Engineering                            Pressure Vessels
     ASME Sect VIII, Divs 1 & 2 expertise
     Vessel component design
     Nozzle loads
     Vessel rating services
     HX tube sheets
   Structures & Mechanics
     Steel; AISC & AISI
     Aluminum
     Welding; AWS, ASME
   Analysis
     Types
        Stress & displacement
        Fatigue
        Seismic
        Heat transfer
        High temperature behavior
        Risk Assessment
     Methods
        Spreadsheet Solutions
        Finite Element Analysis
        3D Modeling & Visualization
 Materials
     for refinery use
     for high temperatures
Computing
    Event simulation
    VBA programming/
    MS Office automation

Vessel rating services

I work with a number of local refineries and engineering firms to provide 're-rating' services; calculations of adequacy for existing equipment based on changed design limits.  This work has typically come from efforts to provide calculations showing compliance with ASME design rules, sometimes when they don't exist, sometimes when conditions (loads or corrosion) change and sometimes as a part of OSHA 910 efforts for demonstrating adequacy.

I use software from both PV Elite from Coade and Compress from Codeware, both located in Houston.  I also have copies of ASME and API Codes dating back to the late 30's that help provide historical perspective on older designs.

Re-rating, I've found, can take on a wide range of meanings to people.  Correspondingly the effort to address pressure/ temperature capacities also can take on a wide range of strategies.  Here in California re-rating typically includes evaluation of seismic loads to current UBC criteria.  With older equipment this often means consideration of higher loads leaving acceptance more a question of how well the supports and anchorage perform than the real changes of pressure or temperature.

Often the re-rating cases I see are the 'sticky' ones that require going past the basic equations in Div.1 to make use of the infamous, U-2(g) wording of 'design .. which is as safe as those provided by the rules of this Division (1)'.  This course often takes me to Cal-OSHA offices to meet and present technical bases for acceptance.

contact email address - CBoyakPE@sonic.net

"An engineer is someone that can do for a nickel what any damn fool can do for a dollar."