ProjAC at Plastic Pipes Conference XIX -Las Vegas
PPCA Plastics Pipe Conference PPXIX at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas.
The conference which is held every two years hosted 350 delegates from 24 to 26 September. The occasion is truly global with forty countries being represented among the attendees.
The almost ninety speakers presented papers on a variety of topics but perhaps the emphasis was more on market development than technical innovation. Even so there was a variety of papers on the technical aspects of pipe design and installation.
Mohana Murali presented a paper entitled ‘Polyolefin Pipes in the Middle East – Today and Tomorrow’ in which he examined how HDPE sprang from nowhere to take an appreciable market share in the decade following from the mid-nineties.
It is difficult to single out any presentation for special mention from such a diverse list but three caught our attention and we briefly summarise then below.
Design of Large Diameter Buried Pipes by Frans Alferink (WAVIN), Anders Andtbacka (Upinor) and Peter Sejersen (TEPPFA).
The authors spearheaded the extension of the well established TEPPFA design approach first published in 1999. In the original work the upper limit of the pipe diameters examined for the development of the design charts was 1100mm and only solid walled pipes were used. This has made designers wary of applying the method to larger pipes and the now common structured wall pipes.
The outcome of the new work has confirmed the validity of the design charts for structured wall and therefore solid wall pipes up to diameters of 3000mm. This is good news as Projac and many other design organisations believe the TEPPFA method is the most reliable and accessible method.
The second paper to stand out looked at the limitations of current methods of installing offshore pipes. Where pipes must be installed at appreciable depth there is always the fear of kinking/buckling where the pipe is subjected to a tight curvature. The paper entitled ‘Performance of Large Marine Pipes During the Submersion as Based on Laboratory Testing’ was authored by Ilija Radeljic (Pipelife, Norway) and Ingemar Björklund (IBCO).
The laboratory tests simulated the bending experienced by solid wall pipes during the marine installation process. The importance of the role of the ballast weights as stiffeners was made very clear. But the innovative approach of raising the pressure inside the pipe during the installation further enhanced the pipe’s buckling resistance during the quite severe bending as the pipe is lowered to the sea bed. Pressures as low as 2 bar were enough to make a significant difference.
We look forward to further publications on this subject from these well-respected authors.
The third paper that struck a chord with us was given by Zoran Davidovsky (Pipelife, Norway) on work completed with TEPPFA. The paper entitled ‘Discover Plastics’ gave an insight into recent investigations by TEPPFA into the reasons why plastic pipes are so often deselected for projects. The study used a carefully controlled canvassing exercise to take opinions from across Poland, France Germany and the United Kingdom. The initial focus was on sewers and storm water pipes but later expanded to include building products, soil and waste pipes, radiator connections and hot and cold water pipes. TEPPFA are now planning a coordinated campaign to overcome these fears and objections as expressed by potential customers. The process will continue but we found it most interesting that so any of the conclusions on the reservations if pipe designers and end users were echoes of what had been found by the GPPA (now disbanded) throughout the Middle East and East Africa.
Although Las Vegas was a long trip for many of the European and Asian members we believe the organisers made it a rewarding exercise for all those who attended. We now look forward to the next PPCA event PPXIX which will be held in Amsterdam in 2020.