Pipe Support Span

Pipe Support Span (Fig. 1) is defined as the optimum distance between two supports so as to avoid excessive
sagging. Pipe span varies with changes in

Pipe Material
Nominal Diameter Of pipe & Schedule
Type of service
Type and Thickness Insulation

Span Length Depends On-

Bending Stress
Deflection
Indentation
Allowable Loads

BENDING STRESS:
Bending is caused mainly due to two reasons:

Uniform Weight Load

Concentrated Weight Load
Uniform Weight Load

Own Weight Of Pipe

Insulation Weight
Weight of Fluid During operation
Weight of hydrostatic fluid During Hydro Test

Concentrated Load

Weight Of Valve, Flanges,

Strainer, specialty in line items etc.

DEFLECTION:
Deflection () is defined as relative displacement of point from its original position.

The basic piping practice to limit pipe deflection between supports to 1OR 1/2 the nominal pipe diameter,
whichever is the smaller.
The most important reason for limiting deflection is to make the pipe stiff enough, that is, of high enough
natural frequency, to avoid large amplitude response under any slight perturbing force .As a rough rule, for
average piping a natural frequency of 4 cycles per second will be found satisfactory. The natural frequency
can be calculated by

INDENTATION:

Where,
t=corroded Thickness of pipe Wall (mm)
S=0.67Sh (N/mm2)
R=Radius of pipe (mm)
d=Bearing Length (mm)
b=Bearing width (mm)
ALLOWABLE LOAD AT SUPPORT:

Where,
Pa=Allowable Load at Support point
t=effective local thickness (pipe wall +Reinforced Pad If Any)
R=outer radius of Pipe
b=Bearing length of pipe (along the axis) on the support structure
IF ACTUAL LOAD AT SUPPORT IS GREATER THAN ALLOWABLE LOAD GIVEN BY ABOVE
FORMULA, REINFORCEMENT PAD WILL BE REQUIRED.
Normally project specific Support SPAN is provided in tabular format for straight pipes. But for elbows or turns the
span to be reduced by a factor as shown in the below attached figure (Fig. 2). Readymade support spans for a
specific pipe diameter and thickness are available in MSS code. For Shell group of companies support span is
provided in DEP.

Fig. 2: Factor to reduce support span depending on layout.