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The Fundamentals of Piping Design
The Fundamentals of Piping Design
The Fundamentals of Piping Design
Ebook313 pages24 hours

The Fundamentals of Piping Design

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Written for the piping engineer and designer in the field, this two-part series helps to fill a void in piping literature, since the Rip Weaver books of the '90s were taken out of print at the advent of the Computer Aid Design (CAD) era. Technology may have changed, however the fundamentals of piping rules still apply in the digital representation of process piping systems.

The Fundamentals of Piping Design is an introduction to the design of piping systems, various processes and the layout of pipe work connecting the major items of equipment for the new hire, the engineering student and the veteran engineer needing a reference.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 21, 2013
ISBN9780127999791
The Fundamentals of Piping Design
Author

Peter Smith

Peter Smith is an independent consultant based in Europe with 30 years of experience in the onshore and offshore sectors of the oil and gas industry. He has worked on design and construction projects for, Exxon, Total, Mobil, Woodside Petroleum, Shell, Statoil, Bluewater, Elf, and Huffco Indonesia.

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The Fundamentals of Piping Design - Peter Smith

Incorporated

Preface

In the CAD era, the rapid input and extraction of technical information far exceeds the manual drafting process previously used to design process plants. It is very important that the individuals responsible for CAD modeling and manipulation of this information understand the basic principles of piping design.

However, the industry has not stood still. In one area, there has been a dramatic change: the design of process plants and the visual representation of piping systems. This change was driven by information technology (IT) and altered the very way process plants are conceived, visualized, developed, designed, constructed, and maintained. Computer-aided design (CAD) has now almost totally replaced manual draftsmanship (see Figure P–1).

Figure P–1 An example of a snap shot taken from a 3D CAD model. (Printed with the permission of Bentley Systems Incorporated.)

This radical shift came about in the last 20 years, and it accelerated in the last 10 years to such an extent that the old school of manually designing a piping system in drawings, using pencil and paper, has been replaced by digital representation and the creation of 2D CAD drawings and the more advances 3D model (see Figures P–1, P–2, and P–3).

Figure P–2 A 3D model of five gas compressors showing inlet and outlet piping. (Printed with the permission of Bentley Systems Incorporated.)

Figure P–3 A 3D model of one gas compressor showing the pipe work in more detail. (Printed with the permission of Bentley Systems Incorporated.)

Engineers and designers who entered the industry post 1990 will be less aware of manual representation of piping systems, and certain individuals have never been asked to draw a general arrangement or an isometric. The age of digital representation of technical drawings is a revelation, and it does increase the speed of the design phase of a project if all of the information is available. It also increases the speed at which the individual can make mistakes, and there are no limits to the severity of these mistakes.

At this time of writing, intelligent software is being discussed in the industry, however this facility is useful only if it is applied by an intelligent operator. In many cases, the IT skills of CAD operators far exceed their piping skills, and the objective is to get a healthy balance, where an engineer or designer not only understands how to model quickly, but why he or she is modeling a specific component or layout.

Speed and accuracy should be the goal.

When I first came in contact with computers in the mid 1970s, there was a saying, garbage in—garbage out. This still applies, and it will do so for the foreseeable future.

The objective of The Design of Process Piping Systems, volume one, is to introduce the reader to the fundamental rules of the subject. Most of these rules originate from the various industry codes, such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) B31 series; and in many cases, these rules are mandatory requirements, which when applied result in a plant that can be constructed and operated safely for its projected lifetime.

Other rules or standards are required to allow the plant to be designed and constructed uniformly with fittings with predetermined dimensions and manufactured of materials with known chemical composition and predictable mechanical strength. It is essential that an engineer or designer understands the basic requirements and the background to the options that are available during the design phase.

I reference process piping systems designed to one of the ASME B31 series of codes, with an emphasis on ASME B31.3—Power Piping. Piping is a very large subject and it would take numerous volumes to cover it in its entirety. Also, many specialist sectors require in-depth reading, such as metallurgy, welding, corrosion, inspection, and valves.

What I attempted to do is to give the reader fundamental information on the subject of piping that can be expanded on by further reading and on the job

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