# Funny Engineering Pictures



## Dleg

We've had a couple over in the Environmental forum. But I think this one is too funny keep to the enviros only.

What do you do when you install one run of pipe in two sections, starting from both ends, and then find out they don't meet up at the same elevation?

See here:


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## Dleg

This was an 8 inch air line from the blowers to the aeration tank at one our two sewage treatment plants. The utility kept having to replace the blowers because they would burn out every couple of months, and they even replaced the entire aerator assembly to try to correct the poor performance.

Finally, after nearly ten years, they started digging up the air line to see if there was a break or something.

Here's the inside: (remember, this was supposed to be an 8" pipe)


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## Dleg

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be an invitiation to post other funny engineering pictures.


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## Fudgey




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## DVINNY

Once again, Fudgey RULES


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## EdinNO

On the pipe, what did they do, blow toch and melt it down?

I don't see why they "crinkled" it up like that. Were they trying to heat it up to bend it and "persuade" it t meet up wit the other pipe and it collapsed like that? :dunno:

Ed


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## MetroRAFB

ED,

That appears to have been their intent, but anyone with a pulse should have known that wasn't going to work. I've had experience in the field with heating and bending PVC pipe, and there are limits to what you can do without constricting it too much. Some field monkey on THAT job should be shot.

:dddd:


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## EdinNO

He probably said, "Heck with it. Engineers always overdesign things anyway" or "By the time they find this, I'll be long gone".

Ed


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## McEngr

> He probably said, "Heck with it. Engineers always overdesign things anyway. By the time they find this, I'll be long gone".
> Ed


The wannabe engineers, aka draftsmen, at my office call it O.K. engineering. O.K. = overkill. Yup they're geniuses that need to show us the ropes  .


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## MetroRAFB

The true beauty of that situation is that the engineer is in the clear unless he/she spec'd out that particular melted fitting.


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## RIP - VTEnviro

We specifically include things in the plans and specs just to cover our ass like that. We know damn well the contractor isn't going to follow half the safety protocols they should.

But, we call it out anyway, so we can always say later, "It was on the approved plan. Not my fault they ignored it."


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## MetroRAFB

Yeah, construction plans are covered with disclaimers for the engineers. Basically the contractor is responsible for doing it correctly, even when crappy engineers design something that doesn't even meet code. The disclaimers usually say that the contractor is responsible for installing stuff per the engineer's design AND applicable codes. So if he installs something wrong just because the engineer said to do it, he's still screwed.


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## EdinNO

We've had 'em that say code takes precidence over the engineering docs in case of a conflict.

Ed


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## RIP - VTEnviro

I think I've heard that too. Engineering docs are professional judgment, code is law.


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## Dleg

You guys are giving our contractors waaaaayyy too much credit here. I wasn't there when they did it, but I can say with 99.99 % (four log!) certainty that not one of the guys who did that once thought about the engineering or the consequences. It was probably just a "damn! Just melt it together so we can go home" kind of thing. :dunno:


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## Mike1144

I don't see scorch marks. And it looks like a regular collapse pattern. Could this have been caused by a hot fluid flowing through?


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## Dleg

Hmm... Interesting possibility. The pipe was used convey air from standard blower units to the aeration basins at a sewage treatment plant. I'm not sure the blowers heat the air enough for that to happen. And I'm not sure the pipe was long enough for expansion to have caused a collapse like that (around 100 feet) My thought on the lack of visible scorch marks was that the pipe had been buried for 10+ years, and the scorch marks degraded in the moist soil environment?


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## EdinNO

Its possible there would be no scorches, just melting. Maybe we have to do some tests? Anything in the budget for some forensic engineering? 

Ed


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## MetroRAFB

It's very possible that you could heat the pipe enough for to collapse as shown without leaving any scorch marks. Scorching occurs when you place the heat source too close to the pipe surface. Conventional PVC heaters have rollers inside them, the pipe lays on those rollers and you're supposed to keep the pipe rolling while it's heating to prevent scorching. I'm not sure whether or not they make that style of heater for pipe that large but I imagine they do. The other method I have experience with for small PVC (3/4", 1") is to use a heat gun (glorified hair dryer). I doubt you'd be able to heat pipe that large with a heat gun but it might be possible.


