Delta FEA

My interests

Everything piping, vessels and mechanical.

All aspects of piping engineering including layout, pipe materials and pipe stress.

CAD and software including Inventor, AutoCAD, Nastran, Autodesk Simulation, Mathcad, Excel, VBA, Caesar pipe stress etc

Practicable, realistic and simple solutions.

My philosophy

My interests are with system design as a whole. I regard pipe stress and Finite Element Analysis as integral parts of piping and process engineering.

Many solutions to pipe stress, FEA and other design challenges are often related to some aspect of the system design.

Changing pipe layout or equipment design does not need to be the only design solution.

A solution can often be found by just talking to the process engineer or changing the pipe material specification. Input data for a design is often established at early stages of a project when information is not available and has to be estimated. For example, process design conditions or the pipe materials specification might be unnecessarily conservative.

More recent data might allow design conditions to be relaxed or pipe sizes to be reduced.

My work areas

Work area	Comments and software tools
Pipe Stress Analysis	Caesar *** Rohr2 ***, **** Pass Suite
Finite Element Analysis	Autodesk Nastran 2023 * Autodesk Simulation Mechanical 2018 (Perpetual licence) **
Piping Engineering	ASME B31.3 etc Autodesk Plant 3D 2023 ** Autodesk Navisworks Manage 2022 *
2/3D Cad	Autodesk Inventor 2023 * AutoCAD 2023 * Smartsketch (Past experience)
Mechanical Engineering	Vessels and process equipment. ****
Process Engineering	Pressure drop calculations ****
	* My software subscriptions ** Software I use and have subscriptions for. I do not claim to be an expert. *** Software licensed as required. **** Not my primary experience but I do have working knowledge.

Photo 20 in NB cross country steam lines

This is the only time I have needed to use “Vector Cross Product” to calculate pipe support slope and expansion joint orientation. Nobody would believe my calculation. I had to teach my myself AutoCAD 12 to draw a 3D model with true views to show the pipe support slopes.

Installation accuracy was critical. An error in plan orientation or position for individual pipe supports would have changed their alignment – even if the support angle was correct. I had intended that all pipe support bearing surfaces be site adjusted to ensure that each was in the plane of movement.

The site supervisor knew better. Luckily, the drawings which were based on pre-construction site surveys must have been close enough. The pipeline has operated for more than 20 years. I do not know who to credit for the site surveys – they must have been absolutely spot on.