Introduction xv
Acknowledgments xvii
1 Methods for Analyzing Failures 1
1.1 Mathematical Modeling 2
1.2 Methods for Solving Problems 4
1.2.1 The Scientific Method 4
1.3 The Crack Growth Equation 5
1.4 Failure of Carbon Fibers in Compressive Fatigue 7
1.5 Failure of Carbon Fiber, Titanium, and Steel in Compressive Fatigue 8
1.6 Cycles to Failure for Carbon Fiber Laminate and Stainless Steel 10
1.6.1 Summary 11
1.7 Ockham’s Razor 12
2 Industrial Mechanical Equipment Failures 13
2.1 Failure in a Large Stirred Processing Reactor 13
2.1.1 Hydraulic Cyclic Force on Support Bolting and Support Plate 15
2.1.2 Product Chunk Impact on Support 16
2.1.3 Summary 18
2.2 Stress on Spline Shaft Due to Extruder Wear 19
2.2.1 Summary 20
2.3 Ship Propeller Impact Damage 20
2.3.1 Summary 23
2.4 How a Turbojet Aircraft Engine Works and Fails 23
2.5 Failure of a G.E. CF-6-6 Turbofan Disk on a DC- 10 25
2.5.1 Summary 28
2.6 Loss of a Turbofan Blade 28
2.6.1 Summary 30
3 Industrial Vibration Failures 33
3.1 An Actual Aircraft Engine-Gearbox-Propeller Torsional System 33
3.1.1 Summary 37
3.2 Coupling Failure: Motor-Gearbox-High Speed Compressor System 38
3.2.1 Summary 41
3.3 Slip-stick Phenomena 41
3.4 Windshield Wiper Chatter Problem 43
3.4.1 Summary 45
3.5 Catastrophic Failure of a Vibrating Centrifuge Deck 45
3.5.1 Summary 47
4 Catastrophic Implosion of the Deep Sea Submersible Titan 49
4.1 Titan Deep Diving Vessel Implosion 49
4.2 Evidence from Titan Debris 53
4.3 The Titan Submersible Design 53
4.3.1 Summary 55
5 Potential Earth Catastrophes 57
5.1 What Is the Chance the 2029 Asteroid Apophis Will Impact Earth? 57
5.1.1 Summary 59
5.2 What Damage Would an Asteroid Impact Such as Apophis Cause? 60
5.2.1 Summary 61
5.3 What If the Chelyabinsk Meteor Had Impacted Earth? 63
5.3.1 Summary 63
5.4 Preventing an Asteroid from Impacting Earth 63
5.4.1 Summary 66
5.5 The Damage Potential of Solar Flares 66
6 Flight Dynamics and Major Disasters 69
6.1 How Does an Aircraft Fly? 69
6.1.1 Summary 70
6.1.2 Summary 70
6.2 Stalls and Flat Spins and Crash of Flight 2283 71
6.2.1 Summary 72
6.3 How Can a Drone Helicopter Fly on Mars? 73
6.3.1 Summary 74
6.4 Disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH 370 75
6.4.1 Summary 76
6.5 Why Did the Nose Wheel Collapse on a Boeing 767? 77
6.6 What Happened to the Space Shuttle Columbia? 78
6.6.1 Summary 80
6.7 Why Did the Door Blow Out of a Boeing 737 Max 9? 80
6.7.1 Summary 82
6.8 Why Did Hail Destroy the Nose of an Airbus 320? 83
6.8.1 Summary 85
6.9 Damage Due to Tire Falling Off Boeing 777 Aircraft 86
6.9.1 Summary 87
6.10 How Does a Hummingbird Fly? 87
6.10.1 Summary 88
6.11 How Do Fish Swim? 88
6.11.1 Summary 90
6.12 Tourism Helicopter Crashes into Hudson River 90
6.12.1 Summary 91
6.13 More Data on the Crash of Bell 206L into the Hudson 92
6.13.1 Summary 94
6.14 Air India Flight 171 Crash 94
6.14.1 Summary 95
7 Impact Disasters 97
7.1 Average and Peak Impact Force 97
7.1.1 Summary 98
7.2 Examining the Head-on Impact of Two Vehicles 99
7.2.1 Summary 101
7.3 Design Use of the Head-on Impact Equation 102
7.4 Can a Water Filled Membrane Bag Be Used as a Safety Device? 102
7.4.1 Summary 105
7.5 What Happens When a Turkey Vulture Hits a Car? 105
7.5.1 Summary 106
7.6 High Speed Closing Mechanism 106
7.6.1 Summary 108
7.7 Analyzing the Force of a Sudden Impact 108
7.7.1 Summary 109
7.8 Getting Hit on the Head with a Beer Bottle 110
7.8.1 Summary 112
7.9 Deep Penetrating Bomb 113
7.9.1 Summary 115
7.10 Precision Immobility Technique or (PIT) 116
7.10.1 Summary 118
8 Structural Failures 119
8.1 What Causes Tower Cranes to Collapse? 119
8.2 Walkway Collapse 121
8.2.1 Summary 122
8.3 Bridge Collapse with Ship Impact 122
8.3.1 Summary 123
8.4 Collapse of Electrical Power Transmission Towers 123
8.4.1 Summary 125
8.5 The Progressive Failure Collapse of Structurally Deficient Buildings 126
8.5.1 Summary 127
8.6 High-voltage Tower Failures and Vortices 127
8.6.1 Summary 128
8.7 Are Swaying Skyscrapers Dangerous? 129
8.7.1 Summary 132
9 Concerns Relating to Heat Transfer 133
9.1 Elevated Temperature in a Vehicle 133
