Thermal destruction of vessels with liquid upon heating

A new engineering technique of calculating the heating and thermal destruction of vessels containing liquid under extreme thermal loading conditions is offered. The heating of the shell and the internal vessel volume is described on the basis of the thermodynamic approach. The pressure growth in a vessel is a result of gas heating and liquid evaporation. Stresses within the shell and its destruction conditions are determined, which allows predicting the critical time of destruction upon heating. The calculation and experimental data for pressure growth inside the vessel are in good agreement

Choosing project risk management techniques. A theoretical framework

The pressure for increasing quality while reducing time and costs places particular emphasis on managing risk in projects. To this end, several models and techniques have been developed in literature and applied in practice, so that there is a strong need for clarifying when and how each of them should be used. At the same time, knowledge about risk management is becoming of paramount importance to effectively deal with the complexity of projects. However, communication and knowledge creation are not easy tasks, especially when dealing with uncertainty, because decision-making is often fragmented and a comprehensive perspective on the goals, opportunities, and threats of a project is missing. With the purpose of providing guidelines for the selection of risk techniques taking into account the most relevant aspects characterising the managerial and operational scenario of a project, a theoretical framework to classify these techniques is proposed. Based on a literature review of the criteria to categorise risk techniques, three dimensions are defined: the phase of the risk management process, the phase of the project life cycle, and the corporate maturity towards risk. The taxonomy is then applied to a wide selection of risk techniques according to their documented applications. This work helps to integrate the risk management and the knowledge management processes. Future research efforts will be directed towards refining the framework and testing it in multiple industrie

Operationalising learning from rare events: framework for middle humanitarian operations managers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the learning from rare events and the knowledge management processinvolved, which presents a significant challenge to many organizations. This is primarily attributed to the inability tointerpret these events in a systematic and “rich” manner, which this paper seeks to address. We start by summarizing therelevant literature on humanitarian operations management (HOM), outlining the evolution of the socio-technical disasterlifecycle and its relationship with humanitarian operations, using a supply chain resilience theoretical lens. We then out-line theories of organizational learning (and unlearning) from disasters and the impact on humanitarian operations. Subse-quently, we theorize the role of middle managers in humanitarian operations, which is the main focus of our paper. Themain methodology incorporates a hybrid of two techniques for root cause analysis, applied to two related case studies.The cases were specifically selected as, despite occurring twenty years apart, there are many similarities in the chain ofcausation and supporting factors, potentially suggesting that adequate learning from experience and failures is not occur-ring. This provides a novel learning experience within the HOM paradigm. Hence, the proposed approach is based on amultilevel structure that facilitates the operationalization of learning from rare events in humanitarian operations. Theresults show that we are able to provide an environment for multiple interpretations and effective learning, with emphasison middle managers within a humanitarian operations and crisis/disaster management context

Multiobjective Early Design of Complex Distillation Sequences Considering Economic and Inherent Safety Criteria

Inherent safety aspects are not usually considered as a driving force during the conceptual design stage of chemical plants. Instead, after the selection of the optimal economic flowsheet, safety is added to the design. However, this sequential design approach could be applied to inferior designs due to protection devices’ cost overrun. The objective of this work is to implement a strategy to simultaneously design a profitable and inherently safer distillation train. Two safety indexes, a disaggregated version of the Safety Weighted Hazard Index and Dow’s Fire and Explosion Index, have been adapted to quantify the inherent safety performance. A large-scale multiobjective MILP problem is formulated. Thus, two strategies of objective reduction are utilized: principal component analysis coupled with Deb’s algorithm and a method based on the dominance structure. The results prove the suitability of these safety index as inherently safer metrics, and showcase the ability of the objective reduction methods to discriminate among the inherent safety criteria.We acknowledge financial support from “Proyectos de I + D para grupos de investigación emergentes GV/2016/005” (Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport, GENERALITAT VALENCIANA) Spanish “Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad” (CTQ2016-77968-C3-2-P, AEI/FEDER, UE)