All-Radius Instant Emergency Strongback (ARIES) Pressurized Leak Arresting System for Emergency Pipe Repair Applications

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes a new technology for emergency leak arresting aboard Navy vessels. The great variety of pipe configurations, such as elbows, tee’s, valves, and mountings, compounded by the variety of possible leak geometries, such as deformed, jagged, or jutting, make the use of a single patch geometry very problematic. Additionally, the need to arrest freely flowing leaks requires mechanical stability to seal against outward pressure that putties, glues, and tapes cannot easily provide. PSI’s All-Radius Instant Emergency Strongback (ARIES) pressurized leak arresting system addresses these difficulties by providing a flexible and formable sheet that can be adapted to pipe and leak parameters at hand, then instantly hardened. This hardened sheet then is installed in a similar fashion as conventional strongbacks. To further improve emergency leak arresting PSI proposes a novel relief nozzle system and improved strong back clamping hardware that is made possible by adopting the novel ARIES. The ARIES system is an enabling technology that will provide optimized tensile strength, curing speed, material compatible, flexible, and fire resistant strongbacks to unify all pipe repair operations for Navy vessels.