Article Published In Vol.2 (May-June-2014)

Analytical Calculations for Piping Thickness and Stress

Author : Pramod Bhatia and Anup Jha

Piping systems are important means of fluid transportation and we can find their use in several industrial and commercial applications. Some of the typical situations where pipes are used are: power plants, oil refineries, steel industry, oil and gas transportation, commercial heating etc. Hence, sustainability and durability of piping system is of keen importance. Failure in piping deign can cause severe accidents and shortage of many other essential resources like electricity, water, gas, fuel for transportation etc. Pipe failure is typically caused by increased stresses beyond allowable limits which are caused due to thermal expansion, fatigue, creep, sustained loading, wind, seismic loading, snow etc. Although with the advent of computers we have resorted to computations methods of piping design, the manual analytical methods still find their utility. Hence in this paper, we present the analytical method of calculating two important components of piping design i.e piping thickness and stress under sustained loading.

Keywords: Piping design, piping thickness, sustained loading, analytical method