Closing Address

P.H.W. WOLF

I was pleased when the Organizing Committee invited me to say a few words at the conclusion of this Conference.

Engineers and technologists do not always communicate well with each other. They may look at the same problem but from different standpoints, and with different objectives. As M. Berge observed in Paper 6 the user with a failed component is not generally very interested if the failure was due to stress corrosion or stress accelerated corrosion cracking, or something else. To the materials technologist, the question is full of interest. The engineer does not help his communication when he insists that he is engaged in an art, not a science. It is true that he may rely on intuition and experience in arriving at the general concept of an engineering article or structure. When he comes to clothe that general concept with metal, he requires data - accurate comprehensive data. However, the data that he wants often cannot be given to him by the materials specialist in the form in which he wants it. In order to arrive at the best form of his concept, the engineer would like data in a form in which he can manipulate it and study the effect of variations. But most important, he would like to be assured that he has identified all the influences which could endanger the satisfactory behaviour of his plant or component. Too often, he cannot get the data because he does not know what questions to ask and may well have to be satisfied with one or two pieces of specific information and some general pointer to guide his guess work.