JOHN P. BREEN

Senior Engineer

John Breen is Senior Engineer and Piping Specialist for Pressure Sciences, having joined the company in 1995. He has over thirty-six years of industry engineering experience. With Pressure Sciences, he is principally involved in the design, analysis, and fitness for service of pressure system equipment (vessels, tanks, heat exchangers, etc.), piping systems and hangers, and other process equipment. John is recognized as one of the foremost process, utility, and high energy piping system experts in the country. He has expert capabilities in performing piping analysis with programs such as Triflex, Caesar II, Fe/Pipe, and is equally adept at using Compress & CodeCalc for vessel design and evaluation. He is also highly knowledgeable in the requirements and applications of appropriate NDE techniques and methodologies for inservice inspection, and in the evaluation and interpretation of NDE data.

Mr. Breen is responsible for leading Pressure Sciences field engineering and construction support efforts, for providing piping training and consulting services, for establishing critical component safety programs, and developing pressure system failure prevention and plant life management programs at power and chemical process plants. His experience encompasses design (ASME B&PV, B31.1, B31.3 and API Codes), as well as maintenence and in-service inspection, evaluation, rerating, modification, and failure prevention. He is well known and respected at fossil and nuclear generating stations, and at chemical and petroleum process plants.

Mr. Breen is heavily involved in various piping and pressure vessel assessment programs in support of OSHA 1910.119 PSM Mechanical Integrity regulations at chemical plants and petroleum refineries, including implementation of the API 570 standard for inservice inspection and qualification of piping. He also provides on-site condition assessments, construction surveillance for remediation projects, nozzle load reduction and hanger design improvement programs at chemical, petroleum, metals processing, and power generation stations. He has previously developed procedures and performed stress analyses in support of various pressure system recertification programs, including the program at the NASA Lewis Research Center.

His experience in pressure systems design includes eleven years with O'Donnell & Associates, including work at the NASA Lewis Research Center and at the Wright Brothers Memorial Wind Tunnel at MIT. It also includes working for the Peter F. Loftus Corporation and Gilbert Associates in the areas of steam generation and distribution, nuclear and fossil fueled power plants, chemical plants and petroleum refineries. He is experienced in using the API 610 and 612 and NEMA SM-23 rotating equipment standards and the design of piping connected to strain-sensitive rotating equipment. He has designed and implemented computer software for piping stress analysis and piping support design. He has done extensive work with published results on the finite element analysis of branch connections and other intersections of large diameter elements. Mr. Breen has developed procedures for the maintenance, modification and repair of pressure piping systems and their supports. His experience includes the design of pressure relief systems, nonmetallic piping, vibration attenuation systems for piping, analysis of flanged connections, and analysis of jacketed cryogenic piping systems.

While with O'Donnell Associates, he performed much site and office work for six of Commonwealth Edison's (Chicago, IL) nuclear plants. He also worked at Iowa Electric's (now IES, Cedar Rapids, IA) Duane Arnold plant, at Pennsylvania Electric's and Allegheny Power's fossil power stations, and at the ARCO and Ashland Chemical Plants.

Other previous employment includes eleven years with Auburn and Associates, two years with Gilbert Commonwealth (where he spent substantial time at Nuclear sites including Three Mile Island, the Japanese plants OHI, Takahama, and Mihama, and KORI in Korea), and eleven years with Peter F. Loftus. John is also an veteran of the U.S. Army.

John has developed and taught seminars in piping design and analysis for the ASME, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Southern California (USC), and others. He is a member of the Mechanical Design Committee (MDC) of the ANSI/ASME B31 Pressure Piping Code, serves on the ASME Board of Reviewers for technical papers in the Pressure Vessel and Piping Division, and has written numerous technical papers and articles on piping codes and piping design and stress analysis.

John obtained certification in the Process Safety Management (PSM) program at USC in 1993. Subsequently, he went on to teach the Mechanical Integrity of Major Process Equipment (EPSM) course for USC. Mr. Breen's experience in PSM includes projects for major food processing companies, chemical process plants, and electrical power generating plants.

CODE MEETINGS

As a voting member of the B31 Mechanical Design Committee, John Breen  attended their joint meeting with the B31.3 Process Piping Code Committee in New Orleans in June, 1999.  There he presented the results of his investigation into the relevance of variations of the definition of Cold Modulus of Elasticity, and recommendations for consistency with the book committees.  He was also assigned to the new task of developing rules for design of very large diameter piping, including stress intensification factors.
 

Mail to: (jbreen@press-sci.com)

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