Engineering: January 2009 Archives

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country's infrastructure a grade D – barely above failing – in a study it conducts every four years and warned that the country's infrastructure "crisis" was endangering its future prosperity.  With water, sewage and road systems judged to be in particularly bad shape, one in four bridges across the US were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, while around 2,000 dams were considered to have "high hazard potentia."

Granger Morgan, an independent engineering expert, said that American infrastructure, especially in transportation, "is certainly not in the same league as parts of the developing world and parts of Europe."

Excerpted from Telegraph.co.uk.com

The trial resulting from a wagon accident at El Capitan Ranch is scheduled to begin Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, at Santa Barbara Superior Court.  Joseph Aragon and Ellen Aragon vs. El Capitan Ranch, LLC, Robert Carriages and Sons AKA Les Voitures Robert et Fils, Carriages by Margaret, Devon Bonfy, and DOES 1 through 50, Inclusive (Case #: 1220826) alleges negligence, product liability and premises liability.  Ten people were injured when a horse-drawn wagon tipped over and dumped 18 passengers onto the pavement at El Capitan Canyon campground in Santa Barbara.  Joseph Aragon suffered severe injuries to both shoulders and has had five shoulder surgeries since then.  The plaintiff's engineering expert described the wagon as improperly made with spokes connected to the wheels using undersized bolts, wood spokes that were not adequately weather-proofed, and the angle of the spokes to the wheel was improper which added to the wheels' instability.  Cloudcomputing.com also reports:

"It's frightening that, to the best of our knowledge, Robert Carriages and Sons doesn't even have an engineer involved in the making of its wagons," says plaintiff attorney Wolf. "And this isn't the first accident that has been reported to the company regarding its wagons. We understand a similar situation happened to an Illinois man in the fall of 2003."

In Engineering Underground Pipeline Safety civil engineering expert Charles Samo, PE, writes:

Natural Gas Pipelines
Underground pipelines are also used to distribute natural gas to consumers including homes and apartment buildings. The aging steel gas pipes are being constantly replaced with high strength Polyethylene plastic pipes. (Since plastic pipes are buried underground they never corrode). One major problem with plastic pipes, however, is that unfortunately, they are vulnerable to ruptures caused by construction equipment. Damage to these pipes could result in escape of natural gas into the atmosphere and to ignite. Natural gas, when released, is more hazardous to life than oil. California Public Utilities Commission has safety jurisdiction and administers the safety of gas pipelines in California.

Major Causes Of Damage
A recent study by the California State Fire Marshal (CSFM) showed that 59 per cent of the failures on oil pipelines in California are the result of corrosion or rust. Damage by construction equipment is the next highest cause of oil pipeline spills.

In Engineering Underground Pipeline Safety civil engineering expert Charles Samo, PE, writes:

Although pipelines are considered the safest and most economical mode of transporting large volumes of petroleum and natural gas products over long distances, at times they do present safety risk when in urban areas. Most major airports in U.S. rely on underground pipelines for delivery of jet fuel. The daily consumption of a busy international airport may be around 5 million gallons-a-day or less. A commercial passenger jetliner requires less than 3,000 gallons of fuel per-hour of flight. Construction equipment may inadvertently dig into an underground high-pressure jet fuel line. Any such incident could cause extensive property damage resulting in airport shut down. Whenever the delivery of jet fuel is interrupted, an estimated 600 trucks twice daily would be required to deliver an equivalent daily volume of jet fuel needed.

Severn Trent Water has been testing robot VR600 to clean their reservoirs. Because the robot works underwater, it can do the job without emptying the reservoir and keeps tap water running. Severn Trent is working with water engineering expert Panton McLeod, which owns the submarines. Paul Henderson, operations director at Panton McLeod, said: "The only alternative to using the remotely-operated machines was to drain the reservoir and have workers going into the tank to clean it."

A smaller submarine, known as a remotely-operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, inspects the inside of the tanks.  If it is a success, it will be brought into use in Leicestershire's reservoirs.

For more, see ThisisLeicestershire.com.