In plant construction, a site measuring – inside of a plant or of a whole plant – is permanently needed. Using conventional measurement methods, site measurements are created manually. In this process, single points are measured with a tape measure or a total station; this is very time-consuming. Additionally, each technical crew creates its own site measuring for its specific purposes.
What is stress assessment of piping?
Stress assessments serve as system analysis of piping. They provide key information for construction, operation and system safety. During planning state of piping, the real operating conditions (pressure, temperature, volume flow rate, medium etc.) are considered. With stress assessments and analyses, weak spots are revealed in piping systems. Performing such assessments during planning new pipelines, weak spots can be avoided by installing support or changing the arrangement of piping, for instance. Stress assessments serve for examining if piping is damaged or damages other plant components at thermal or dynamic stress.
Caesar, Pipestress and Rohr II are often applied as software for stress assessment of piping. For several decades now, Caesar II and Rohr II have been used for static and dynamic structural dynamic analyses and for creating figures of the stress in piping in plant construction, energy engineering and chemistry as well as petrol chemistry. PDMS is a 3D planning system that is suited for displaying plants and especially for pipeline construction.
How are projects usually planned?
There is a high fault tolerance in the manual site measuring by tape measure or laser pointer. With this measurement method, measures can be easily forgotten which leads to a significant extra effort. The cooperation of different technical crews is complicated because they don’t use the same basis for planning. Each technical crew normally relies on its own situation concerning the site measuring and plans further actions based on it. Co-ordinating the different technical crews presents a challenge.
Requirements for stress assessments in Rohr II and Caesar II
For static analysis or stress assessment of a pipeline, highly accurate measurements are essential for an effective project execution. In the case of entering inexact measures, the stress analysis of a pipeline with systems, such as Rohr II and Caesar II, logically leads to miscalculations. For instance, from a height of 6 metres, piping can only be reached using scaffolding. Thus, effort and security risk are enormously increased.
Which advantages does 3D laser scanning provide in this case? How can the static analysis or stress assessment be simplified?
Laser scanning presents a very uncomplicated surveying method. Long ranges and accuracies as well as a wide angle of view of the scanners reduce the effort in surveying enormously. With this method, the use of scaffolds and the risk of measuring in safety-critical areas are a thing of the past. The safety of surveyors is ensured by the contact-free measurement method.
Benefit from the security in planning!
Furthermore, 3D measurement guarantees an exact site measuring within a short time. Due to the pointwise capture of objects, no measures can be forgotten anymore. All persons involved in the project can use the same database from different positions! Thus, details in planning can be aligned soon and potential collisions can be avoided. With conventional methods, such a communication as well as simulations on the PC wouldn’t be imaginable. Thanks to the great security in planning, extensive postprocessing will not be necessary. This saves time and money!
Use the highly accurate data soon and uncomplicated!
With laser scanning, you can immediately use the received 3D data in your CAD system, generate a scaled model, simply and quickly take measures or perform calculations. In particular, existing laser scanning projects can be updated or continued cost-effectively.
