Overview
Project
The Oaks mains replacement, NSW
Product
Ductile Iron custom engineered pipe adaptors
Application
Infrastructure
Asset Owner
Sydney Water
Contractor
West Region Delivery Team (WRDT)
Project background:
A project to replace the water supply mains at The Oaks, a town in the Macarthur Region of New South Wales on the south-western edge of the Sydney Basin.
The challenge:
There were several sections in this pipeline that required connections to different pipeline materials comprising Polyethylene (PE) heavy-walled pipe and DICL (DI) pipe – including some that were already in the ground. Off-the-shelf eccentric tapers would have left a variation of IDs of up to 50mm in some cases, creating a step in the invert level of the pipe causing head loss and possible stress points over time.
The solution:
Vinidex was approached by the WRDT consortium to develop a custom solution. With the support of WRDT’s engineering team, Vinidex proposed an FBE-coated DI custom-casted and machined Flanged Eccentric taper transition fittings solution (to meet the requirements of AS2280 and AS4087 for flanged connections).
Fabricated steel pieces were initially considered, but long lead times, costs, and problematic alignment with PE flanged drilling patterns meant a customised taper transition was preferable, providing significant cost savings and faster install times to the project.
Each Eccentric Transition Taper was manufactured to match the ID of the machined PE stub flanges, delivering a seamless transition between PE to DI at each join along the pipeline (and lower headloss or potential for ragging).
