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Detailed Engineering for Piping

Background

Tractebel Engineering (TE), member of the SUEZ group, developed its first experience in detailed engineering for piping back in the seventies, during the design stage of the Belgian nuclear plants. TE reviewed and approved the design work performed by piping contractors.

In the late seventies, as the end of the design stage was nearing, it became evident to TE that the expertise in detailed engineering for piping had to be mastered and maintained within their own organisation to guarantee a reliable and steady service to the owners of the Belgian power plants.

It has ever since been one of TE's priorities to develop the capabilities and resources required to quickly respond to all the current needs of our utilities, i.e.:

• Detailed design for piping, including the production of Design Specification and stress isometric drawings
• Analysis of piping systems, design and analysis of piping supports to the requirements of the most commonly used Codes, including ANSI B3 1.1, B31.3, ASME Section III, …
• Procurement of piping materials
• Qualification, selection and follow-up of piping contractors
• In-service problem solving such as piping vibration, failure, excessive displacements, waterhammer, support distortion or failure
• Improvement of in-service operations such as large scale snubber reduction programs

Resources

THE WORKFORCE

The bulk of TE's piping expertise resides with over twenty experienced graduate engineers and technicians with rich and varied backgrounds.

Some have been trained in the design offices of major NSSS suppliers where they became acquainted with the most advanced analytical methods; others have worked for several years in piping contracting organisations where they learned the more practical requirements and skills of the shop and field work; others are newly graduated mechanical engineers with fresh knowledge of theoretical foundations and computer techniques.

THE ENVIRONMENT

TE has included the QA requirements of 10CFR50 appendix B in its procedures since the beginning of its involvement in the nuclear industry. It can draw on the resources and valuable expertise from many other TE engineers specialised in:

Layout, for the routing of pipes in areas with complex layout requirements

Equipment, for equipment and valve data and interface

Quality Surveillance for the follow-up of the shop, field tests and controls as required by the applicable Codes

Thermal Hydraulics, whose experts can generate hydraulic forcing functions for the various normal and accidental plant conditions

Structural Analysis when the piping qualification process calls for more sophisticated finite element analysis techniques.

TE also takes advantage of the permanent feedback it receives from the operating Belgian plants, and from foreign customers, to build up its experience and improve its work procedures.

Through the years, TE developed considerable expertise in the use and interpretation of piping codes thanks to its long practice of those construction codes and through its permanent participation in several ASME III and XI Working Groups in charge of developing and enhancing those codes.

THE TOOLS FOR THE JOB

TE presently uses a number of computer programs to make its production work efficient and reliable; these are either licensed commercial programs or in-house developed programs.In both cases they are documented and maintained according to the stringent requirements of the ISO 9001 standard.

For piping analysis

The Pipestress program is used to perform static and linear dynamic analyses of piping systems as well as stress checks with regard to most current Codes, including ANSI, ASME as well as many other national Piping Codes.

Currently TE is probably the Pipestress user with the deepest knowledge of this piping program world-wide.TE has also dramatically improved the modal extraction algorithm for its in-house version of Pipestress, TE developed and integrated the Twin Mode Rotation Method in Pipestress (which in some cases makes it possible to drastically reduce the conservatism of the piping calculation)

The EditPipe program is an in-house developed package used as pre- and post-processor to the Pipestress program; this program has been commercialised since 1995 and has already become a must for the new Pipestress users: it offers a user-friendly environment to Pipestress such as libraries of piping elements and material properties as well as advanced interactive graphic capabilities most useful to visualise input data (element properties, response spectra, ...) and output results (deformed shapes for any load case)

The Adamos program consists in a specific tool developed by Tractebel in order to perform time history calculations for lines whose supports exhibit a non linear behaviour (gaps). This tool is mainly used in projects of reduction or elimination of the expensive "snubbers", those mechanical devices already present in a lot of nuclear power plants.

Piping systems can be directly modeled and imported from the CAD software Pdspipe

Flowmaster is the program dealing with dynamic flow transient effects

For piping support design and analysis

The Images-3D program is used to perform static and dynamic analysis of supports and structures made of beams and plates

The Newtraps program is an in-house developed package used as a post-processor to the Images-3D program; it performs stress checks according to the ASME and NBN Codes as well as fillet weld sizing

To perform analysis for structures or mechanical components, the finite - element Systus software is used

Capabilities

PIPING DESIGN

• Determination of piping categories
• Production of certified design specifications
• Production of layout drawings
• Review of pipe line routing for flexibility purposes
• Production of piping stress isometric Drawings
• Determination of piping support requirements (type and location), including seismic and other dynamic restraint

Combined Cycle Plant - live steam pipe

PIPING ANALYSIS

• Static analysis, i.e. dead-weight and other sustained toads, thermal loading, including thermal stratification analysis
• Dynamic analysis using the response spectrum method, time history accelerations (e.g. earthquakes) or forcing functions (e.g. water hammer)
• Piping qualification to the stress and fatigue requirements of the most commonly used Codes including ANSI B3 1. 1, B31.7, ASME Section III - Subsection Nx-3600

• Assessment of piping vibration problems and determination of appropriate solutions such as absorbing restraints, viscodampers, etc

• Supporting improvement in order to reduce the reaction loads on equipment nozzle

CLASS 1 PIPING ANALYSIS

• Class 1 nuclear piping qualification according to the ASME Code Section III - Subsection NB-3600
• Large experience and skill of complex fatigue analyses, with help of specialised programs such as Transa for the evaluation of thermal parameters
• In some pipe re-qualification projects, usage factors could be consequently reduced by a factor between 4 and 20.

