Engineering Consulting Services

Dr. Jones holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and has been in the consulting business for virtually his entire career. He founded several successful consulting companies, some which are still in business and others that have been acquired by larger firms. For more than 30 years he has taught courses in finite element methods, pressure vessel design and analysis, electronic packaging, impact dynamics and risk analysis. 

In 1987 he was elected to the status of  Fellow in the ASME and more recently elected a Fellow in the National Academy of Forensic Engineers. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks he was asked to serve in the Bush White house as an ASME Federal Fellow assigned to the Office of Science and Technology Policy. His work there resulted in the development of a risk-based methodology used to rank terrorist threats and allocate security funding. After leaving the White House, he continued to work in DC as Senior Fellow at the ASME Innovative Technology Institute. He returned to California in 2008 and continues to provide consulting to a wide range of client

Areas of Expertise

In Dr. Jones’ long career he has worked in numerous economic sectors including nuclear, petrochemical, electronic packaging, aerospace, automotive and forensic engineering. The common thread that allows for this wide range of experienced is the application of finite element methods to problems in virtually all areas involving complex engineering problems. He was an ANSYS Support Distributor for approximately twenty years. His consulting firm was acquired by MSC (NASTRAN) IN 1998, where he became Director of their Expert solutions group, a consulting arm of the company. He left MSC to become a White House Fellow in 2001. During the many years of providing consulting services to the clients of the two largest finite element firms in the world he was exposed to almost every economic sector that utilizes finite elements.

 Forensic Engineering is defined as the application of the art and science of engineering in matters which are in, or may possibly relate to, the jurisprudence system, inclusive of alternative dispute resolution. [National Academy of Forensic Engineers – NAFE 1991]

Forensic engineering is the science of determining why materials, products, structures, or components fail or do not function as intended. The primary purpose of forensic engineering is to locate the cause of causes of failure with the intent of improving the performance or life of a component. It can also involve the investigation of intellectual property claims, especially patents. Forensic engineering is often required when investigating personal injury cases or product liability. However, forensic engineering can and should be performed when any unexpected failure occurs even if there are no injuries or damages. Forensic engineering can also be employed to “reverse engineer” products, complex devices, or processes. Forensic engineering, combined with knowledge of patent law, can be a useful tool for developing non-infringing, competing products.

Dr. Jones has been retained to perform forensic engineering investigations for many products and components. These include aircraft, automotive, electronic, pressure vessels and piping, fire related failures, fatigue failures, misuse of hand tools, etc., etc. Predicting failure is one of the more difficult tasks for an engineer or scientist. It is relatively easy to calculate stresses and strains, temperatures and natural frequencies and other physical responses but determining, a priori, which of many complex loading conditions, including environmental, maintenance, misuse, neglect, etc., or some combination will lead to failure is extremely difficult.

It is often necessary to perform finite element analyses of complex structures, especially when the loading is complex. Proof and confirmatory testing is needed in some cases. Forensic engineering requires experience and physical insight. There is no substitute for having witnessed many different failures and failure modes. This is one area where grey hair is definitely a benefit.

Dr. Jones is a Fellow in the National Academy of Forensic Engineers.

For approximately the past 30 years, Dr. Jones has provided consulting services for legal matters, which involve mechanical engineering expertise. He has been retained as an expert witness in more than 150 cases. The cases have ranged from relatively straightforward ladder failures to fires and explosions that caused over $100 million in damage. He has performed forensic evaluation including extensive computer simulation to determine the cause of failure and to recreate events. He has worked with teams of multidisciplinary experts to reconstruct complex events leading to catastrophic failure. This work has included vessel explosions, piping system failures, civil structure collapse, and transportation events. He has been deposed more than 50 times and testified in court on numerous occasions. This web site contains additional information regarding areas of expertise and forensic engineering.

Since returning to California from Washington, DC in 2008, the percentage of his time devoted to expert witness preparation and testimony has grown from less than 15% to more than 60%. His cases are approximately evenly divided between plaintiff and defense. Dr. Jones is a Fellow in the National Academy of Forensic Engineers [NAFE.org].  

A list of deposition and trial testimony is included in his resume. If you are interested in retaining Dr. Jones, please use the contact form at the top of this page. References will be provided upon request.

