Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean Romig
Judging by the pics Mike showed the wall thickness there looks perfectly adequate, leading me to believe it must have been an obstruction that caused the rupture.
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I agree with Dean. The barrels look really adequate.
The thing that strikes me is the apherical shape of the failure. It is like a giant bubble and the steel in the front part of the failure is literally pulled inward quite a bit. Trying to envision this failure, it looks like a giant bubble grew in the barrel, sucking the front portion inward begroe the rupture moved forward. It looks like something a complete blockage would cause. I'm not a metalurgist, but worked with them in engineering for 35 years and looked at a lot of high pressure refinery pipe failures, and normal open tube failures just don't look like that. I would have expected a welled and burst tube, but with everything in the faild region pushed outward. This looks like it swelled tremendously locally before the final rupture occured.