COMMENTS FROM A FORMER EMPLOYEE OF SHELL OIL USA ON RECENT ARTICLES PUBLISHED ON THIS WEBSITE
John
Part of Shell Brent Bravo oil platform falls into North Sea
I just read about the Brent ‘incident’. That ‘little problem’ should have been taken care of through a preventive maintenance inspection program long ago. Sea water is not only highly corrosive to steel, but cyclical loading caused by wave action can induce fatigue failure. Believe it or not, the useful life of an airplane or a submarine is determined by the number of pressurization cycles the fuselage or hull goes through. Oil tankers have a useful life based on the number of stress cycles the hull has undergone. Oil tankers have split in half because of hull fatigue failure.