PUBLICATIONS AND VIDEOS

SUMMARY

The principles of structural design to resist fire and explosions on offshore installations have been extensively described in the Interim Guidance Notes and subsequent FABIG Technical Notes. Much of this guidance is also applicable to land-based petrochemical installations.

Techniques for the design of offshore piping to resist explosions have been described in OTO 1999-046 Explosion Loading on Topsides Equipment, Part 1 Treatment of explosion Loads, Response Analysis and Design. FABIG Technical Note 8 seeks to combine this guidance with the design for fire and to extend the techniques to cover onshore plant design. Guidance on minimising hazard, assessing hazard, on pipe support and pipe rack design is also given. The work follows a review of current industry practice in this area.

It is neither practical nor necessary to design all pipes to withstand explosion and/or fire effects and a two-level criticality rating system is advocated for those pipes that do require treatment.

Three design and analysis methods for explosions are described. The basic Category 1 analysis is a simple static load and code check approach to ASME B31.3. Category 2 is an enhancement of the method, with SDOF analysis to determine and incorporate suitable Dynamic Load Factors. Category 3 is a full MDOF – NLFEA approach for more complex situations. Categories 1 and 2 are illustrated by worked examples.