News

Plant Shutdowns (also known as Turnarounds) are brief periods of time where a plant is either partially or totally taken out of service to perform maintenance activities. This approach permits access, inspection, and repair of critical equipment. Planned work scopes...

FEC director, Patrick Meehan, will be presenting a seminar on prevention of failure of steel tanks, bins and silos for the Australian Steel Institute (https://www.steel.org.au/). The seminar is aimed at providing background into the design of steel tanks, bins, and...

The transport of dangerous goods involves additional hazards due to the nature of the contents. This requires an additional layer of requirements and regulations to ensure the safety of those involved. In addition to meeting the requirements of the Australian Code for...

Transportation of goods by road is an essential part of many industries and is continually growing and evolving. Designers are constantly striving to optimise the tankers to reduce tare weight and increase payload and volume. Improvements in these areas result in less...

Large steel stacks and chimneys present unique design challenges to engineers. Given their size, the rules typically used for other structural elements are not necessarily applicable and can potentially result in either uneconomical or unsafe designs. Currently there...

Disagreement between various design standards raises questions for engineers as to what represents an appropriate drag force coefficient (Cd). The Cd value is used to determine the design wind load applied to structure. Vertical vessels and exhaust stacks are...

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has transformed design procedures for engineers. Allowing more complex geometry, loading and restraint cases to be analysed. FEA is a powerful tool for engineers to simulate problems that would otherwise be too cumbersome for hand...

The design of bolted steel tanks to AS2304 is based on a limit states approach which represents a fundamental change in philosophy with respect to traditional tank design. In general, limit states and allowable stress design produce relatively similar results;...

The allowable nozzle load on a tank is a common request; however, the procedure to arrive at an appropriate set of loads is not always straightforward. Firstly, the allowable nozzle loads on a tank are generally significantly different to a similar sized pressure...

There have been significant advances in recent years in the understanding of bolted-joint behaviour. Past ASME Pressure Vessel and Piping Conferences have seen numerous research papers focused on the topic. Of most interest has been the behaviour of a bolted joint...