 Dr. Jones is experienced in the use and interpretation of applicable Codes and Standards for pressure vessel and piping design. He has personally certified more than 50 stress reports to the Class 1 Standards of the ASME Code. He has written and certified a number of Design Specifications per ASME Code requirements.

Dr. Jones is a recognized expert in the design of petrochemical equipment. He has served as a consultant to refineries throughout the United States, Canada, and numerous foreign countries. He has taught courses in the design of pressure vessels for over 35 years. His early design experience included the design of the head, vessel, and core support structures for the Trident Class nuclear powered submarines. He performed design analyses of the control rod drive mechanism used for the Trident power plant, as well as other related nuclear valves and components.

Dr. Jones also performed the design and analysis of a number of components used in the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBRP) and the Fast Flux Test Facility. He participated in the design and/or analysis of the CRBRP head, core support structure, bypass flow module, upper internal structure including the jacking mechanisms, and the horizontal baffle. For the Fast Flux Test Facility, he worked on a number of components, including the sodium isolation valves, mixing components, sodium coolant piping, and guard vessels for the primary sodium pump, and the intermediate heat exchanger.

Dr. Jones has extensive experience in the development and application of finite element computer programs. He formerly was the ANSYS Support Distributor (ASD) for Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Mexico. In this capacity, he provided technical support and consulting to innumerable major companies, including Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell, TRW, Solar Turbines, ARCO Products, Motorola, Intel, and many others.

He began using FEA in 1968 when he obtained an early generation computer program from the University of California at Berkeley and installed it on the Westinghouse Bettis computer. He learned to use the program and began to simulate fracture mechanics research test programs. Soon, the FEA method became established at Bettis Laboratories and was used to design pumps, pressure vessels, and other important components for the naval nuclear program.

Upon leaving Bettis Laboratory for private industry, he started using the ANSYS finite element program to perform consulting projects. In 1977, Dr. Jones moved to California and opened an office devoted to performing FEA consulting and providing technical support for ANSYS. When the ANSYS Support Distributor Program was initiated in the 1980’s, his firm was selected to provide sales and technical support for California, Arizona, and New Mexico. He subsequently was given the country of Mexico and territory in Chicago and Wisconsin. Dr. Jones’s firm was the first and the largest ANSYS Support Distributor in the United States when it was acquired by the MacNeal-Schwindler Company in 1998. At MSC, he established a consulting division for that company. His title at MSC was Director, Expert Solutions Group. This consulting business continues to this day as part of MSC.Software, Inc.

During the more than thirty years Dr. Jones devoted to finite element work, he personally performed or supervised more than 1,000 projects. He taught finite element methods and applications, personally teaching hundreds of application classes and literally thousands of students.

In addition to the ANSYS program, Dr. Jones has used numerous other general and special purpose programs including NASTRAN, DYNA-3D, MARC, ABAQUS and others. He developed specialized analysis techniques for the electronic packaging industry (INTEL and Motorola specifically), the automotive industry (including full automotive body dynamic simulation for Hyundai) and worked with Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, CA, to develop a user-friendly random vibration capability for rocket engine analysis.

He was invited to present classes on the analysis of electronic packaging at the National University of Taiwan (Super Computer Center), at several locations in Japan and in Korea. He developed an automated FEA process for ball grid array packages and other standardized packages. His development work for Hyundai resulted in a company standard for FEA analysis of new vehicle designs.

Some of the most challenging FEA work was performed in support of licensing of spent fuel shipping and storage containers. The licensing process requires simulation of a thirty-foot drop of the container onto an unyielding surface. The contained must not leak or lose containment of the spent fuel. Dr. Jones worked with a German firm GNB (Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Behalter, MbH) for more than 20 years as their licensing consultant in this area. Numerous containers were approved by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) and the German authority BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (German meaning Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing). Other projects include crash simulation of vehicles to determine extent of crush and acceleration levels during impact.

Dr. Jones has developed analytical analysis methods for electronic packaging for almost his entire career. His first engineering position was with TRACOR Inc. of Austin, Texas, where he was the mechanical engineer-in-charge of packaging the controls for automated Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) devices. These production products were installed in six different military aircraft. The work included design, analyses, and testing of the fire control system as well as the actual ECM dispenser.

