In modern society@ the use of pressure vessels enters into many phases of human activity and@ consequently@ the services derived from pressure vessels lead to a tremendous variety of applications and associated engineering problems. The most important of these engineering problems covers various aspects of public safety and economics@ and are noncompetitive. Since they are the responsibility of the entire engineering community and are of national concern@ there has been a growing recognition by leaders in Industry and Government of the fact that the burden of finding solutions must be handled on a cooperative basis and that this effort can best be supported by equitable contributions from Industry and/or public funds. Such cooperative action was organized in the form of the Pressure Vessel Research Committee (PVRC) by the Welding Research Council of the Engineering Foundation in 1945.