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## EdinNO

metro,

You may have mentioned in the past, but what do you do work-wise? It sounds like you have some experience with PVC. Just curious

Ed


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## MetroRAFB

I work for a truss company now, but while in college I co-oped with a large electrical contracting company and spent some time working in the field. That's where I gained my PVC experience, roughing electrical work in the concrete slabs before they poured them. Lots of times heating and bending the PVC is easier than cutting and glueing on factory fittings. Cheaper too. But you've got to be careful, too much bend will cause the pipe to collapse. A trick some of the field guys use sometimes is to fill the pipe with sand while you bend it. That provides some stability and support while you're bending it. Once you're finished with the bend you can flush the sand out of the pipe with water before you connect it to your pipe run.


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## Mike1144

When they built my inlaws pool, they used torches. I guess their procedure was to heat it till it turns brown, then bend. Granted this was only 2" PVC.

I managed to catch one major boo-boo. When the electrical guys did their PVC bending, they got a little too close to the flexible PVC water line with their torches. It was under pressure for a leak test and ballooned out to almost twice its diameter. They were all set to bury it in concrete.


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## Art

re: blowers

why not 'amp' them to see where on the curve they are operating, ie, HP

you know the speed, I'm assuming it was a 'rootes' type postive displacement...

take a pressure at the discharge (usually a gauge is provided)

and one at the diffuser header (you may have to tap the pipe and plug) 15 min job

then you could tell exactly what was going on...

these machines typically don't overload, as HP is a function of displacement/speed/delta P all fixed...most have a weighted blow off to prevent the DP from going too high...ie, start up with water in the pipe...

all have circuit breakers and motor overloads that should trip at 115% of rated current, and since motors are generally rated for 1.15 duty factor, they should never be damaged...


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## MA_PE

I don't see any fittings and I can't see someone melting an 8 in. pipe to make the connection. Instead you cut it and put on a coupling.

Also that looks like pretty heavy wall stuff. We all know that plastic creeps with time. I suspect that the pipe was restrained at both ends and had sufficient compression to buckle the wall. Once is buckled it continued to creep to relieve the compressiona nd eventually closed up like you found it. DLeg aren't you in a tropical paardise somewhere. what was the burial depth. Aren't ambient temperature often 100+ degrees. The sand gets too hot to walk on? correct?

What was the process temp of the flue gas? Elevated temp flue gas would also make the pipe elongate creating more compression for restrained ends.


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## MetroRAFB

I doubt a coupling would have worked, the two segments have to align perfectly in order to get the coupling on and once you get much above 1" PVC there's no room to "bend" it manually to make them line up. That's why you don't start at both ends and work towards the middle, ever ever ever. Of course the railroads did it in the 1800's but I bet they had some serious coordination as the two railroads came closer to meeting.

I don't think that could have happened once the pipe was buried. Even if the surface temps of the sand were 100+ degrees, below the surface it cools off quickly. Also, what would cause the pipe to deform so badly in that one specific area? The picture looks exactly like what PVC does once you've heated it locally to a couple of hundred degrees F.

Any volcanic activity directly underneath that pipe when it was dug up?



:beerchug


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## MA_PE

> I doubt a coupling would have worked, the two segments have to align perfectly in order to get the coupling


Not for anything but after they cut out this bad section, they must have installed a coupling to get the line back into service. I doubt they just abandoned the line or excavated all the way to back to one end to start over. This was an air line so slope wasn't exactly critical and you can get twice the production by starting at either end and meeting in the middle. Check out the boot in the picture for reference, you'll see this is a pretty good sized line and the buckle looks pretty uniform around the perimeter. Uniform heat from somewhere. Would be tough to get with a torch.

Another thought might be chemical softening from whatever the flue gas was. Also interesting that it occurred in the middle of the line. If both ends are restrained, expansion/contraction may be concentrated near the center.

Details! We need details! B)


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## Art

if the pipe was used to convey blower air it gets hot, sometimes as high as 200F...

if the pipe was blocked at each end, where it went down &amp; came up...when it expanded it it would have buckled...at the weakest spot...and highest force, equi-distance from the 2 ends/blocking, ie, ~ the middle...

