Joseph Anthony Hedderman, P.E.
Joseph Anthony (Tony) Hedderman has over thirty years of engineering experience, particularly in the areas of structural design and analysis, heat transfer, failure analysis, and seismic analysis. He has extensive experience using finite element analysis and has worked on projects over a wide range of industry sectors including the petrochemical, aerospace, mining, energy, and nuclear industries.
Mr. Hedderman is a licensed mechanical engineer. He began his engineering career working for a pressure vessel and storage tank designer and fabricator. He has extensive experience in the design and analysis of large-scale petroleum and cryogenic storage tanks, vacuum chambers, and pressure vessels. In addition to working as a design engineer, he has spent several years working as a field engineer assisting in the construction and commissioning of several petroleum storage tanks, an LNG peak shaving facility, a large-scale mailbox shaped vacuum chamber, and two 30-foot diameter autoclaves. Mr. Hedderman has also spent several years working as a project manager at a nuclear fabrication shop. As a result of his time working in the shop and as a field engineer, he is sensitive to ensuring that the design details (or modifications) of pressure vessels and auxiliary equipment are practical.
After spending ten years designing and fabricating pressure vessels, storage tanks, and auxiliary equipment, he began working as a consultant specializing in the design and analysis of various equipment using finite element analysis.
As a consultant, he has extensive experience analyzing pressure vessels, heat exchangers, mining equipment, equipment skids, and material handling equipment. He has also performed fitness-for-service evaluations, numerous failure investigations, and provided expert witness services for various legal cases.
He has performed transient thermal, elastic-plastic, modal, harmonic, response spectrum, random vibration, transient dynamic, fatigue, creep, and non-linear buckling analyses. These analyses included various complex mechanical and thermal loading such as: cryogenic spills, fire conditions, liquid sloshing, seismic effects, and impact.
Mr. Hedderman has extensive knowledge of industry Codes and Standards relating to equipment and component design, performance, and safety, including the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code, AISC ASD (ANSI/AISC 360), API 650, API 620, API 579-1/ASME FFS-1, ASCE 4, ASCE 7, and the International Building Code (IBC). He has conducted numerous code evaluations for a variety of pressure vessels, and other structures and equipment, the vast majority including seismic loading. He has been using the finite element software ANSYS since the mid-1980s and is experienced with Space Claim, PV Elite, and Compress.
Some of his notable projects over the years include: analysis of high temperature pressure vessels used to process nuclear waste, evaluation and resolution of 20+ ethanol process tanks with severe fabrication thermal distortions, shock analyses of a condenser for nuclear submarines, fatigue assessments of various commercial and military aircraft components including the Joint Strike Fighter, fitness-for-service evaluation of multiple 50+ year old pressure vessels for a brewery, vibration analysis of a feedwater strainer for the commercial nuclear industry, and stress analyses of rotary car dumpers used to empty railroad cars loaded with coal.
For a more extensive list of Mr. Hedderman’s design and analysis experience click here.