ABSTRACT
The authors were involved in litigation which spanned five years in the United States Federal Court. This paper focuses on their experiences in the application of engineering and law, with special emphasis on the interface between the two disciplines. In particular, in:
Section 1: It is demonstrated that as the equipment ages, failures are more likely to occur from a series of isolated events, seemingly unconnected, but ultimately producing a catastrophic failure. The focus of this section is on the United States oil and petrochemical industry with a brief statistical overview of the number of failures and their costs (billions of dollars).
Section 2: The authors discuss a specific catastrophic failure in a catalytic cracking unit, pointing out how a number of isolated events, specifically described, resulted in such a catastrophic failure.
Section 3: The subject of erosion and corrosion in the petrochemical plant is discussed. Attention is drawn to the accelerated rate of equipment deterioration when both mechanisms are present and tandemly active. Unlike the corrosion mechanism that can easily be detected by visual observations, the erosion due to liquid or particle impingement is not always so obvious and detectable through visual examination. The shortcomings of some of the non-destructive techniques in detecting the localized erosion is discussed. In the case of the subject cat cracker explosion, it is shown that the lack of recognition of the liquid erosion potential prevented a rigorous and proper inspection procedure to discover the pending disaster.
80Section 4: The authors discuss how their investigation was controlled and managed by the United States Federal Court.