9.1.1 Summary 134
9.2 How Long Should It Take to Heat My Home? 134
9.2.1 Summary 137
9.3 Fireplace Heat Transfer 137
9.3.1 Summary 138
9.4 Raising the Air Temperature of a Room with a Gas Fireplace 139
9.4.1 Summary 139
10 Catastrophic Explosions 141
10.1 Can a Kitchen Full of Natural Gas Destroy a Home? 141
10.1.1 Summary 142
10.2 Would the Home Water Heater Explode? 142
10.2.1 Summary 144
10.3 Would the Pressure Cooker Actually Explode? 145
10.3.1 Summary 146
10.4 How Does an Underground Pipeline Explode? 146
10.4.1 Summary 148
10.5 Explosive Effect of a Volume of Enclosed Vapor 148
10.5.1 Summary 149
11 Natural Disasters 151
11.1 How Are Tornados Formed? 151
11.1.1 Summary 152
11.2 Force of a Tornado 152
11.2.1 Summary 153
11.3 How Are Hurricanes Formed? 155
11.3.1 Summary 157
11.4 The Effect of a Hurricane’s Storm Surge 158
11.4.1 Summary 159
11.5 Determining a Hurricane’s Path 159
11.5.1 Summary 162
11.6 The Lateral Sliding and Vertical Uplift Earthquake Models 162
11.6.1 Summary 165
11.7 Yellowstone Caldera Is Rising, When Will It Erupt? 166
11.7.1 Summary 169
11.8 Why the Yellowstone Caldera Plate Surface Doesn’t Get Hot 170
11.9 The Next Great Tsunami 171
11.9.1 Summary 173
11.10 What Causes Straight-line Wind Damage? 173
11.11 Will the Tilting Tree Uproot? 174
11.11.1 Summary 176
11.12 Why Didn’t the Tree Limb Break? 176
11.12.1 Summary 178
11.13 Why Did the Tree Splinter in a Hurricane? 178
11.13.1 Summary 181
11.14 Some Final Thoughts About Trees 182
11.14.1 Summary 183
12 Catastrophes Relating to Flooding Disasters 185
12.1 A Simple Explanation of Flooding Using a Bathtub Analogy 185
12.2 Why Didn’t My Home Flood? 188
12.2.1 Summary 192
12.3 Why Does Lake Houston Rise Above the Spillway? 193
12.3.1 Summary 195
12.4 Kingwood Texas Flooding May 1–3, 2024 195
12.4.1 Summary 196
12.5 What Caused the Street to Flood 196
12.5.1 Summary 199
12.6 Sudden Flooding of Kingwood Drive 199
12.6.1 Summary 200
12.7 Catastrophic Flooding of a River 201
12.7.1 Summary 202
13 Probabilities 203
13.1 Are We All Alone in the Universe? 204
13.2 What Is the Probability of a Piece of Machinery Failing This Year? 205
13.2.1 Reciprocating Gas-engine Compressors Failures 206
13.2.2 Pressure Vessels, Piping, Steam Boiler Failures 206
13.2.3 Other Types of Machinery Failures 207
13.2.3.1 Summary 207
14 Why Question the Ingenuity of Humans? 209
14.1 How Did the Egyptians Transport 75-ton Granite Stones from the Quarry? 209
14.1.1 Summary 210
14.2 How Were the Pyramids Built? 210
14.2.1 Summary 213
14.3 How Do the Ancient Move Mega-blocks on Hard Land? 213
14.3.1 Summary 214
14.4 Using a Human-powered Crane to Lift Mega-blocks 215
14.4.1 Summary 216
14.5 Moving Huge Pyramid Stones by Rolling 216
14.5.1 Summary 218
14.6 Moving Large Blocks with Rollers on Rails 218
14.6.1 Summary 219
15 Some Unusual Questions Answered 221
15.1 Why Does a Whip Make a Loud Crack Sound? 221
15.1.1 Summary 222
15.2 My Wife’s Broken Chair and a Failure Cause 222
15.2.1 Summary 224
15.3 Zero Is Equal to One or Mathematics Can Trick You 224
15.4 Why Won’t My Truck Start? 226
15.4.1 Summary 227
15.5 Force of a Hardball on a Bat and Hand 228
15.5.1 Summary 228
15.6 Why Doesn’t My Hand Hurt When I Hit a Nail With a Hammer? 229
15.6.1 Summary 230
15.7 Pop-out Strength of High-rise Windows 231
16 Engineering Equations Used in This Book Explained 233
16.1 Force Balance 233
16.2 Inertial Law or Newton’s Second Law 233
16.3 Centrifugal Force 234
16.4 Potential Energy (PE) 235
16.5 Kinetic Energy (KE) 235
16.6 Energy Balances in Mechanical 236
16.7 Energy Balance in Heat Transfer 236
16.8 Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation 237
16.9 The Specific Heat Equation 238
16.10 Shear Force and Pressures 239
16.11 Energy Caused by Frictional Rubbing and Shearing 240
16.12 The Momentum Equation and the Conservation of Momentum 241
16.13 Probability of Something Occurring in a Given Time 242
16.14 Developing Tsunami Surface Velocity and Wave Height 242
16.15 A Glancing Hail Strike 244
16.16 Frequency of a Pendulum 245
Index 247
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