The arithmetic is rarely where piping work goes wrong. The inputs, the assumptions, and the question being asked are where it goes wrong.
A pressure design calculation can be flawless and still return the wrong wall thickness, because an allowable stress was recalled instead of looked up or a corrosion allowance was set by habit. A line can be sized correctly as a liquid line and still hammer, because nobody noticed it flashes. Most of this knowledge is assembled on the job, one project at a time. Textbooks describe methods in the abstract, and the governing code states requirements without showing how a competent engineer still arrives at a wrong answer.
This field manual works every method through with numbers. Where a calculation has a trap, the trap is shown by working an example that falls into it. Where two approaches disagree, both are computed and the disagreement is quantified. Where a method has a limit, the limit is stated and a case that breaches it is worked. Every value has been computed rather than recalled, and the examples reconcile across chapters. Twenty-two chapters in five parts, seven appendices, and over two hundred and fifty numbered tables.
What this manual helps you do:
- Draw the scope boundary and fix the design basis before the first calculation
- Compute pressure design thickness for straight pipe, bends, miters, and branch connections, and check reinforcement where it is required
- Size liquid, gas, vapor, and steam lines, and recognize a flashing two-phase line that was sized as something else
- Work flanged joint and bolt load calculations, and see what a test pressure does to flange class selection
- Treat layout, support, and thermal flexibility as one connected problem rather than three
- Set corrosion and erosion allowances that survive a remaining-life check rather than a habit
- Carry a design through fabrication, examination, pressure testing, and turnover with the documents that make it defensible
Inside: code selection and design basis; materials, sizes, schedules, and dimensional standards; pressure design of pipe and components; flanged joints, gaskets, and bolt loads; corrosion and wall thickness allowances; liquid, compressible, and two-phase flow with erosional velocity limits; pump and compressor piping and net positive suction head; plant layout and routing; supports, spans, and hangers; thermal expansion and flexibility; valves and control stations; relief, blowdown, and vent piping; steam, condensate, compressed air, and cooling water; insulation and heat tracing; fabrication, examination, and pressure testing; specifications and change control; water hammer; buried piping; and nonmetallic and lined systems.
Every chapter carries learning objectives, worked examples, a failure autopsy, a field capstone, practice problems, and an answer key. No portion of any standard is reproduced: where a value must come from one, the book gives the lookup and verification procedure instead of a copied table.
Written for the engineer or designer who has a piping problem in front of them today. It is not a substitute for the code of record, for a stress, materials, or process safety specialist, or for engineering judgment.
Put this manual on the desk beside the code and start working the problem in front of you with both open.
