engineering

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility rather than just read about it. In short: The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is a military fuel storage facility in Hawaii. Operated by the United States Navy, Red Hill supports U.S. military operations in the Pacific.

Key takeaways

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is a military fuel storage facility in Hawaii. Operated by the United States Navy, Red Hill supports U.S. military operations in the Pacific. As of March 7, 2022, the Department of Defense announced the planned closure of the Red Hill facility, due to reduced military need and water contamination issues.

Description Unlike any other facility in the United States, the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility can store up to 250 million gallons of fuel. It consists of 20 steel-lined underground storage tanks encased in concrete, and built into cavities that were mined inside of Red Hill. Each tank has a storage capacity of approximately 12.5 million gallons. The Red Hill tanks are connected to three gravity-fed pipelines that run 2.5 miles inside a tunnel to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor. Each of the 20 tanks at Red Hill measures 100 feet in diameter and is 250 feet in height. The Joint Task Force Red Hill was established on September 30, 2022, for the purpose of "safely and expeditiously" defueling the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage facility. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: "Defueling and closing Red Hill is the right thing to do – for our service members, our families, the people of Hawaii, the environment, and our nation." The commander of the Joint Task Force is Vice. Adm. John F.G. Wade. Red Hill is located under a volcanic mountain ridge near Honolulu. It was declared a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1995.

History

Before the United States entered World War II, the Roosevelt Administration became concerned about the vulnerability of the many above-ground fuel storage tanks at Pearl Harbor. In 1940 it decided to build a new underground facility that would store more fuel and be safe from an enemy aerial attack. The Red Hill site would provide unprecedented flow rates of fuel due to its elevation. In addition, the site's unique geological characteristics, including basalt rock, could support such large tanks. Federal, local government and contracted engineers and geologists performed many surveys of the Koolau Range and eventually reached a consensus on Red Hill as the best choice because it is mostly homogeneous basalt. Their original plan was to build four large underground tanks. These would be horizontal, as all underground tanks were at the time. However, during the planning process, the engineers decided to build the tanks vertically because construction and excavation could occur simultaneously. This was possible because a vertical shaft drilled through the centerline of the tank would allow excavated rock to funnel down onto a series of conveyor belts in the lower access tunnel. Planners and engineers began the process by acquiring the real estate, staging equipment and materials, and building a work camp. The 3,900 workers worked around the clock, seven days a week, to complete the project. Construction started by excavating the vertical shafts for all 20 tanks concurrently with mining of the upper access and lower access tunnels. The tunnels were aligned directly in the middle of the parallel rows of shafts. Once perpendicular to the shafts, cross tunnels were mined to connect the shafts to the main access tunnels. For constructability and safety reasons (cave-ins), the upper domes needed to be built first, so the miners excavated individual ring tunnels around the circumference of each of the future upper dome bases. They then scoped out the area of the domes and proceeded to construct the steel framing, steel liner and rebar. Workers continuously poured concrete that ranged in thickness from two feet at the crown to eight feet at the base. Once the concrete cured, it was pre-stressed by pressure grouting the area between the concrete and the basalt. Upon completion of the excavation, workers erected a steel tower in the center to the full height of 250 feet. The tower served to support concrete chutes, pipes, booms, and other equipment necessary to install the piping, concrete, and steel linings. Workers then began to erect the steel liner and rebar incrementally so that they could pour concrete in stages. Concrete was poured continually and workers had to remove wooden shoring as concrete filled. They injected pressurized grout to pre-stress the concrete by filling void space between the concrete and the gunite. When finished, the tanks were tested by slowly filling them with water while laborers in boats inspected the entire surface area of the steel liner. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place during the construction of Red Hill, and eight construction workers were killed by strafing aircraft. A portion of the site was used to bury hundreds of bodies of Navy personnel killed in the attack. Those not claimed by families were moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific when it opened after the war.

Environmental problems

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility

In research: Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures in Honolulu County, Hawaii, Historic American Engineering Record in Hawaii, Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in simple terms?

The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is a military fuel storage facility in Hawaii. Operated by the United States Navy, Red Hill supports U.S. military operations in the Pacific.

Why does Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility.