Fike engineer wins prestigious award

BLUE SPRINGS, Mo.—Fike senior test engineer Tom Farrell has earned the William H. Doyle award, the company recently announced. The award was presented at the Loss Prevention Symposium during the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Global Congress on Process Safety, held in in New Orleans, La. March 30-April 3.

Given annually since 1984, the William H. Doyle award recognizes the best paper presented at the previous year's Loss Prevention Symposium.

The winning paper, “Dust Flame Propagation in Industrial Scale Piping, Part I: Empirical Study in a Conveying Vessel-Pipeline System” was presented orally by Farrell at last year's conference in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to Farrell, the other primary authors of the research paper were Fike employees Jim Vingerhoets, Jef Snoeys, and John Going. Many of the tests and information presented in the paper were conducted at Fike's unique, state-of-the-art, comprehensive combustion and research testing facility, located at its global headquarters here, the company said in a March news release.

"This paper represents a significant multi-year research effort conducted by Fike's global explosion protection research team, to gain significant understanding of flame propagation in flowing pipes on an industrial scale, correlate CFD simulations with experimental results, and connect isolation and venting system design," Farrell said, in a prepared statement. “I am proud to be a part of a company that invests its time and energy into constantly improving its products … and is dedicated to improving industrial safety as a world global leader in process safety solutions.”