The problem with standard heat exchanger design is that flow is never evenly distributed through each tube in the bundle. The tube in the center receives most of the fluid. A baffle improves the situation, but engineers believed that they could acquire even more heat transfer surface area from the side tubes. They learned that the flow distributor did outperform the baffle. Finally, the engineers persuaded their managers that the flow distributor, although more expensive than the baffle, was a better choice.
Stucco is a plaster made of dehydrated lime, powdered marble, and glue constructed on a wire mesh.
Hall and his research team at the University of California, San Diego, tested this theory by constructing test houses on a hydraulic shake table that simulated earthquakes. The tops of the first test houses, enclosed in plywood rather than stucco, swayed back and forth 12.5 centimeters further than the bottom. The second set of test houses were built with stucco, and their tops only swayed 2.5 centimeters, while their structures only suffered a few cracks. The amount of protection depends on the gap behind the stucco. Placed far enough from the wooden frame of the house, stucco can absorb most of the tension during an earthquake.