Pressure Systems Casebook: Causes and Avoidance of Failures and Defects

Pressure Systems Casebook contains a collection of papers drawn from two IMechE seminars that will be of particular interest to students and engineers who want to broaden their knowledge and learn from experience and history. The authors' backgrounds cover a range of perspectives, from representing industrial users of pressure systems to regulators, research, and engineering consultants. Complete contents: Lessons from failures of gas cylinders used for dispensing beverages - Experience from Health and Safety laboratory investigations - Insurance aspects of pressure systems failures - Failure investigation for commercial purposes - system failures leading to the collapse of storage vessels under partial vacuum - Reliable technical failure investigation - Failure design procedures in the new European Pressure Vessel Standard EN 13445 - Causes of vibration fatigue in process pipework - a new methodology to assess the risk - Avoiding vibration-induced fatigue failures in process pipework - Lessons learned from pressure system failures Pressure systems contain stored energy and the threat of damaging failure is ever present. Failures of pressure systems still occur and are costly to those affected; yet the main causes, consequences, and methods of investigation are not widely known. Pre-existing defects are a major cause of failures and near-failures in pressure systems, yet many can be avoided by greater awareness of the circumstances in which they arise.