no small measure, to Alan's work.

His first development was the Wells Wide Plate Test. Service fractures were often initiated at very low stress, but it proved impossible to reproduce these in laboratory tests on small specimens. Alan designed a rig capable of testing a 1m square plate with a longitudinal weld. A notch was cut in the weld preparation to simulate an HAZ crack and act as the fracture initiator. The first rig had a capacity of 700 tonnes, but later designs increased this finally to 4000 tonnes, so that plates up to 100mm could be tested. The wide plate test continues to this day as the final arbiter of structural integrity.

Alan had a rare combination of experimental expertise and theoretical insight. His second contribution was to develop the Crack Tip Opening Displacement (CTOD) concept. The impetus for this came during secondment to the US Naval Research Laboratory where Alan formed a close and lasting friendship with Dr George Irwin, father of modern fracture mechanics. CTOD became the basic acceptance test for fracture resistant weldments and now underlies international codes for structural integrity assessment.

Whilst at Belfast, Alan and Rosemary built a house with many unique construction features in a beautiful spot on the Argyll coast. I had the pleasure of visiting them during the construction. They decided that the house should be stone faced. A source of stone was the boulder-strewn beach. Alan was concerned about the effect on the beach's appearance of removing the 50 tonnes of stone he needed. He calculated that there was 350 tonnes of stone on the beach and envisaged the beach with one stone in seven removed. He decided that it would look all right and this was the decision point for buying the site! He and Rosemary carried all the stone to the house in string bags. The roof was a double hyperbolic-paraboloid a front wall shaped like an M, high at the sides and low in the middle, and a back wall high in the middle and low at the sides. With the help of the family and vacationing undergraduates, the house was completed in thirteen years.

Mike Burdekin writes

It was an enormous privilege to have worked for and with Alan Wells in the early stages of my career. The experience helped to shape my career and I will always be very grateful to Alan for his guidance and friendship from that time and subsequently.

They were exciting days when I joined BWRA in 1961 to work for Alan in the Brittle Fracture section. The brittle fracture problem from the Liberty ships was still not solved and there were one or more major service failures each year. Alan had understood the effects on fracture from welding and residual stresses and developed the test that became known as the Wells Wide Plate test. The plates to be tested were about a metre square and of the full plate thickness. To raise a specimen like this to the yield strength needed a combination of high load capacity but low displacements. Alan designed his own machines to do this and the ingenious idea he came up with for the load capsules involved an aluminium sealing ring that located on shoulders around the outside of the 'piston' and the inside of the capsule body fixed to the cross heads. It was a devil for the technicians to operate and keep sealed but it was a cheap and effective solution to the problem of producing high loads with a limited displacement requirement.

Richard Dolby writes

I first met Alan in Belfast when he was Professor of Civil Engineering at Queen's University. This was in the mid 1960s at a fracture conference which Alan had organised on general yielding fracture mechanics. All the international gurus of the subject were there, including Professors George Irwin and Walter Soete. I remember reflecting on Alan's obvious world class reputation and the respect in which he was held by all the fracture experts. Much of that reputation had come from his earlier work at BWRA, and as a very new member of staff, this impressed me. Clearly, BWRA was a significant player internationally. Alan's pioneering work on wide plate testing and crack opening displacement concepts became essential reading for those of us starting on fracture projects back at BWRA.

His arrival later on as Director General of TWI was a signal that world class engineering mattered to the growth and prosperity of the Institute, and this was evident wherever I travelled in the USA, Japan or Europe. His reputation opened doors for all of us in terms of new Member prospects or new contracts. This respect was also clear at all IIW assemblies, where as a Chairman of Commission X and of many seminars, he was known as 'the quiet man with the commanding voice' and everyone wanted to listen to his wisdom on engineering matters.

His special skill was to be truly interdisciplinary when tackling engineering problems, something that few engineers achieve today. He was a gentleman engineer and a gentle man, who took a personal interest in my career for which I shall always be grateful.

Steve Maddox writes

I was never sure if the pipe really needed such close attention simply to allow Dr Wells to smoke barely two grams of tobacco a day, but it certainly had a calming effect on this rather nervous young investigator as his PRAD reports were reviewed. This was during the period when Dr Wells was an Engineering Professor at Queen's University but took time to help monitor research at TWI. His patience, often dealing with 'new' topics that he had probably already addressed years before, and wisdom were so appreciated and his encouragement certainly fostered further progress. It was indeed a privilege to be associated with such an outstanding engineer, but also such a kind and gentle man.

Martin Ogle writes

We both started our careers in research and our PhD theses both gather dust on the shelves of the Cambridge University Engineering Department. We both enjoyed the intellectual challenge of solving technical problems and discovering the truth by test. In the fifties Alan was busy breaking heavy plates apart with massive jacks, whilst I was busy bending model building frames to destruction with smaller ones. We had both become associate members of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

In the sixties and seventies our career paths diverged. It appeared to me that Alan's extremely fertile mind developed a 'telephoto' vision that was constantly scanning the horizon for new elegant solutions. My mind was forced to develop a 'fish eye' vision which trained me to look all around and to make best use of what already lay to hand. This difference in approach led to two notable confrontations later on.

The first concerned the design of the large electron beam chamber. I was in favour of the simple rectangular box design made of flat plate and stiffeners. Alan was in favour of a double sphere made from numerous thinner flat plates - like two footballs.

Alan's vision was firmly focused on the structural efficiency of a sphere in resisting uniform external pressure. Alan was certainly single minded and, despite protestations from many quarters, the balls won the day.

The other confrontation concerned the design of the hexagonal reception building, now the new library. He and the architect resolved that the building should be striking and unique. The solution was a steel space frame with external columns supporting the upper floor. My recommendation that a lot of cost could be saved by using internal columns was not gratefully received. However this was the least of our problems. According to Alan, the upper floor slab would be structurally efficient if it was to be constructed from unreinforced concrete. It would be cast in 15 feet equilateral triangles, bounded by steel beams. The soffit would be curved - six inches thick at the boundaries and two inches in the centre!

The architect and I were somewhat taken aback. I asked Alan what would happen if a heavy object was accidentally dropped near the middle of the slab. Alan was magnanimous enough to concede that he did not have a ready answer to this scenario. The concept was dropped. It was a draw - one all!

I always felt that there was mutual respect for the difference in engineering approach between us and our sparring was always conducted with good humour. I did however sense Alan's frustration that his undoubted intellectual abilities did not have sufficient outlets in his later years.

'Alan likened his contribution to the church to that of a buttress, rather than a pillar ...supporting it from the outside rather than within'.

At Alan's funeral, in the 13th century nave of St Mary's, Mepal in Cambridgeshire, close friend Reverend Malcolm Cooper told a congregation of engineering's great and good that many of Alan's closest personal acquaintances had little idea that he was an engineer, let alone a Fellow of the Royal Society.

'And philosophically, it was as an engineer that he was always looking for the presence of a higher authority to be demonstrated, and burnt into his consciousness. He wouldn't allow himself to pursue more ethereal paths to the truth.'