sept-2017

110 111 STRESS ENGINEERING SERVICES STRESS Engineering Services PROVIDING ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS “S tress is an engineering term that describes the distribution of internal forces used to evaluate the strength of components and materials,” says ChuckMiller,Vice President of Stress Engi- neering Services, a company that provides solutions in the fields of engineering design and analysis, thermal and fluid sciences, instrumentation, and testing. “During design work, you’re engineering the component to minimize the stresses where they need to be minimized,”he explains.“We do a significant amount of work in the offshore oil and gas worldwherewe performanalyses of the components that are used–drilling riser systems,com- ponents on the floating vessels–looking at themotions as the floating systems respond to hurricanes and other significant events in the ocean.We can calculatewhat themotions of those facilities will be and determinewhat the loads and stresses on the components that are holding that facility in placewill be during those events.” Stress Engineering Services is a wholly employee-owned firm that was founded in 1972 by Joe Fowler, Ray Latham, and Harry Sweet, a professor and two graduate students from Texas A&M University,whose initial work was certified stress reports of nuclear power plant equipment.“We started working in the nuclear power industry, trying to bring higher-end engineering–primarily finite element analysis–to the industry,” says Terry Lechinger,Vice President of Business Devel- opment and Marketing.“We quickly diverted that business into the oil and gas business AT A GLANCE STRESS ENGINEERING SERVICES WHAT: An independent, employee-owned, consulting engineering firm WHERE: Headquarters in Houston, Texas WEBSITE: www.stress.com