I guess that's why ductile iron or SS is usually used...


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## Dleg

Damn, I'm having trouble with my browser - I replied to this last week, and it never showed up after my browser gave the "not found" error message.

MA-PE: I think most of the details are given in the earlier messages, the pipe is only about 100 feet long. I am tempted to lean more toward the expansion/buckling theory, except that the plant operators had originally told me that it was the contractors who had melted the pipe to make it fit. Although I am sure they are only guessing, it really is a common practice around here. I think the contractors think that just because they can do it with electrical conduit, they can do it with any other type of plastic pipe. At $3.05 an hour ($2.75 an hour at the time the plant was built) for the foreign workers used on most construction jobs out here, we unfortunately get exactly what we pay for.

PS - and that's not a boot. (Shhhh! don't tell!)


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## MA_PE

> At $3.05 an hour ($2.75 an hour at the time the plant was built) for the foreign workers used on most construction jobs out here, we unfortunately get exactly what we pay for.


I understand the cheap labor, but you figure the plant owner would pay a "task master"/overseer to make sure the job got done correctly.

If that was truly installed like that, then the supervisor should be shot.


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## Dleg

Actually, there was a A&amp;E firm hired to do construction management, and I know who it was. The excuse is that the melted fitting was "obviously done in the middle of the night" to hide it from the CM. But I say, no CM should ever accept buried work that he/she did not personally see. So I agree with the shooting verdict. I have sent this picture out as an e-mail to several engineering friends, titled "the importance of CM". So in that respect, I'd be embarassed to find out that the pipe buckled due to creep &amp; expansion. Since I know the CM and he's not a bad guy, I think I'll jsut stop sending the e-mail around. But the picture still hangs on my wall at work!


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## Road Guy

alright, this might not be a funny pic, but maybe the story. my first "engineering related" job, co-op , Georgia DOT, They were building a bypass around the town of Thomasville,GA. The area, while rural, has many a"really really rich"land owners (such as former President Jimmy Carter) so the only land they could purchase was an old landfill.

yes, they built a road over a landfill, using something called dynamic compaction (see pic) what they would do is drop an 8-ton weight on a grid (10' X 10' spacing) 8 times. Then they would come back with a 6-ton flat "stamp" and clean it up. It would compact the fill area (or at least reduce the height) by at least 10 feet)

well what I found funny was they they paid for this construction, not lump sum, but they paid the contractor by the drop, so guess who counted all those damn drops, and this bypass was about 6 miles in length...







if you look far in the distance in this pic, you can see the height differnce where the crane is sitting...






it was also my job to lay out the grid for the crane operator each morning :brick:


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## FusionWhite

Ahh, the glorious world of cooping. Whats funny about that RG is that the city of Louisville is building an interchange right through a land fill and guess who got to do the environmental sampling out there? Yeah it smelled like we were drilling into a port-a-pot crap tank.


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## Hill William

That dynamic compaction stuff is pretty cool. Counting the drop sucks. While in construction, did you ever have to take care of a pile driving operation?? That sucks ass. You have to count each blow and watch to see when it takes 12 blows per inch. Mind you the diesel pile hammers are usually pieces of shit and spew soot and oil all over you. When I was in construction, I had special cover alls in the truck that were only used for pile driving.


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## Road Guy

ah yes I am familiar with a kobe diesel pile driving hammer 

on the dynamic compaction about every 10 blow they would hit a huge pocket of trash and it would spew up in the air like a damn aerial bomb, you didnt get to close.

my first week on the job, they just dropped me off and left me (not even a truck  )


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## RIP - VTEnviro

> he area, while rural, has many efluent land owners


Effluent land owners?

Do they own the discharge pipe from the local treatment plant? :dunno:


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## Road Guy

you know what I meant...."really really rich"


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## Guest

Cool stuff RG !! :thumbsup:

I would kill for more field time - even if it meant working next to a diesel or having oil (or other media) spewed at/on me. Seriously. I hate riding a desk. :brick: :hung:

JR


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## MA_PE

I've heard those effluent guys are usually incontinent, too.


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## McEngr

> I've heard those effluent guys are usually incontinent, too.


