WCA September 2013

The essential first step would be to establish that the magnet, the largest in the world when it was built by scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in the 1990s, is inert. (It was.) No longer essential at Brookhaven, the magnet would exhibit no magnetic properties until plugged in at another research institution funded by the US Department of Energy: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. The next concern would be for the magnetic ring, constructed of steel and aluminium with superconducting coils inside. According to Fermi it cannot be taken apart or twisted more than about one-eighth inch without irreparable damage to the coils. In a five-week journey, commenced 22 nd June, the secured magnet was moved by specially designed truck and barge to the shore of Long Island; then down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida, and up the Mississippi, Illinois, and Des Plaines rivers to Chicago. The $3 million moving costs may be deemed a bargain when compared with the $30 million estimate to construct from scratch the electromagnet needed for an upcoming experiment at Fermi. ❖ Delta Air Lines opened a $1.4-billion terminal at John F Kennedy Airport on 24 th May, strengthening its position in the battle for the lucrative New York travel market. The facility replaces the dilapidated Pan Am terminal, built in 1960, that Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, had come to consider an embarrassment. According to US Customs and Border Protection, JFK is still the primary gateway to the US, having seen 13.1 million inbound international passengers last year. Miami International Airport was second, at 9.8 million, followed by Los Angeles International Airport at 8.3 million. Delta, the largest airline at Detroit Metro Airport, carries about 2.1 million of the international passengers arriving at JFK, more than any other carrier, according to airport operator the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. ❖ Raymond L Conner, the chief executive of Boeing’s civil aircraft division, acknowledged on 16 th June that the company was still fielding questions about measures taken to eliminate risks associated with the lithium-ion batteries on the Boeing 787, known as the Dreamliner. In separate incidents in January, smoke and fire erupted from batteries in two of the standing aircraft, prompting a three-month grounding of the entire Dreamliner fleet. Speaking to reporters on the eve of the Paris Air Show, Mr Conner said of the blow that the battery troubles had dealt the company’s reputation: “It’s unfortunate, but it’s just reality. We have to address it head-on.” Airline industry notes

❖ Mr Onishi observed construction crews working on the area around the shear keys and the adjoining bearings to prepare for installation of the so-called saddles: steel cables that will do the work of bolts by fastening the shear keys to the crossbeam. But Thomas Devine, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, told him that it was premature to adopt the saddle solution before engineers had ascertained the cause of the hydrogen-assisted cracking in the bolts. “It’s a matter of common sense as well as good engineering practice that before you attempt to remediate a problem, you define the problem,” Dr Devine said, adding that only full (ie time-consuming) tests on the 32 bolts would yield an answer. ❖ Political and economic pressure to devise and apply a fix is immense. The eastern stretch of the Bay Bridge was one of the three busiest bridges in the nation, handling about 280,000 cars a day. The longer-range consideration noted by Ms Worth is even more compelling. Government seismologists have said there is a two-in-three probability that a major quake, perhaps originating on the Hayward fault which runs under the Bay Area, could hit before 2033, and with even more devastating force than in 1989. If, in the run-up to Labor Day, little else about the project seemed clear, Steve Heminger forthrightly called the bolt failure “catastrophic.” The executive director of the Oakland-based MTC told the Times : “It is very unusual in bridge construction that you have an element of the structure fail at such a rate.” ❖ Mr Heminger, who also chairs the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee, an umbrella organisation overseeing construction, made a further point. In addition to establishing what caused 32 bolts to fail, officials must decide whether some 2,000 other bolts – similar in design but with no apparent problems – could be inspected and modified, if needed, after the new span is opened to the public. Elsewhere in steel . . . ❖ Accuride Corp (Evansville, Indiana), a supplier of steel components to the North American commercial vehicle market, announced a $5.8 million expansion of powder coating capacity at its Henderson, Kentucky, manufacturing plant. Company officials said that the expansion would include a new, advanced-technology coating line at the steel wheel production facility. Bob Matyi of Platts reported (21 st June) that the company has preliminary approval from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority for up to $600,000 in tax incentives. The Henderson facility, originally a part of Firestone Steel Products, was opened in 1974. ❖ How do you transport a 50-foot-wide, 15-ton electromagnet to its new home 3,200 miles away?

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2013

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