Trey Walters, P.E., Applied Flow Technology, USA and G G Orieux, Q Li, L Thomson, Enbridge Pipelines Inc, Canada - 13th International Conference on Pressure Surges 2018, Bordeaux, France, November 14-16, 2018
Engineers tend to overdesign systems when uncertainty exists. Overdesign is an important part of the engineering process, but unnecessary overdesign will only increase the cost of systems without enhancing safety. An experience between a major pipeline company, their engineering design firm, and the waterhammer simulation software products used by both is described. A disagreement between software package results and ultimately the two companies developed into an issue that could significantly increase costs. More and better validation cases would have helped everyone navigate this situation more quickly, easily and inexpensively. More and better application guidelines may have helped the engineering design firm achieve higher certainty in their recommendations with potentially less overdesign.
