Martin Blackman

Martin helps clients keep on top of their pressure piping and equipment integrity issues via stress analysis, FEA and fitness for service. He is the author of various articles, an ASME paper and software including the Salad post-processor for CAESAR II and web apps on this site. In a former life he played whizzbang lead guitar, but now he just plays old albums..

Easy vacuum checks for piping

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buckled pipe

A client recently asked us whether vacuum may be a problem for her piping system. She was aware that the piping codes pointed to the external pressure check in ASME VIII Division 1. I won’t make this out to be a simple topic and indeed there is still ongoing research in the area. But for … Read more

FFS Interpolator

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FEA model of corroded pipe with pressure bulge

Improve on API 579 Level 1 or 2 It’s been a while between posts, so let me say that I haven’t been completely idle – I’ve been cooking up a new web-based calculation app for engineers dealing with corrosion defects. On the surface, this application looks similar to the API 579 Level 1 assessment for … Read more

Piping fatigue and corrosion

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ASME B31.3 contains the footnote ‘Corrosion can sharply decrease cyclic life; therefore, corrosion resistant materials should be considered where a large number of major stress cycles is anticipated’. But what happens if carbon steel with high corrosion allowance has been selected and changes are out of the question? Or you may be assessing an existing … Read more

Calculating pressure containment of welding tees

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photo of B16.9 tee

There are at least three recognised methods for assessment of branch intersections. These are most often applied to fabricated connections on pressure vessels and piping rather than welding tees. Welding tees to ASME B16.9 are normally qualified by vendor burst tests, but that doesn’t help if you need to assess a corroded or eroded fitting, … Read more

B31.3 branch stress own-goal

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image of stress at reducing branch from CAESAR II

Quick summary This article may pique your curiosity if you’re interested in the finer details of pipe stress analysis, but if you’d rather just get the overall takeaway – Sustained bending stresses in ASME B31.3 2016 calculations are underpredicted at some branches As long as the stress analyst remembers to split the branch pipe model … Read more

Pipe Support Selection for Bare Pipe

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There are many ways to go about supporting pipe, from putting it straight on steel to sophisticated sliding shoe designs. Too often, this aspect of piping design is not given enough thought, resulting in problems later on in the life of a facility. Early on in detail design, the responsible party should prepare a flow-chart … Read more

Salad Postprocessor for CAESAR II

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Salad Postprocessor

The Salad Post-processor takes data exported from CAESAR II to do additional calculations and summaries. The software is now updated to version 1.40, and is available at no cost here. Lets go through some of the things you can do with this software . Make a summary of your stress model On one page you … Read more

Niekie Jooste – Welder Destiny (Part 2)

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In Part 2 of this interview, welding engineer and futurist Niekie Jooste addresses a wide range of future-facing topics including Education, Resource-based companies/countries, Blockchain, QA/QC, Google, Science fiction and career planning.

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Niekie Jooste – Welder Destiny (Part 1)

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In this interview with welding engineer and futurist Niekie Jooste, we get a fascinating glimpse into how work and careers may evolve in the not-too distant future. Niekie shares some of his vast knowledge on welding as it relates to piping engineering, before moving on to artificial intelligence and its potential implications.

To hear more of Niekie’s thoughts on the future and to better prepare yourself for the coming ‘onslaught of the machines’, be sure to check out the Welder Destiny site.

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