Punitive damages is a quasi-punishment that aims at prevention. It is not known under European law. They are awarded in exceptional circumstances. Its purpose is to punish the perpetrator of an insidious and intentional illegal action. The author describes the story of the tanker Exxon Valdez, which struck rocks off the coast of Alaska on 23 March 1989. The captain Joseph Hazelwood was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident. Because of the resultant pollution thousands offishermen applied for compensation, as did the owners of businesses connected with the maritime environment and of shoreline real estate. Exxon Shipping reached many settlements with plaintiffs, but thirtytwo thousand fishermen and owners of shoreline property rejected settlements, and sued Exxon demanding indemnity and the imposition of punitive damages. On 16 September 1994 a jury imposed punitive damages to the sum five thousand million dollars along with an indemnity of 507.5 million dollars. On appeal the quasi punishment was reduced to 4.5 thousand million dollars. The Appeal Court fixed punitive damages at 2.5 thousand million dollars. Both sides appealed to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court considered whether the punitive damages imposed on Exxon were consistent with the principles of maritime law. On 25 June 2008 it finally determined that in cases similar to that of Exxon Shipping the relation of punitive damages to indemnity should be 1:1, and reduced 2.5 thousand million dollars to 507.5 million dollars, which was the indemnity awarded to the plaintiffs.
This paper presents a numerical analysis of an agitated fully baffled cylindrical vessel with a down pumping four blade worn or unworn pitched blade impeller (α = 45° and 30°) under a turbulent flow regime. CFD simulations predict the pumping capacity of the system equipped by worn and unworn pitched blade impeller. Experimental data were taken from the authors’ previous work and compared with results of numerical computations. A good agreement with experimental data was obtained. The ensemble-average mean velocity field with worn and unworn impellers was computed. It follows from the simulation results that the wear rate of the impeller blade has a significantly negative effect on the velocity distribution in an agitated liquid. The greater the destruction of the worn blade, the higher is the deformation of the velocity field around the rotating impeller, with a simultaneous decrease in impeller pumping capacity.