At 02:32 am 15/05/2006 -0500, Thomas wrote: > Frank Grimer posted
>> I must admit - I'm more than a bit suspicious of consultants like >> Frost and Sullivan, too. Pilkington Brothers got no less than four >> sets of consultants to approve their launch of Glass-Reinforced >> Cement. I said PB were mad and that GRC would fail when the strain >> capacity ran out at 5 years. Somewhat to my surprise and enormous >> schadenfreude GRC failed right on time. > I'm curious about the failure of the GRC Frank. Why did it fail? > and how did you estimate the time before failure? It failed because it lost all its ductility by the end of 5 years and became as brittle as the unreinforced cement matrix. We knew the time to failure because we had done tests of 5 years duration and more. Basically the alkaline cement attacks the glass The chemists at BRS had developed a zirconium glass which was 10 times as resistant to attack as the traditional E glass used for plastics. But E glass GRC becomes brittle within 6 months. Why did the manufacturers go ahead when they knew the material would become brittle? - You just try and persuade a GLASS manufacturer that brittleness is not a good idea. Why didn't the BRS chemists abort? Well it was their baby and what do chemists know about the dangers of brittleness? Eventually it was the wetting and drying differential shrinkage which did the business. 8-) But you yanks know all about the danger of brittleness, eh! It's not for nothing NASA is known as "Need Another Seven Astronauts". As for the consultants, four lots were hired to tell them what they wanted to hear cos I refused the imprimatur of the BRS Structural Engineering Division - At a crisis meeting held on neutral territory half way between BRS and PB, the PB chairman screamed at me "I'll hound you Grimer - I'll hound you, I'll hound you..." when I wouldn't buckle - and then promptly broke down in tears). My Deputy Director, Cornelius said "I can't have you speaking to my staff like that Dr.B" and Dr.Evans suggested we adjourned. Apparently Dr.B asked our head chemist if I was a communist (I was wearing an astrakhan hat that winter). Gutt said, "On the contrary - he hates communism - he's a catholic." A new committee was formed a month later and much to my relief I was not invited. <g> And so you can well understand my feelings of schadenfreude when 5 years later it all went up the Swannee. Fortunately PB were never allowed to make any structural members because years earlier I has spoken out of turn at a visit of the Director General of all the government environmental research labs and told him that we were in for a repeat of the high alumina cement debacle with GRC. Lyons wanted to close the whole thing down but was persuaded to allow non-structural members such as claddings. Frank
