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COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Question 1: What are a few of the advantages of using checkSTRESS?
To the Designer:
- Save Time
- Reduce Re-Work
- Increase Value to the Company
No frustrating iterative process between design and stress depts. to arrive at a basic compliant layout.
Since the designer is more aware of the general arrangement, s/he can relocate, add or remove supports for weight and thermal cases, without having to hear from the engineer what she already could have done.
Increase your knowledge and hence marketability by mastering basic stress analysis principles.
To the Engineer:
- Use Saved Time For More Critical Analysis Areas
- Reduce Re-Work
Free up your time, and use it for more critical analysis areas where needed. Produce more reliable analyses.
Save the frustration of having to interact multiple times with the designer over simple issues.
Get forehand knowledge of the different steel/support structures by looking at "code-compliant" layouts sent by the designer since the model implicitly conveys that information.
No need to re-enter the piping model since you are handed a fully compliant working piping model file.
To the Manager and Department:
- Shorten Project Times
- Reduce Costs
- Use Scarce Personnel More Efficiently
The stress dept. is no longer the "bottleneck." Increased productive usage of the engineer's time spent on more detailed and rigorous analyses results in better designs and quicker "sign-offs."
By sending "code compliant" systems to the stress people (for detailed stress analysis), a portion of higher-priced stress engineer's time is replaced with lower-priced designer's time, allowing stress engineers to spend their time more effectively to analyze more number of systems and to better engineer critical areas, thereby increasing reliability in designs.
The project execution and total elapsed time are cut short dramatically, allowing the department, and the company to realize more savings.
Question 2: Do I have to model each and every piping system in checkSTRESS I want to design?
Not at all. checkSTRESS is an "add-on" to your 3D plant design software. Presently, you can add this tool on top of AVEVA's PDMS and Elomatic's CADMATIC 3D plant design systems. checkSTRESS will check your designs while you work in the 3D software. There is no need to export to an external file to operate checkSTRESS nor is there a need to re-enter data in checkSTRESS.
Question 3: When checkSTRESS shows a piping system as being non-compliant with piping code stress requirements, how will a designer know how to change the layout and the support schemes?
A detailed user manual is included along with the software.
This manual covers:
- "Basics" of pipe stress analysis
- A number of illustrative sample layouts
These sample layouts illustrate the process of arriving at a code-compliant system starting from a non-compliant system. The examples show the suggested procedure for changing the routing or selecting proper support types and locations or both inside PDMS. Piping designers will be able to "predict" a piping system's response to sustained (weight + pressure) and thermal loads and take corrective actions to the layout and support schemes to alter its response. With a little practice, they will be able to master this technique.
A designer, more than a pipe stress engineer, is aware of the general arrangement of the nearby primary or secondary steel/support structures in relation to the piping being routed.
a. By simple trial and error, a designer can reroute piping while keeping the arrangement in mind to achieve a better layout, and/or
b. By introducing new or relocating existing supports, a more code-compliant layout can be arrived at.
Question 4: Wouldn't the designer be doing the pipe stress engineer's job?
Only a very little amount, resulting in huge savings for everyone.
Since "code compliance" is only one aspect of pipe stress analysis. Why spend the majority of the engineer's time (in back and forth iterations with the design dept.) to do, say 20%, of the task? Pipe stress analysis is a lot more involved than complying with code requirements. Support design, seismic design, wind and dynamic analysis, nozzle loads, to name a few, make up the remaining parts of a complete pipe stress analysis which might constitute the remaining 80% of the task.
To a designer, checkSTRESS confirms whether a piping layout s/he designed is code compliant or not. In this respect, checkSTRESS is equivalent to an online "ClashCheck" feature in PDMS or a "SpellCheck" feature in a word-processor. Having no clashes does not imply that the piping layout will meet all design, construction or maintenance requirements. Similarly, having no spelling mistakes in a document does not imply that a document is grammatically correct.
So, in essence, the designer produces a first-level code-compliant layout for basic loading conditions (weight, pressure and thermal), barring which, s/he would have had to enter a series of "back and forth" iterations with the stress department to meet basic compliant requirements.
From the engineer's perspective: S/he does not have to experience a frustrating and time-consuming iterative process with the design department to do a small and basic part of the work. S/he can continue with the more complicated and rigorous analysis of the system beyond code-compliance.
With the currently practised workflow, an engineer usually spends 80% of his/her time doing 20% of the total work (basic code-compliance, due to the time-consuming workflow between the stress and design depts.) and spends the remaining 20% of his/her time doing the more rigorous analysis. Shouldn't this situation be the opposite?
checkSTRESS will make it so.