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Is your process piping protected against the risks of vibration induced fatigue?
Piping vibration is a common cause of failure at welds and small-bore connections (SBCs), resulting in leaks
Similar to the breaking of a paper-clip by repeated bending, the millions of small amplitude cyclic stresses caused by vibration can lead to fatigue failures at critical locations, often after several months or even years of normal operation.
In the oil & gas and chemical process industries dealing with hazardous liquids or gases, such fractures could lead to serious incidents involving major injury, fire, explosion or pollution.
Energy Institute Company member and specialist training provider, VibTech Ltd provides a range of 1-day to 4-day training courses which are guaranteed to enable you to easily reduce the risk of vibration induced fatigue failures.
In association with reliability experts AVT Reliability, 4 dates are available for 2-day open courses in 2018, as follows:

• 12 & 13 June 2018
• 4 & 5 September 2018
• 4 & 5 December 2018

All training courses are held at AVT Reliability, Warrington, UK

For further details of this and other open training courses offered by AVT Reliability in 2018 visit https://www.avtreliability.com/training/pipework-vibration-compliance

For further details about other Piping Vibration courses, please send me an email at neilparkinson@vibtech.co.uk

Many serious pipe vibration issues can be easily detected using a simple vibration screening technique like that used for the routine condition monitoring of rotating machinery.

If undetected, excessive vibration can result in fatigue cracks at welds resulting in pipe fracture.  In the oil & gas and chemical process industries dealing with hazardous liquids or gases such fractures could lead to serious incidents involving major injury, fire, explosion or pollution.

If you would like to learn more about how to adopt best practice to reduce the risk of fatigue failures on your pipework and how to implement common corrective actions, then you may be interested in one of the 5 pipework vibration courses run by specialist training provider VibTech Ltd.

Did you know that by investing in a couple of days training for your maintenance/reliability department, your existing vibration analysts who already routinely perform condition monitoring on rotating machinery could be using exactly the same instrumentation to perform vital risk assessment surveys on business and safety critical static plant such as pipelines and associated small bore connections (SBCs), which account for the majority of failures.

It seems that not all maintenance engineers and managers realize that exactly the same machinery CM principles can be applied to supposedly static plant such as pipework, which is known to commonly suffer from unwanted vibration issues for example due to mechanical excitation, pressure pulsations or flow induced vibrations etc. where many serious pipe vibration issues can be easily detected using a simple vibration screening technique like that used for the routine condition monitoring of rotating machinery.

The problem engineers face is knowing how much vibration is acceptable and what level of vibration would become so damaging that it could lead to a high risk of fatigue cracking, resulting in imminent rupture of the pipe welds.

If undetected, excessive vibration can result in fatigue cracks at welds resulting in pipe fracture.  In the oil & gas and chemical process industries dealing with hazardous liquids or gases (e.g. COMAH sites) such fractures could lead to serious incidents involving major injury, fire, explosion or pollution.

Whereas for rotating machines, typically vibration limits may be taken form standards such as the vibration severity guidelines presented in ISO 10816 depending on the machine type.  However for pipework vibration limits, presented in the industry best practice guidance document from the Energy Institute, define two clear limits, ‘Concern’ and ‘Problem’.  These are broadly analogous to the warning and alarm levels for machines.

If you would like to learn more about how to adopt best practice to reduce the risk of fatigue failures on your pipework and how to implement common corrective actions, then you may be interested in one of the 5 pipework vibration courses run by specialist training provider VibTech Ltd.

Specialist training provider VibTech Ltd is proud to become an Energy Institute (EI) Company Member, demonstrating the company’s commitment to promoting good practice and professionalism across the Energy Sector for the benefit of society.

VibTech is committed to reducing the risk of pipe fractures caused by Vibration Induced Fatigue and offers a range of 1-4 day training courses for engineers.

Based upon EI Guidelines, the training will raise awareness of industry best practice in avoiding serious incidents caused by leaks from pipework and covers how to perform a Vibration Risk Assessment to identify pipework most at risk as well as solutions and precautionary measures to prevent failures.

The next open course in UK is 19th & 20th September in Manchester, however most courses are bespoke for individual companies who want to train a group of engineers at their own facilities, typically including managers, plant operators, process engineers, designers and stress engineers.

If you are interested in arranging training to learn how to adopt best practice to reduce the risk of fatigue failures on your pipework and how to implement common corrective actions, just send me an email to neilparkinson@vibtech.co.uk. Or visit www.vibtech.co.uk

Or, if you would like further information on becoming an EI Company Member, visit
www.energyinst.org/membership/company-membership