Static and Dynamic Tension Tests on Structural Steel.

Thesis. Department of Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Static and Dynamic Tension Tests on Structural Steel. Testing of Structural Steel by Static and Impact Loading to Compare the Energy of Rupture. Submitted by R.A. Sharrer and R.G. Guyer. Majors, Corps of Engineers U.S. Army. 1922. 

M.I.T. thesis bound in half leather with cloth; quarto, 77 recto-only pages and 14 blank leaves. Mimeographed typescript with 12 numbered plates: nos. 1-4, hand drawn-graphs; no. 5, a blueprint of the Charpy impact machine; nos. 6-8, each with two original silver gelatin photographs of the broken specimens; nos. 9-12, hand-drawn graphs. Attractively bound with six spine compartments with gilt titling and ornamental ends. Minor scuffing to cloth, rubbing to leather, silvering to mounted photographs, Very Good overall.

Sharrer and Guyer conducted their research with Carnegie Steel; the preface also acknowledges the assistance of John Hughes of the U.S. Steel Co. Its application was especially to steam railway and trying to quantify the amount of static stress needed to add for calculations, until then dictated by a “rule of thumb” developed through the “judgment of the prominent engineers of the time.” The Charpy impact test, is a standardized method used to measure the impact strength and toughness of materials by striking a notched specimen with a controlled pendulum weight, swung from a set height, and measuring the energy absorbed by the specimen during fracture. The process is mostly used for testing metals.

An attractive document and evidence of the “catching up” of theoretical engineering over practical implementation (i.e. building) during a period of rapid expansion. Guyer later published “Subaqueous Ledge-rock Breaking.” Both men were career officers in the Army Engineering Corps working with waterway projects outlined in Government annual reports.