Back in October of 2013 you may have seen a detailed article about our 6” all directional 564 Mercer joints at the state of the art Costanera Center in Santiago, Chile – the tallest building in South America at 300 meters. If not, shame on you! (Don’t worry, we have you covered here: https://mason-ind.com/costanera-center-santiago-chile/)
It seems when writing that piece, we were remiss in praising the fine work our Stainless Steel department does. On the same project, we were tasked with finding an alternative to a bulky and inefficient solution for piping that was spanning a pedestrian bridge that linked the main power plant of the Costanera Center with the prolific main tower. Stainless Steel stepped up and designed 6” all directional movement, double braided VFLs for the higher than normal seismic movement and pressures. The Stainless Steel Bulletin in our catalog shows a well-drawn schematic of how this works, but what better than a well taken photo by Silentium, our long time Representative and great friends in Chile.
As our bulletin points out, there is minimal space required for installation, all the joints fit snuggly inside one another and our floating flanges provide ease of installation for the mating of the pipe flanges. They look pretty good too! You will also notice hangers supporting the unique 60 degree elbow. These are in place to provide another level of flexibility in the system when the two independently supported buildings pull their respective piping systems apart during seismic events, which are quite common in Santiago.
It was mentioned in our previous post to please keep your “impossible” design challenges coming our way. This is yet another reminder that we are committed to developing new products to meet your design requirements.
