Flexibility Factors and Stress Indices for Piping Components With D/T ≧ 100 Subjected to In-Plane or Out-of-Plane Moment

The finite element analyses are carried out for the several piping components (D/T ≧ 100) subjected to in-plane or out-of-plane moment. For the stress evaluation of the chemical plant piping systems, ANSI B31.3 is usually applied. But the stress intensification factors and flexibility factors in this code are mainly for a heavy-wall-thickness pipe, so it is necessary to reconsider these factors for a thin-wall-thickness pipe with a large diameter. In our study, several finite element analyses using MSC/NASTRAN program were performed on the pipe bends (elbow or miter bend, 0.01 ≦ h ≦ 0.2) and the unreinforced fabricated tees (50 ≦ D/T_r ≦ 300, 0.5 ≦ d/D ≦ 0.95, 0.25 ≦ T_b/T_r ≦ 0.95), and the empirical formulas for the flexibility factors and the stress indices, due to out-of-plane or in-plane moment, were proposed. Experimental stress analyses for the piping components with D/T_r = 127 were also carried out, and it was confirmed that the results agreed well with the numerical ones.