Variation of wall thickness at rib.

For those of you who have been following our recent rants and ramblings in our articles about the prediction of failures of tanks and chambers, you will probably be saying these guys just sit there steaming away in their digital world thinking about things which may, or may not, be happening out there in the real world.

Your right! We do spend most of our time hiding behind our monitors, in cyberspace playing with the bugs in our software, twiddling our thumbs and waiting for inspiration to arrive. But, sometimes we have interesting days when we are asked to visit a moulder, or a test house, with our client especially when a tank is being moulded for the first time or when products are under test to observe and advise.

On a recent entertaining day we see operatives swinging on the tool, hitting the moulded product with hammers or prising it out of the tool with crowbars. Once these minor physical issues are resolved and the operative made to see the error of their ways, the recurring question is, has the polymer been subjected to the optimal heating and cooling parameters during the moulding process?