Tribute to Dr. Reynold K. Watkins: Pioneer in Pipeline Technology Advancement

Abstract

The pipeline engineering profession owes much to Dr. Reynold K. Watkins, a professional engineer and professor emeritus of engineering at Utah State University (USU), where he has served on the faculty since July 1, 1947, shortly after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a master’s degree. Inspired by his Professor John Benson Wilbur, who was a consultant for the design of the Cape Cod bridges, his early aspirations revolved around designing bridges. However, the nation was still recovering from World War II, and bridges were of low priority, so he joined the faculty of Utah State Agricultural College, where the emphasis was on water distribution in the arid Great Basin. Beside his teaching assignments, he was asked to assess irrigation canals and found that canals lost a third of the flow per mile due to evaporation, percolation, plants along the banks, and rodent burrows. Even more depressing was the loss of children who drowned in irrigation ditches. Could pipes reduce the losses? He took a sabbatical leave to study buried pipes under Merlin Grant Spangler at Iowa State College. He completed his Ph.D. in 1957. In the 1960s, Dr. Watkins chaired the Culvert Committee of the Transportation Research Board. His reputation as an expert on underground pipeline construction led DuPont Corp. to seek his assistance in investigating the potential for deploying buried high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines. He also conducted studies and tests on flexible buried pipes for many pipe associations, as well as pipe manufacturers and pipelining providers. In 1986, Dr. Watkins was named outstanding engineering educator at USU. He received the prestigious American Society of Civil Engineers Pipeline Division Stephen D. Bechtel Pipeline Engineering Award in 1988. In 1997, he received the Industry Pioneer Research Award from the Corrugated Polyethylene Pipe Association. Subsequently, in 1999, Dr. Watkins was the recipient of the inaugural presentation of the Reynold K. Watkins Award for lifetime achievement in the research and design of buried pipes by the Pipe Rehabilitation Council. In 2006, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Steel Tank Institute and Steel Plate Fabricators. During his tenure at USU, Dr. Watkins served as an associate director of the Engineering Experiment Station and head of the mechanical engineering department. He also served on the state and national engineering committees and as a consultant to manufacturers, engineers, and users of buried pipes and tanks, on both national and international fronts. Hundreds of professionals have attended his Piping Systems Institute for practicing engineers conducted annually at USU for several years. He founded Utah State’s Buried Structures Laboratory and served as the laboratory’s first research director. Dr. Watkins coauthored with Dr. L. R. Anderson Structural Mechanics of Buried Pipes (Watkins and Anderson 1999). He also coauthored with Dr. O. K. Shupe Introduction to Experimentation, USU Engineering Experimentation Station, a 1976 text for graduate students (Watkins and Shupe 1976). His Getting Research Findings into Practice, NCHRP Synthesis of Highway Projects 20–5, Topic 11, was published by the U.S. government’s Highway Research Board (Watkins 1974). He is a contributor to the recent ASCE Manual of Practice (MOP) 119, Buried Flexible Steel Pipe Design and Structural Analysis (Whidden 2009), where the most current work of Dr. Watkins and others is presented to develop external loading design concepts. Dr. Watkins has 54 refereed papers on structural performance of buried pipes published in technical journals. He has served as a guest lecturer for different universities (see Figs. 1 and 2) and directed many short courses in the United States and around the world. His books and papers have set the standards for underground pipeline construction, maintenance, and performance, making these structures more dependable and safer. For many years, he has been