Dr. Jones more recently has been in responsible charge of analyses for a number of electronics suppliers including Motorola (several divisions) and Intel, as well as other companies including integrated circuit (IC) suppliers and consumer and military product suppliers. He developed analysis procedures to simulate environmental cycling that were adopted by the manufacturers as a standard. The FEA evaluation was required for all new design configurations before a new product could be released for manufacture.

Based upon the experience acquired in performing a wide range of analyses for all anticipated conditions encountered in electronic packaging he developed a comprehensive five-day course that was presented to numerous companies in the United States and Asia. An example of design conditions analyzed using these techniques is the evaluation of fabrication stresses resulting from the bonding of several different materials into a package. These materials, such as silicon, copper, solder, mold compound, etc., all have different thermal expansion coefficients and solidify at different temperatures. The resulting package will contain significant residual stresses at room temperature and the stress state changes as the package heats up and cools down during operation. In most cases, these packages must operate in hostile environments including extreme heat and bitter cold. The goal of these analyses is to predict the success of the package and eliminate premature failure due to mold compound cracking, delamination, die cracking, etc.

As a result of this work, Dr. Jones was invited to present classes on the analysis of electronic packaging at the National University of Taiwan (Super Computer Center) and at several locations in Japan and in Korea as well as the United States. The FEA evaluation also includes a dynamic analysis of boards and assemblies with loading due to shock and vibration, random vibration and static “g” loading. Heat management is also addressed, including the use of CFD programs to evaluate conjugate heat transfer in complex flow patterns. Special purpose pre- and Post-Processing tools were also developed to automate the FEA process for ball grid array and other standardized packages.

While serving as a White House Fellow sponsored by ASME in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Executive Office of the President, in Washington, DC, Dr. Jones was assigned to develop a Research and Development (R&D) program for protection of critical infrastructure. He assembled representatives from ten agencies of the Federal Government that had the responsibility for infrastructure components.  These included the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Postal Service, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Federal Aviation Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, and other federal agencies. As a result of numerous meetings with senior level representatives from these agencies, it became apparent that there was a pressing need for a risk based methodology for ranking terrorist threat for the allocation of public resources.

Dr. Jones approached the ASME risk analysis committee through Reese Meisinger and others who were influential in ASME policy to encourage ASME to become involved in the risk assessment of critical infrastructure components. This work resulted in a high level White House sponsored workshop (Fall 2002) held under the auspices of OSTP. The primary recommendation of this workshop was to devise a risk-based methodology for ranking terrorist threat. In response to this need, a proposal was developed by Dr. Jones and others at ASME and funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This DHS grant resulted in the precursor of the current Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP©) methodology. RAMCAP© has become the standard by which risk assessment of terrorist threats are measured by DHS. All of the nuclear power plants in the United States have been assessed using RAMCAP©.

RAMCAP© Sector Specific Guidelines have been developed for Chemical Plants, Petroleum Refineries, Liquefied Natural Gas Facilities, Spent Nuclear Fuel Shipping and Storage facilities, Dams and Locks, Water Treatment Facilities, Higher Education sites, and for the risk assessment of sites which store and use radioactive Materials for Medical, Industrial, and Academic (MIAN) purposes.

The RAMCAP© methodology continues to be developed in other sectors, as well as regional risk assessments. RAMCAP© has been cited in congressional hearings and testimonies hundreds of times and is often named as one of the most important achievements of DHS to date.

Dr. Jones was chairman of the RAMCAP Standard Committee which developed an international standard for the RAMCAP methodology. This standard was abandoned due to concerns from ASME regarding possible litigation. A Standard has also been developed for the water sector. The EPA has endorsed the use of the RAMCAP Plus Standard for risk assessment of the thousands of water treatment facilities in the United States. The methodology has been automated and incorporated into user-friendly computer programs.

RAMCAP Plus was developed to include the risk to natural hazards so that this risk can be estimated and compared against terrorism risk. The RAMCAP Plus methodology has been further developed to include means of estimating the resilience of a community to recover from either a terrorist event or a naturally occurring event.

This section currently under revision