THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 25, 1995 TAG: 9509230187
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
Norfolk engineer Robert Hahn has been drawing sketches for 20 years trying to fix a problem on the expansion joints in power plants. Hahn jokes that if he had a patent for every sketch he's drawn, he'd have a wall full.
The story of how he finally succeeded has little to do with the actual expansion joint. It's about how a small Norfolk temporary staffing company, with no research and development department, siphoned help from public agencies. Now it has a patent application on a part that that hasn't been redesigned in 50 years.
To understand the difficulty of Hahn's success, some background on the company he works for is necessary. The Atlantic Group is a 70-employee Norfolk company that started in 1963 as a franchise of Manpower Inc., now one of the largest temporary help agencies in the world.
In 1974, The Atlantic Group found its niche when it sent eight workers on a decontamination job at the Surry Nuclear Power Station northwest of Hampton Roads. Over the next five years, Atlantic sent workers to more and more power plants - nuclear and coal-burning.
Atlantic got its first job to retube the condenser in a power plant in 1979. It sold the Manpower franchise that same year and made a headfirst entry into the condenser retubing business. Atlantic now owns that niche as the largest condenser retubing contractor in the United States.
Enter the problem. There's a part between the condenser and the turbine in a power plant called a ``dogbone expansion joint.'' The rubber belt acts as both a seal and a cushion - like cartilage between two bones.
If an expansion joint wears out, the utility has to shut down the plant. That could cost as much as $1 million a day, a lot of lost money for a part that can be purchased and installed for less than $50,000.
Hahn, vice president of condenser services at Atlantic, had an idea to redesign the joint. Atlantic Group workers met at lunch one day and talked about a better model. ``I'm not exactly sure who came up with the design,'' Hahn said. ``It was done on a napkin.''
Atlantic's design faced a cluttered path to get from napkin to mass production. They couldn't send the sketch to their research and development staff, because they don't have one. They didn't want to call upon another company for help, because the unpatented design could get into a competitor's hands.
On top of that, the utility industry - the end customer - is reknowned for its cost-consciousness, so expenses would have to be held down for the expansion joint's development.
So in July 1993, Atlantic sought help from the Technology Applications Center at Old Dominion University. Atlantic Group President Dennis McLaughlin - son of the company's founder - had gone to ODU and liked the idea of working with the local university.
``The center would help us fund this, and it was going to get expensive,'' McLaughlin said. ``And with ODU, you're not working with a competitor who's going to go out and work against you.''
The Technology Applications Center - an outreach of the state's Center for Innovative Technology - hooked Atlantic up with Hamid Sayar, who at the time was a master's student in mechanical engineering.
Atlantic offered to pay for the 33-year-old Sayar's Ph.D. program if he would make the expansion joint design the basis for his doctorate.
``Most of the time people who fund graduate research, it's the big companies - Ford, GM, IBM,'' says Ann C. Van Orden, the mechanical engineering professor overseeing Sayar's research. ``The fact that this is a local company and they're funding a local student at a local university is the most exciting thing for me.''
Sayar and Van Orden became Atlantic Group's research and development department. Atlantic was cautious initially about working with a university, McLaughlin said, because much of the graduate research tends to be theoretical.
As it turned out, Sayar had experience most engineering students might not. Since he had worked three years in a machine shop before beginning school, he could make prototypes for testing. He built a contraption himself to do stress tests on the new product.
The problem with the expansion joint is not in the materials it's made of. Hahn says the rubber joint will wear out every eight to 12 years regardless of its shape. But workers have to twist and push the expansion joints to get them in place. That stresses the rubber and can cut the joint's durability in half.
The new design - which can't be explained or shown here because it might jeopardize their patent - should allow the workers to install the joints without as much twisting. It's worth pointing out that the new design differs drastically from the one that was drawn on the napkin. Atlantic was already awarded a patent - its fifth - for the original idea, but if the new joint works out they won't even use its predecessor.
``The first design is not always a perfect design,'' Sayar says philosophically. ``But this is part of experimental work.''
If the new expansion joint proves successful, it will be the first product Atlantic can distribute internationally. Not all power plants are the same, of course, but both nuclear and fossil fuel plants have expansion joints.
The international market could help The Atlantic Group recover some of its estimated $100,000 in development costs for the joint. That's a lot of money for a small company, but not enough to be a deterrent to future efforts.
``We're not going to stop with this,'' McLaughlin says. ``We're going to go out and start working on its replacement.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color cover photo by Richard L. Dunston
Hamid Sayar, and ODU PH.D. student, tests a new joint design on a
fatigue testing machine.
Color Staff photos by Richard L. Dunston
Hamid Sayar, an ODU Ph.D. candidate, sketches the difference between
an old expansion joint and a new one.
Robert B. Hahn, vice president of condenser services, demonstrates
the original to Dennis McLaughlin and Kim Massey, also of The
Atlantic Group.
Color Photos
The Atlantic Group
Dennis McLaughlin, president of the Atlantic Group, like the idea of
working with the local university.
Robert B. Haha, vice president of condenser services.
Kim M. Massey
manager of condenser support.
KEYWORDS: PATENT by CNB