Greetings!
I know I have not updated this blog in some time, but the information I would like to have shared over the past few months cannot be publicly posted. It reveals trade secrets and proprietary information. They even made me sign a contract to not release the information. I can however share the basis of the project. Standardizing and programming parametric 3-D models for UL 142 and 2085 above ground diesel fuel storage tanks. The assignment brought about standardizing lifting lugs for these massive chunks of metal.
This brings me to a topic I can discuss. Lifting Lugs. This necessary component has very little literature on how to design and analyze the lifting capacity. The company I currently work for has been designing lifting lugs without any formal analysis. Granted, there has not been an incident where a lifting lug failed. This is largely due to over compensation of an existing design. This design has been approved by a certified PE, but does not give much insight on how it was analyzed. Not to mention that the safety factor being used in the calculation was 3.0. I would have to say that is fairly generous.
Over the next few months I will be designing and analyzing lifting lugs and posting my results here. I am incorporating parametric algorithms to optimize the designs.