Equipment Health Monitoring of Coke Drum to Improve Fatigue Life

Coke drum lives can be extended by using an equipment health monitoring system, often without increasing the cycle time. Delayed coking is a form of thermal cracking used for processing “bottom of barrel” residuum. Thermal cracking produces a wide range of hydrocarbons along with coke, a solid structure of ~90 wt% carbon. In the delayed […]

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ASME Section VIII, Division 2 Elastic Analysis Discussion: Collapse vs Ratcheting

  So, you think you know what load case combinations to use for your ASME Section VIII, Division 2, Part 5 analysis to satisfy Protection Against? Common sense says to follow to Code rules in Table 5.3 – but do you fully understand what that means? And, what loads should you use to satisfy Protection […]

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Performing an FEA in Section VIII, Division 1 to Qualify an Article U-2(g) Component

  While there are currently no explicit rules on how to perform a finite element analysis (FEA) if you are doing so in support of an ASME Section VIII, Division 1 vessel, there is good practice. Regarding rules, all you have is from Article U-2(g), which says: This Division of Section VIII does not contain […]

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Requirements for an ASME Section VIII, Division 2 UDS – Part 2 of 2

Since the introduction of ASME Section VIII, Division 2 in 1968, a design basis document called a Users Design Specification (UDS) has been a Code requirement. The original requirements from 1968 were rather sparse. So, when Division 2 was re-written and issued in 2007, it was decided to expand the requirements to encompass all of […]

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Requirements for an ASME Section VIII, Division 2 UDS – Part 1 of 2

Since the introduction of ASME Section VIII, Division 2 in 1968, a design basis document called a Users Design Specification (UDS) has been a Code requirement. The original requirements from 1968 were rather sparse. So, when Division 2 was re-written and issued in 2007, it was decided to expand the requirements to encompass all of […]

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Leadership

I was asked to participate in an engineering career development panel session at the 2013 ASME Pressure Vessel and Piping Conference which was held in Paris, France. I elected to talk about what engineers can do to improve their leadership skills. I am including some of the introductory material in this blog; the full presentation […]

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