About the Project
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This is a project within the multi-disciplinary EPSRC and ESRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) on Quantification and Management of Risk & Uncertainty in Complex Systems & Environments, within the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty. The studentship is granted for 4 years and includes, in the first year, a Master in Decision Making under Risk & Uncertainty. The project includes extensive collaboration with prime industry to build an optimal basis for employability.
The wealth of citizens in urban communities, the strength and robustness of economic and financial infrastructures depend on safe, secure, sustainable and affordable process industries, which include chemical, food and beverages, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, textile plants. Such process plants have been built in the last decades in modern societies in numerous regions world-wide and are currently exposed to various environmental and man-made hazards. A multi-million state-of-art plant to produce biodiesel from waste cooking oil was recently opened in Liverpool, UK, by Olleco, formely Agri Energy. The processing plant, constructed on a brownfield site in Bootle, is claimed to be the largest of its type in the UK and it consists of complex piping layouts and support systems.
Piping systems, which comprise pipes, fittings, flanges, valves and pipe-racks, are crucial components in process industries. The latter consist of steel non-structural systems which are exposed to a number of natural hazards, e.g. extreme winds, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, geotechnical-related effects, as well as man-made threats, e.g. impact, blasts, etc.
The design of piping systems in process industries has been traditionally based on American Standards, namely API 650 (2012) and ASME B31.3 (2016). The provisions of the above codes apply to piping for all fluids, including raw, intermediate and finished chemicals, petroleum products, gas, steam, air and water. However, the American Standards do not contain specific and comprehensive rules for the reliable assessment of existing steel piping systems and earthquake-induced loadings. European specifications (e.g. EN 13445, CEN 2010; EN 13480, CEN 2011; EN 14015, CEN 2004, among others) also contain limited provisions for the earthquake-resistant design of industrial equipment. An effort has been made in Eurocode 8-Part 4 (CEN 2006), which concerns almost exclusively vertical-cylindrical liquid storage tanks. Nevertheless, the latter rules do not cover all possible limit states and, furthermore, they need significant improvement to reach a level of applicability for design practice.
On the other hand, recent failures in existing plant facilities (see, for example, the explosions occurred in the flooded Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, caused by the tropical storm Harvey, at the end of August 2017) indicate that there is a continuous and severe risk in piping systems in process industries, even for those that are located in regions with low seismic hazard, e.g. in Central and Northern Europe. In complex industrial facilities the failure of the piping systems may pose hazards ranging from lethal explosions to toxic spills, which are also induced by inevitable domino-effects propagating in the plant.
Pipework can suffer from a vast range of deterioration and failure mechanisms. Yet pipework still seems to remain the least well-understood equipment type, especially in the chemical process industries (Krstin, 2007), and the price of failure of piping system is often too high. While pipelines are considered one of safest systems of long range transport, the database of accident is often on the same level as that of stationary refinery installation (e.g. Dziubinski et al., 2006). Causes relative to the mechanical properties of the pipes, such as corrosion and material failure, are of potential concern.
References
American Petroleum Institute (2012), Seismic Design of Storage Tanks, API 650, 11th Edition, Washington, D.C.
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2016). ANSI-ASME B31.3 Code - Process Piping: piping typically found in petroleum refineries; chemical, pharmaceutical, textile, paper, semiconductor, and cryogenic plants; and related processing plants and terminals, New York, USA.
Dziubinski, M., Fratczak, M. and Markowski, A.(2006). Aspects of risk analysis associated with major failures of fuel pipelines. Journal of Loss Prevention in the process industries, 19(5), 399-408.
European Committee for Standardization (2004). EN 14015 - Specification for the design and manufacture of site built, vertical, cylindrical, flat-bottomed, above ground, welded, steel tanks for the storage of liquids at ambient temperature and above Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization - CEN (2006). Eurocode 8: Design of structures for earthquake resistance – Part 4: silos, tanks and pipelines, Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization (2010). EN 13445-3 - Unfired pressure vessels - Part 3: Design, Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization (2011). EN 13480-3 - Metallic Industrial Piping – Part 3: Design and Calculation, Brussels, Belgium.
Krstin, L. (2007). Learning from pipework failures. Loss Prevention and Safety Performance in the Process Industries Symposium 2007, IChemE Symposium Series no.153, Edinburgh, UK.
Pappa, P., Varelis, G. E., Vathi, M., Perdikaris, P. C., Karamanos, S. A., Ferino, J., Lucci, A. Mecozzi, E., Demofonti, G., Gresnigt, A. M., Dijkstra (Tebodin), G. J., Reza, Md. S., Kumar, A., Paolacci, F., Bursi, O.S., Kopp, M., Pinkawa, M., Wieschollek, M., Hoffmeister, B., Stamou, A., Diamanti, K., Papatheocharis, T., Botsis, C., Chandrinos, I., Doukas, I. (2013). Structural safety of industrial steel tanks, pressure vessels and piping systems under seismic loading (INDUSE), European Commission Research Fund for Coal and Steel Structural safety of industrial steel tanks, pressure vessels and piping systems under seismic loading, Final report, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
Shibutani, T., Nakamura, I. and Otani, A. (2014). Failure Analysis of Piping Systems With Thinned Elbows on Tri-Axial Shake Table Tests, Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology, 137(1), p.011205.
Tixier, J., Dusserre, G., Salvi, O. and Gaston, D. (2002). Review of 62 risk analysis methodologies of industrial plants. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 15 (4), 291-303.