Development of flexibility factors for fabricated tee branch connections
- Sharoden Engineering Consultants, Matthews, NC (United States)
Flexibility factors for pipe and piping components are provided to piping stress analysts by the ASME Code to simplify the task of analyzing piping systems. The Code allows the analyst to perform a simplified finite element analysis that utilizes straight and curbed beam elements to represent the piping system. Flexibility factors in conjunction with stress intensification factors (SIFs), are incorporated into the piping stress analyses to represent the actual complex behavior of the piping components within the model. The need to determine reasonable and appropriate flexibility factors and SIFs for a series of relatively small diameter pipes which form branch connections from relatively large diameter run pipes becomes quite apparent when the allowable stress approaches a pre-defined minimum. This need led to the previous work of Williams (1995) which calculated the SIFs for a large number of fabricated tee branch connections. The purpose of the current work is to extend the previous effort by Williams and present the calculated in-plane and out-of-plane flexibility factors for these same geometries. This work utilized the finite element method to determine the relative rotations of the branch connections for in-plane and out-of-plane moment loadings. As in the previous work, a parametric study was performed to investigate a large range of branch-to-run geometries. The results of the finite element analysis displacements for both in-plane and out-of-plane moment loadings on the branch end of a series of fabricated tees are presented.
- OSTI ID:
- 418128
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960706--; ISBN 0-7918-1778-4
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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