What Went Wrong?

Chapter 9. Pipe and Vessel Failures

It happens, like as not,There's an explosion and good-bye the pot!These vessels are so violent when they splitOur very walls can scarce stand up to it.—Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Canon Yeoman's Tale,” c. 1386

9.1. Pipe Failures

Davenport [1] has listed more than 60 major leaks of flammable materials, most of which resulted in serious fires or unconfined vapor cloud explosions. Table 9-1, derived from his data, classifies the leak by point of origin and shows that pipe failures accounted for half of these incidents—more than half if we exclude transport containers. It is therefore important to know why pipe failures occur. This chapter examines a number of typical failures (or near failures). These and other ...