Women in Welding - Madeleine du Toit

WOMEN IN WELDING Q&A WITH MADELEINE DU TOIT

T

he WTIA has recently established the ‘Women in Welding’ initiative, with the objective of encouraging more females to participate within the industry.

she serves as Programme Leader for a Research Programme into ‘More Efficient Use of Materials for Energy Pipelines’.

Today, we profile Madeleine du Toit, the newly elected and first ever female WTIA Council Member.

Madeleine holds BEng, MEng and PhD degrees in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a Masters in Welding Engineering from the University of Witwatersrand.

She is a registered Professional Engineer in South Africa and an International Welding Engineer (IWE).

Madeleine joined the University of Wollongong as Professor in the Welding Engineering Research Group at the start of 2014. In this role,

Madeleine served as the President of the Council of the Southern African Institute of Welding (SAIW) from 2010 to 2014, and as Chairperson of

the Governing Board of SAIW Certification (responsible for the assessment and certification of welding personnel in South Africa) from 2004 to 2014. During this time, Madeleine established a very successful internationally accredited training program for International Welding Engineers and Technologists in South Africa.

Madeleine is actively involved in the activities of the International Institute of Welding (IIW) as part of the Australian delegation, currently acting as Chair of Commission IX (Behaviour of Metals Subjected to Welding) and as Chair of the Communications and Marketing Working Group.

WTIA Newsletter July 2015

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Q&A WITH MADELEINE DU TOIT placed into service. As fabrication continues to move offshore to reduce manufacturing costs, Australia loses vital onshore fabrication capability and specialist skills.

Once lost, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to build up the local fabrication industry again, leaving Australia at the mercy of offshore fabricators.

Professor Madeleine du Toit, Welding Engineering Research Group, University of Wollongong.

Describe your job.

As an academic, my job is a mix of teaching, research and consulting.

I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate level to engineering students, perform industry-funded research in the areas of pipeline welding, welding and corrosion of aluminium alloys, welding of stainless steels and titanium additive manufacturing, and I currently supervise a number of postgraduate research students studying towards Masters and PhD degrees.

What inspired you to choose a career in the welding and materials engineering industry?

A guidance counsellor during high school inspired me to study engineering, but my love for welding comes from my father, a mechanical engineer

who worked for Transnet in South Africa and supervised the rail welding division for many years. He managed the procurement and commissioning of the first welding robots in South Africa, and I grew up with stories about welding and fabrication.

I was also fortunate to have an excellent undergraduate lecturer in welding who inspired me to choose a welding project when I decided to continue with postgraduate studies.

What do you believe is the biggest challenge for the industry at the moment?

The biggest challenge facing the welding industry in Australia currently is the threat of cheap imports that are often not manufactured to Australian standards and require extensive rework and repair before being

What do you believe is the biggest opportunity for the industry at the moment?

I believe the key to strengthening the local fabrication industry and retaining vital skills is ensuring consistent quality at all stages of the fabrication process. The adoption of international quality standards for welding, such as ISO 3834, is essential to boost confidence in onshore capability, to ensure that skilled welding personnel at all levels are trained to international standards, and to guarantee that all welding and fabrication is consistently performed to the highest Australian and international quality specifications.

What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on? Why? From 2006 to 2014, I worked as consulting welding engineer for Impala Platinum, one of the world’s biggest platinum mining companies, on a series of projects aimed at upgrading and redesigning the company’s base metal refinery.

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Q&A WITH MADELEINE DU TOIT Most of these projects centered around the redesign of high pressure leach autoclaves used in various stages of the hydrometallurgical extraction process.

The 2nd leaching stage, used to produce a platinum-rich residue through the extraction of copper and any remaining base metals from the 1st stage leach solid residue material, is performed in autoclaves operating at high temperature and pressure in a highly oxidising concentrated H2SO4 solution.

The original design utilised a heavy wall carbon steel shell (40 mm wall thickness) with lead lining and two layers of acid bricks for corrosion protection.

These brick lined autoclaves served as the industry standard in this application for decades, but were heavy, unsafe, maintenance intensive and prone to catastrophic failure.

resulting in an increase in the available volume for the same external shell dimensions.

The first new duplex stainless steel unit has been in continuous operation for more than seven years, with minimal maintenance, with a second unit installed in 2010. Since weld quality was critical in this application, we introduced a controlled dip transfer welding process for root pass welding of the longitudinal and circumferential seams, and automated submerged arc welding for the filler passes.

I was closely involved in the commissioning, procedure development and qualification, and quality assurance associated with the fabrication and welding of the autoclaves.

Who or what has inspired you the most professionally?

As part of my involvement with the International Institute of Welding over the last 15 years, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the most respected and highly regarded welding academics and welding engineers in the world.

Learning from these experts, getting their feedback on my own work, and observing how different welding problems are solved all over the world have been extremely inspiring.

What gives you satisfaction?

Working with students and seeing them develop into skilled, confident young engineers is very rewarding.

Seeing former students excel in industry is equally satisfying.

I formed part of the project team that proposed a radical redesign of the 2nd stage leach autoclave with the aim of reducing maintenance costs and downtime, increasing throughput and ensuring a safer working environment.

The carbon steel shell was replaced with 25 mm thick SAF 2205 duplex stainless steel in the new design. Use of this highly corrosion resistant material eliminated the need for the lead and brick linings and reduced the wall thickness requirements substantially, Infrastructure at a platinum mine.

WTIA Newsletter July 2015

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