L.C. Peng

Famous Person in North California

You were an outstanding secretary in general of six or seven Taiwanese Associations and Chamber of Commerce in Northern California, an initial creator of an influential magazine. You have many followers in that area. My daughter’s in-law was your classmate and your good friend at Taipei Institution of Technology. We talked a lot of thing during our golfing. I asked you: “Why did you abandon so many friends, perfect whether and out bursting housing price of California and moved to Houston?” You simply answered in Taiwanese: “I was ‘Hiaw-Ka-Tsen’”, meaning could not sit still and wasted the move. I told you that you did it only once. I moved from N.J. (attending school) to N.Y.C. (school plus work), to Massachussetts (school) and then to Houston, to Fort Worth, and back to Houston. I did 5 times. In my heart I knew you were trying to avoid the busy social life in Northern California in order to concentrating in writing of the pipeline stress and design. Quoting poem of Tang Dynasty: “Don’t worry meeting the strangers in the unfamiliar world, Everyone in the world knows who I am.” Or “Friends exist all over wide ocean, neighbors filled the horizon.”

Good Friend with Justice

You are over six feet giant. I could not imaging that such a giant fell down so quickly. This incident gives us an alarm of our age. We had over 10 year’s joyful golfing. Your understanding of the professional rules was outstanding. Nobody in our group could beat you. Many years ago, in a tournament, I was assigned to pair with an experienced player. When my tee-off yardage exceeded his by 20 yards he complained: “It is impossible! It is impossible!” I calmed him down by saying “This is my second stroke” Other players took this as a joke and laughed at it. Only you took this as a great insult to me and asked me to challenge him for competition. You are the good friend with justice.

Outstanding Engineer on Dynamic and Static Liquid

Prior to my retirement, I worked at a Nuclear Power Plant, called Comenche Peak, 60 miles south of Fort Worth. That plant had a huge problem with design documentation. NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) refused to issue the power generating permission. The court ordered 90% of the design document needed to be started over from the beginning. We had to hire approximately 5000 various kinds of engineers from nation’s top 10 engineering firms to perform the design. The final cost of the plant at the end reached 11 billion dollars. Among the subjects, the most tedious problem was the pipe stresses and supports. I was amazed that the most widely used computer software for pipe stress and supports was originated by you. Do not think it is a simple problem. It is not an ordinary pipeline in our house. We were talking about the highly pressurized pipelines inside the nuclear power plant. The liquid inside the pipeline is dynamic involving water hammer problem. The pipe breach would cause water jet, creating jet impact. The broken pipe would twist and hit the important machine, other pipeline or cable trays. Thus, the pipeline not only requires adequate support, it also require pipe whip restrain. These problems are extended from Mechanical Engineering to Civil Structural Engineering. That time, I was a structure engineer in charge of Containment Building design. Containment Building is housing the nuclear reactor, which is the heart of the Nuclear Power Plant. Pipeline stress and support inside and the surrounding structures were under extreme strict review and inspection. I was not involved in pipeline stress and support design. Yet the jet impact and pipe whip restrain are structural engineer’s headache problems. Two years ago, you summarized your theory into a nicely published book. It is almost like an encyclopedia of the piping problems. I understand your feeling when you are leaving us. Quote Tang Dynasty’s poem: “There was no person beforehand, there will be no person to follow. Thinking about the distant and azure heaven, solely tear falling, utterly ignorant of the matter.”