SUPPORT DESIGN AND ANALYSIS

• Design of piping supports and structures, including weld sizing and anchor details
• Static and dynamic analysis of such structures to all loading conditions
• Support structure qualification according to the ASME Section III - Subsection NF and the NBN Code
• Production of piping support drawings and bills of materials

MECHANICAL COMPONENTS

More complex structures requiring accurate modeling can be analyzed with a finite – element program, e.g. :

• to resist to axial forces for piping supports of cryogenic pipes in gas transportation lines :

• the analysis of the resistance of a branch connection submitted to discharge force of a relief valve (on the left), or thermal fatigue behavior of the channel head of a heat exchanger located at the distribution plate

EQUIPMENT

Design and verification of tanks or vessels can be executed by the mean of Pv-Elite program.

References

Belgium

France

Germany

Guinea

Netherland

Norway

Saudi Arabia

Sweden

Spain

Singapore

Thailand

Turkey

United Kingdom

Selected publications

1999

De Smet M., Guyette M.   "Thermo-mechanical analysis of components subjected to thermal stratification transients", 7^th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering, Tokyo Japan Paper 7444 April 19-23, 1999

1998

Guyette M., De Smet M.    "Thermo-mechanical analysis methods for the conception and the follow-up of components subjected to thermal stratification transients", OECD/DSIN Meeting, Paris June 7-12, 1998

1997

Houdart R., Hennart J.-C., "Advanced Twin Mode Rotation Method" ICONE 5, Nice Urbano M.(France), May 26-30, 1997

Guyette M., De Smet M.  "Justifying fatigue induced by severe thermal stratification transients in feed water systems" ASME PVP Conference, Orlando, USA, July, 27-31, 1997

1995

Mathonet J.-F.,Cherasse J.M.,   "Belgian Methodology for Evaluation of Erosion Corrosion"

Leblois L.-C., Guyette M. "Phenomena in units 1, 2,3 and 4 of Doel Nuclear Power Plant",The Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, Honolulu, July 23-27,1995

Guyette M., Leblois L-C."Belgian Experience with the Stratification in Surge Lines", Belgatom S.A., Nuclear Engineering and Consulting Services.

Guyette M., De Smet M.,      "Inverse and direct transfer functions for the fatigue follow-up of piping systems subject to stratification", Nuclear Engineering and Design 153 (1995) 183-195

1994

Geraets L.-H., Weverbergh J. "Design of a slug trap to assess the structural integrity of the pressuriser discharge piping system", PVP-Vol. 278, The 1994 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, Minneapolis, June 19-23, 1994

Houdart R., Hennart J.-C.    "Twin Mode Rotation Method", PVP-Vol. 275-1, The 1994 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, Minneapolis June 19-23,1994

Guyette, M. "Prediction of Fluid Temperatures from Measurements of Outside Wall Temperatures in Pipes", Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology, Vol. 116,179-187

1992

Slechten, J."Operating Experience with Snubbers", SNUG 1992 Winter Meeting, Columbia SC 25-26 February 1992

1991

Lepièce M., Van Vyve J.  "Design Methodology to reduce Vibration Problems in Pipework Systems by the Use of Visco Dampers", SMIRT 11 Transactions Vol D (August 1991), Tokyo Japan, Paper D08/3

Detroux P., Lafaille J.-P.  "Simplified Method to evaluate Seismic Nozzle Loads of Mechanical Equipment connected to unbraced piping", PVP ASME Conference,San Diego,1991

1989

Lepièce M., Leblois L.-C.   "Preoperational Testing Procedure for Vibration of Piping Systems", SMIRT 10, Anaheim, 1989

Geraets L.-H., Daoust P., "Piping Design and Analysis: Comparison between Belgian"

Lafaille J.-P. "Applications of French and American Rules" Int. J. Pres. Ves & Piping 0308-0161/89/§03-50, Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd, England, 1989

1985

Geraets L.-H., Forget J.-P.  "An Overlapping Method for the Dynamic Analysis of Piping (Sub)Systems", in "Recent Advances in Seismic Design of Piping and Components", ASME-PVP-98-3, ASME, New York, 1985

Geraets L.-H., Forget J.-P.  "Criteria for Decoupling and Overlap of Piping Systems", SMIRT-8, Brussels, 1985, Paper F1 5/6

1984

Geraets L.-H., Detroux P."Equipment Modelling in Piping Dynamic Analysis", in "Seismic Effects in PVP Components", ASME-PVP-88, New York, 1984

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