Depends how heavy it is and what angle its come off at. The force required to hold it in the hub is mass x radius x 4 x PI(SQ) that lot divided by the time for one revolution squared. I wouldn't be surprised if it was over 500m away but would be over Km. You have to use a bit of calculus to work out the equivalent radius and mass of a point mass spinning round the centre of rotation.
Once had a screw up doing what I thought was an inappropriately large volume of pressure test on a live test pressure pipe system to be rated and proofed at 50bar for the oil industry.
Normally we would fill them full of water so keep the volume of air down so if it did go bang things wouldn't move much.
But oh no this one had to be full of gas at extremely high pressure.
Did it at the weekend so nobody was in the building apart from us and some radiographers.
I had arranged everything so valves plus attachments were pointed towards the outside of the building pointing slightly up.
Nested behind 4 thick of rail sleepers watching the pressure increase we were just getting to the soak pressure ready to shut the supply off to see if there was any leaks, strain gauges were looking good and about to give a sigh of relief when the was an almighty bang.
A 175kg valve had blown off a 20" dia pipe with a 24" OD flange ripped the bolts right through the flange.
Never saw that again either and when I went outside across the bay all I could see was the backside of a supply boat going into Aberdeen harbour in the general direction of where it had been pointing. It was a worrying couple of hours listening to Northsound for reports of a supply boat sunk in front of Torry battery.
Last edited by mad_jock; 28th Oct 2014 at 21:52.