Piping Stress Analysis - Pit fall preventions: 1.

When the support is taken from the equipment in paticular vertical vessels, t he displacement of the equipment with respect to support shall be defined for th e support through C-node option. 2. Pipeline routing, avoid the turning points at the structural supports (i.e.) at higher elevations and try to maintain at the sleeper level. This may avoid ov er displacement and less load on structural support. 3. While defining "Single / Double" flanged type for elbow try to model in a con servative approach (i.e.) for example, for long/pipeline if the elbow is double flanged type, then the thermal expansion stress will be less and vice versa. So as conservative approach for long pipeline avoid modeling the elbow as double fl ange type. In case of sensitive equipments such as pumps, compressors, vessel wi th less allowable nozzle loads, the elbow type shall defined accurately such as "Single/double" flanged type or no flange type etc. and the result shall be chec ked for conservative purpose for self satisfaction. 4. Flange leakage check shall be carried out for all control valves, PSV, shutdo wn valve, equipment nozzles and other special flanges. For piping system consist s of flanged joints such as PTFE lined, FBE coated etc. flange leakage shall be carried for all suspecious flanges such as flange location at the mid of pipe sp an, near the branch connection where large displacement is expected, near the be nd, near the anchor point where huge axial load is possible etc. 5. Avoid using PTFE to make the equipment nozzle loads within the allowable load s. Since it is not trust worthy, it all depends upon the maintanance of the plan t operators. 6. Try to avoid the use of guides and limits stops with speculative /impractical gaps such as 1mm, 1.5mm, 3mm, 5mm gap etc. to make the sensitive equipment nozz le loads to be within the allowable loads. For example, adding a limit stop with 3mm gap near the pump to show that the nozzle loads are within the allowable li mit and changing the same limit stop gap to 1.5mm gap or to 5mm gap to show the nozzle loads are exceeding the allowable limit is not acceptable. Since such as minor gap is impractical and cannot be furnished in real time situation at site. Limit stop or guides shall be provided such that variation of the gaps should n ot affect the pump nozzle loads, if variation is not possible try to provide a 0 mm gap for the restraints, at least it is practical at site. 7. The structural supports or dummy supports located near to the sensitive equip ments which affect the nozzle loads shall be examined with additonal caution (i. e.) the support stiffness is also a factor that affect the nozzle loads. For exa mple, if a dummy support with limit stop is provided at the discharge line of pu mp, Caesar-II default structural rigidity / stiffness is 10e12 N/mm for which th e provided dummy support is acceptable to limit the nozzle loads, but in practic e the dummy support with 10e12 N/mm stiffness laterally is impractical for such situation so actual designed support will not provide such a stiffness and hence over load on pump nozzle. It is the responsibility of the stress engineer to cl early explain the stiffness requirement to civil and piping department. 8. When handling a pump piping system or other system with multiple operating sc enarios such as one operating and other standby. The stagnation temperature shal l be started from the branch connection for conservative approach not from the o n-off valve or gate valve. 9. Trunnion supports shall be used to resist water hammer loads. (Ref. ERPI mate rial - Stress indices for elbows with trunnion attachment) 10. Take care about the SIF used in the stress analysis, for a piping system wit h flanged elbow, three formulas shall be included such as In-plane / out-plane S IF (i), pressure stiffening (Pe) and correction factor (C) for flanges at elbow. Normally, more value of "i" increases the sustained stresses, increase in "Pe" will reduce the "i" and decrease the sustained stress and addition of "C" will a lso reduce the "i" and further sustained stress. In case of thermal expansion, t he flexibility factor "k" plays an important role and the effect of "k" is same as "i" that is increase in "Pe" and addition of "C" will reduce the "k" factor, which reduces the expansion stress. As per ASME B31.3, pressure stiffening shall

be considered in the analysis by default. Caesar-II take care of this by defaul t as per selected piping code. 11. Bourdon tube effect is the stiffening effect at the elbow caused by the inte rnal pressure tending to straighten the pipe out. It is most noticeable, and sho uld be paticularly considered in thin walled large diameter pipe. This effect sh ould not be considered in cold lines where the pipe is contracting as it aids th e contraction of the pipe and is hence a less conservative assumption. 12. The equipment nozzle loads shall be checked for the operating temperature wh en the design temperature is selected based on the piping design limit as in the piping specification or nozzle loads shall be checked for design temperature if the it is selected based on the addition safety margin such as 20% or 15deg C o f the operating temperature. 13. ASME B31.3 has two equation (1a & 1b) for allowable displacement stress rang e calculation. In which equation 1a is equal to 1*Sy, where as equation 1b is mo re liberal and is equal to max. of 2*Sy. As per code, equation 1b shall be used, it can be activated in Caesar-II configuration file (Liberal expansion stress a llowable), under "SIF & Stress" option. 14. As per QP contract scopes in general, the piping system shall be designed fo r "30 Years" which is equal to approximately 11000 cycles (30*365=10950), but as per ASME B31.3 code, the stress range factor (f) is equal to one for a period o f 7000 cycles (one day per cycle for 20 years which is equal to 7300 cycles). So , for 11000 cycles the stress range factor (f) will be reduced to 0.933 as per t he equation (1c) which will reduce the allowable displacement stress range (Sa).