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WILLIAM S. PELLINI
191 7-1987
BY WILLIAM J. HARRIS, JR.
WILLIAM S. PELLINT, a major contributor to the science
and practice of metallurgical engineering and component
design, died February 25, 1987, of a heart attack at age
sixty-nine. He was known to his friends, colleagues, and
professional associates as one of the most astute and com-
petent investigators of complex phenomena in the fields of
materials and service performance. During his long ant!
distinguished career, he made significant contributions to
the design of highly stressed steel structures, to the design
and inspection of nuclear containment vessels, to the fail-
ure analysis of railroad equipment, to the development of
programs for research on methods of controlling aerodynamic
heating, and to many other fields.
Mr. Pellini was raised in a family that emigrated to the
United States from Italy. His forbearers came from a small
community in Northern Italy that was known throughout
the world for their skill in design and construction of stone
structures. Members of the community would take com-
missions from Russia, Central Europe, England, or elsewhere
that might require them to be away from home for two or
three years engaged in stone cutting and the erection of
magnificent personal or public buildings.
He had an early interest in metallurgy and entered Carnegie
Mellon University in the depths of the depression. He
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274
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
completed his work and received his initial degree in 1940,
but continued work at the University until 1942, when he
was commissioned in the United States Navy. From 1942
to 1946, he served at the Naval Proving Ground, DahIgren,
which was a center of research and study related to light
and heavy armor and projectiles. The work done at the
Armor and Projectiles Laboratory at the Naval Proving Ground,
DahIgren, vastly improved the capability of both naval ships
and naval aircraft to operate and survive in the combat
environment. He made critically important contributions
to the heat treatment of steed during his service with the
navy and became deeply interested in the problems of ma-
terials fracture at high strain rates.
In 1947 he joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
but left there in 1948 to join the Naval Research Labora-
tory (NRL). At NRL, he became head of both the casting
and the welding divisions. He made singular contributions
to the flow of metal in castings and to the processes of
welding.
In his work on welding, he not only contributed to the
technology of welding itself but also used weldments as a
basis for comparing the fracture resistance of different kinds
of steel. He applied explosive techniques that he had learned
at the Naval Proving Ground, Dahigren, to achieve rapid
deformation of a plate made up of two different kinds of
steel joined by a brittle weldment. Under identical explosive
loading conditions, brittle cracks moved rapidly into the
two different plates. This made it possible to learn much
about brittle fracture and materials selection to control brittle
fracture. His contributions came at the time that George
Irwin and others were studying fracture. The combination
of Pellini's applied metallurgical approach and Trwin's more
fundamental physics approach led to the establishment of
the science and engineering of fracture mechanics. Mr.
Pellini was one of the pioneers in this field, with his work
started in 1949 on the explosion bulge tests.
Mr. Pellini became superintendent of the Metallurgy Di
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WILLIAM S. PELLINI
275
vision at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1954 and led a
group of dedicated individuals in work on the Navy Nuclear
Submarine Program and the Naval Ship Program. They
examined the relationships between design requirements,
material selection, and fabrication. They studied the effect
of nuclear radiation on fracture properties. In his career,
he demonstrated that brittle fracture occurs when there is
an error in design, fabrication, or materials selection. A
brittle material can survive if there are no flaws in fabrica-
tion and if the design prevents dynamic loading. His genius
in failure analysis and his ability to extract the right inferences
from complex design and fabrication issues were legendary.
In 1958 Mr. Pellini took leave from the Naval Research
Laboratory to join the staff of the National Research Council
of the National Academy of Sciences and its Materials Advisory
Board. He served as staff director of a major project on
reentry materials that grew out of the 1956 and 1957 van
Karman studies on long-range planning for air force re-
search and development. The program was directed at
designing a long-range program of research on materials
to cope with aerodynamic heating. Mr. Pellini assembled a
distinguished group of preliminary designers and thermo-
dynamicists to establish the thermal environment in missions
ranging from reentry of intercontinental ballistic missiles,
to vehicles returning from moon missions and vehicles en-
gaged in extended supersonic operations in the atmosphere.
He assembled the data on the thermodynamic environment
and established a relationship between that environment
and properties of the promising materials and designs. He
was able to present this information in a single chart that
elegantly portrayed the most promising avenues of research
for addressing the aerodynamic heating problem. The work
done by Mr. Pellini was used as a guide for many years in
directing work on ablative materials, on cooling systems,
and on radiating materials such as the tiles currently used
in the space shuttle.
He continued his studies at the National Research Coun-
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
cil as staff director on a project to address space power re-
quirements. With the help of preliminary design advisers,
he was able to establish an array of requirements, taking
into account weight, power requirements, and duration of
mission. On that array, he was able to overlay the capability
of a wide variety of systems to provide space power and
demonstrate the most promising directions of research for
satisfying the emerging missions. His work made a signifi-
cant contribution to research in this field.
In 1958 he returned to the Naval Research Laboratory,
resuming his position as superintendent of the Metallurgy
Division and serving temporarily as an associate director of
the Naval Research Laboratory. In the Metallurgy Division,
he continued to supervise important work on materials and
their behavior until he retired in 1974.
Upon retirement, he joined the Association of American
Railroads as a senior consultant, working on problems of
brittle fracture. While there, he completed textbooks on
the reliability and safety of structural steels and narrated
videotape short courses defining sound approaches to design
and materials selection.
During his study of tank car failures, he began to exam-
ine opportunities for new materials in tank car designs.
This led him to an exploration of work being done on
micro-alloyed steels with lower carbon contents than were
current in American practice. He established the value of
these lower carbon, high-strength steels, with their high
weldability and very good impact properties. Through a
series of studies and demonstrations, he won support for
application of these materials to new tank cars. The cur-
rent standards in the industry require these materials. His
pioneering work on fracture problems and solutions con-
tributed in a significant way to the reduction in service
failures in the railroad industry.
Those who worked under his direct supervision and who
were privileged to be his associates benefitted greatly from
his scholarly assessment of materials, their behavior, and
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WILLIAM S. PELLINI
277
their performance. His work on nuclear containment ves-
sels, ship structures, railroad components, and the broad
issue of design to accommodate fracture made a major
contribution to the entire field of materials design and
· —
engineering.
He received many honors in the course of his long pro-
fessional career. The Washington Academy of Sciences
recognized his work in 1954 and awarded him an Outstanding
Achievement Certificate. The U.S. Navy awarded him the
Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1961. His brilliant
work on the flow of metals in castings was recognized by
his receipt of the John A. Penton Gold Medal of the American
Founctrymen's Society in 1961. His continuing work on
submarine hulls, nuclear vessel containment, and related
naval problems earned him the Gold Medal Award of the
American Society of Naval Engineers in 1962. He was awarded
the U.S. Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service
Award in 1963. His contributions to the development and
application of the field of fracture mechanics won him the
Albert Sauveur Achievement Award of the American Society
for Metals in 1972, and the U.S. Navy's Robert Dexter Conrad
Award for scientific achievement in 1973. He was a fellow
of the American Society for Materials International.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering
n 1974.
Mr. Pellini was a brilliant student, hard working, self-
effacing, competent, and capable of moving to new fields
and accommodating to their requirements, while achieving
his objectives.
Those of us who had the pleasure of his company over
the several decades of his professional life are grateful for
his contributions to engineering. We continue to miss him.
At the time of his death, survivors included his wife, KatheIyn
Hatch Pellini, who has since died; two daughters, Linda
Pellini-Dunn of Carver and Carolyn Ross of Waldorf, Maryland;
one son, Car] Pellini of Oxnard, California; and seven
grandchildren.
i
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
materials selection
