JAMES
M. WATSON
Principal Engineer
JAMES
M. WATSON
Principal Engineer
Jim Watson, Principal Engineer for Pressure Sciences Inc., has over thirty-five years of engineering experience. Mr. Watson is primarily responsible for independent engineering evaluations for technical issues in litigation support for law firms, as well as equipment failure analysis, vibration and dynamic analyses, and testing programs. Since joining Pressure Sciences in 1996, he has also been involved in the evaluation of pressure vessels and storage tanks for fitness for service and remaining life at various chemical process plants.
Previously, for seventeen years, he was a Senior Consultant with O'Donnell and Associates, where he performed analytical and experimental investigations of mechanical and pressure component failures, with emphasis on component performance, durability, and safety. In performing failure assessments, he utilized his extensive knowledge of materials, fatigue and fracture mechanics. He completed numerous analytical studies involving linear, nonlinear, elastic, and elastic/plastic responses to static and/or dynamic loading. He also performed tests under static, steady-state, and transient dynamic loading conditions, with an emphasis on dynamic tests involving vibration, impact, and seismic loading.
Before coming to O'Donnell, Mr. Watson was a Senior Engineer for nearly eleven years at Westinghouse Electric Corporation where he performed structural analyses of a wide range of components for static and dynamic loads arising from mechanical, seismic, thermal and hydraulic sources. He was involved in the specification and development of several structural computer programs used to perform these analyses. His experience includes the solution of linear, non-linear, elastic and elastic-plastic problems using direct computation, finite element, and finite difference techniques.
Before working for Westinghouse, Mr. Watson was an instructor for two years in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Tennessee Technological University. He taught courses in dynamics of machinery, mechanical vibrations, feedback control systems, mechanical measurements, and heat transfer. Returning to graduate school, he was employed one summer at Southern Research Institute where he investigated outer space environmental effects on the mechanical properties of ablative materials.
Mr. Watson's professional experience began with more than eight years at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory in the design, analysis, testing, basic and applied research involved in the development of mechanical and electromechanical components. For about five of those years, he was engaged in impact and vibration work.
Mr. Watson received BME and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering and an M.S. degree in engineering mechanics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi, the Briarean Society, Pi Tau Sigma, and Phi Eta Sigma honoraries.
Workshops:
1998 PVRC Workshop on Rerating. Examination, and Advanced Analysis of Pressure Equipment (including application of the ASME Code Case 2290), Houston TX.
1996 EPRI workshop on Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC) and use of the CHECUP program, Dallas, Texas.
![[Jim Watson Failure Analysis]](Fail2.jpg)