:lmao:


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## Hill William

Its a video

http://www.break.com/index/crane_drops_steam_roller.html


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## MA_PE

What a bunch of idiots. what 3rd world country was that shot in? Couldn't be in the U.S. no hard hats, public street, all old and crappy equipment, etc. etc.

Typical half-ass foreign mentality. just do it without thinking about it at all.


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## Kipper

Here. Hold my beer while I move this steam roller.

Hey dude, I don't think that will work.

Sure it will it only weighs, oh about 6 tons. Thats what about 8,000 lbs.

My crane weighs about 12,000 lbs.

Yeah, but.

Shut up and hold my damn beer.

Get outa the way.

:rotfl:


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## ILvTigers

I would hope that someone would see this problem begin to arise before actually pouring the driveway....

View attachment 220


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## RIP - VTEnviro

Definitely. That reddish soil looks too similar to the brick color on the house.

Definite fashion faux pas. It's obvious.


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## DVINNY

Here is my version. I made the driveway even steeper.


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## MetroRAFB

Yeah, and it looks like they planted some hay in that pile of dirt but missed the rest of it. They need to spread some more seed. Perhaps they should enlist the help of a landscape architect?


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## Mike1144

> I would hope that someone would see this problem begin to arise before actually pouring the driveway....


Is that Tony Hawks house?


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## DVINNY

You're right. It needed grass.


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## MetroRAFB

Lmao! How do you guys do that? Where can I get a "photoshop" program?


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## Guest

Wow .. those effects rock !! :+1:

What program did you use?

JR


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## Dleg

I am impressed DVINNY. I remember some post I read here back when I joined where someone had gone in and photoshopped the NCEES pencil behind the ears of a number of famous people. Was that you? I laughed my ass off on that one.


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## MetroRAFB

> I am impressed DVINNY. I remember some post I read here back when I joined where someone had gone in and photoshopped the NCEES pencil behind the ears of a number of famous people. Was that you? I laughed my ass off on that one.


What is this "photoshop" of which you speak?


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## DVINNY

I have Photoshop full version, but also have Photoshop Elements 2.0 and 3.0 and they are MUCH cheaper and just as good for want you'd want to do.

When I make the GIF files (smilies) I use Adobe Illustrator and sometimes Macromedia MX Suite


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## tmckeon_PE

Adobe Illustrator is the best "tracer" around for converting pdf files to dxf/dwg.

I use all the progs mentioned and really like the Paint Shop Pro ver 8, but it doesn't do the tracing. Adobe Illustrator does it like a pro.

I have searched the internet and tried many progs for a good tracing prog. Only that one met the grade and it does so much more (I should be paid by Adobe for this post).


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## Guest

> Adobe Illustrator is the best "tracer" around for converting pdf files to dxf/dwg.
> I use all the progs mentioned and really like the Paint Shop Pro ver 8, but it doesn't do the tracing.  Adobe Illustrator does it like a pro.
> 
> I have searched the internet and tried many progs for a good tracing prog.  Only that one met the grade and it does so much more (I should be paid by Adobe for this post).


Speaking of Adobe® and such, my office issued the first e-Permit heralding a new age in correspondence with the agency. I spoke to my supv about how professional seals will be handled - he said that issue is still be worked out by a committee.

From reading FL Rules - there are two provisions for electronically sealing your documents (2nd is listed on opening banner of FBPE.org). I noticed that the site that offers the embossed type PE Seal also offers to provide the .jpg image for $10 as well.

You had raised this issue before - I am hoping to get more answers once everyone gets back from holiday vacation. I will update as I get more answers.

JR


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## DVINNY

$10????

Why not just stamp something, and scan it? We have a CAD guy that drew one to exact scale with the correct number of ticks and all. He had nothing to do one day I guess. LOL.


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## tmckeon_PE

To pay $10 for a digital picture doesn't make sense to me. I will scan my own seal.

DVINNY, there was a thread that had the AutoCAD dwg of the seal. Do you remember where that thread is? If not, I downloaded it and can put it back up.


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## DVINNY

It was under Texas seal or something wasn't it? I think it was here in the General Section


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## tmckeon_PE

If I can upload a file here it is.


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