Excessive piping design workflow iterations and a novel solution: The Conceptual Piping Stress Tool

It is common in the design of large chemical plants to separate the piping design portion along the lines of expertise for economic efficiency. Piping design technicians are tasked with laying out the pipe while engineers subsequently perform high level analyses on the designs. With the adoption of the desktop computer, this has caused an excessive escalation in the workflow iterations between the two sets of specialists. It was found that the technicians have lost access to critical stress information related to high temperature expansion flexibility that should be guiding their designs. A novel solution is proposed and built to preliminary success in the Conceptual Pipe Stress Tool; a software program consisting of a pipe stress calculator and a design database intended to be used by technicians to enhance their design knowledge and reduce the reiteration problem.