Piping Engineering

Piping Material Selection

Material selection is a part of whole engineering

decision that should be made before someone starts to
build piping network. It must be carefully considered
that the piping will retain the pressure, temperature
and corrosion as an inherent operating condition.
Table.1 in attachment simply can be used as guidance
to select the proper pipe and fittings material based on
the temperature conditions. In addition to this, if the
predicted corrosion rate is high, carbon steel base
material can be use either by adding or increasing the
corrosion allowance. Somehow, it is preferred to use
another materials such as 22% Cr Duplex (A-790
UNS SS31803) or ASTM A312 SS 316 instead of
carbon steel with corrosion allowance higher than
6mm, concerning that carbon steel with excessive
thickness and large diameter will increase stresses,
reduce the flexibility of the piping system (especially
at high temperature and pressure), and give more
additional load to support and platform globally.
Table.2 in attachment is presented here as additional
information for 22%Cr Duplex SS. This material has
been attracted many engineers in the past decade, as it
offers some major benefits both in its mechanical
properties and chemical resistance to corrosion.
It must barely keep in mind that NACE MR01-75
certification would be required if the piping system is
subjected to sour services. This standard states that
metallic material under sour service must not have
hardness greater than 22 HRC. This is important to
avoid sulfide stress corrosion cracking (SSCC).

Wall Thickness Calculation

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Developing new piping specification for a new

project requires pipe wall thickness calculation. This
is the second stage after the material has been
selected. The wall thickness calculation is important
as someone has to purchase the available piping size

in the market at standardized wall thickness (scheduled).

The following formula should be used:

Where:
tm = minimum required wall thickness (inches).
P = internal design pressure (psig).
T = selected pipe wall thickness (look at pipe
schedules Table.3 below)
D = outside diameter of pipe (inches).
S = allowable stresses for pipe material (psi), per
tables in ASME B31.3 (Appendix A)
E = longitudinal weld joint factor, per tables in
ASME B31.3 (Appendix A- normally 1.0
for seamless pipe).
Y = temperature factor, per Table 304.1.1 in
ASME B31.3 (Normally 0.4).
C = the sum of mechanical allowances (groove
depth and threading) plus allowances for
corrosion and erosion (inches).
MT = factor to account for mill tolerance on
pipe wall thickness. 0.875 for seamless
A-106 Gr. B pipe and seamless API-5L
Gr. B pipe. 0.90 for API-5L Gr. B welded
20 inch NPS and above.
Notes: (1) This formula should only be used
for t less than D/6 and for P/SE less
than or equal to 0.385.
(2) This formula is derived from the
basic formula for internal pressure
design thickness from ASME

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B31.3 (ASME B31.4 and B31.8

have different formulae).
(3) Threading allowances are as
follows (from ASME B1.20.1, ASME
B31.3, Sections 304.1.1 and 314):
½" - ¾" NPS 0.0571" thread
allowance
1" - 2" NPS 0.0696" thread
allowance

Brief Philosophy of Piping Stress Analysis

To design the proper piping system , engineers must

understand the behavior of piping under loading or
operating condition and also comprehend design code
standard properly. The behavior of piping system is
normally described by such factors, i.e.,

movement/displacement, acceleration, stress, forces,

and moment.
Stress analysis of piping system is primarily due to
safety reason. Generally the purposes of flexibility
analysis are to:
- calculate the stress within piping system and
to validate whether they are exceeding the
code stress or not
- calculate forces and moment at the
equipment nozzle attached to piping such as
vessel, tank, pump, compressors, etc, and
then compare the obtained value with the
allowable nozzle loads.
- Calculate the restrain loads
- Calculate the maximum displacement to
check whether it is causing piping
interference or not

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- Solving dynamic analysis of equipment

vibration, hammering, slugging, seismic, etc
- Optimize the general arrangement and
piping lay out.
The flexibility of piping system should be sufficient
in order to have unhindered movement of piping
under thermal expansion or contraction or movements
of supports and terminal points, therefore it will not
produce the following impacts:
- Failure of piping or support from overstress
or fatigue
- Leakage at joints
- Detrimental stresses or distortion in piping
or in connected equipment (pumps, vessels
or valves for instance) resulting from
excessive thrusts or moments in the piping.
Flexibility denotes the measurement of the presence
of necessary piping length in the proper direction. In
conclusion, the purpose of piping flexibility analysis
is to generate a piping layout that causes neither
excessive stresses nor excessive end reactions. To
achieve this, layout should be not stiff. However, the
system with excessive flexibility is also not desirable
because this requires excess materials, susceptible to
seismic excitation, low natural frequencies, and
increasing initial cost. For example, more length with
many bends increase pressure drop, which inevitably
increase operating cost.
In analyzing piping mechanics, the following
parameters must be considered:
a. The appropriate code that applies to the
system. The code will outline the allowable
stresses.
b. The pressure and temperature (operating and
design)
c. Type of material
d. Pipe size and wall thickness of material
e. Piping geometry including movements of
anchor and restrain
f. Limitations of forces and moments on
equipment nozzles set by NEMA SM 23,

API 617, API 610, WRC 107, or the equipment

manufacturers.

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g. Loading affecting the piping system should be

determined first as load case basis, i.e., static
load (weight effect, thermal expansion and
contraction, effects of support, anchor and
terminal movements, internal or external
pressure loading) and dynamic load (impact
forces, wind, seismic, vibration, and discharge
load)
In any piping system, these criteria must be considered
and satisfied as minimum. For years, there have been
many tools developed to calculate and analyze the stress
in piping systems. However, these simplification
methods will require exhaustive hours of working time if
they are applied to analyze complex system. Recent pipe
stress analysis software is available in the market, such as
AutoPipe, CaesarII, Trifflex, etc. Each of them has
advantages and disadvantages depend on the perspective
of the user and interface system basically. Nevertheless,
the analysis’ activity and philosophy itself would not be
different whatever software we use.
Before developing a piping system, preliminary
assessment must be accomplis hed to select which piping
line is more critical in term of its stress and in what level
of stress the piping is. The complete information of piping
stress analysis requirements (whether or not the
comprehensive formal computer analysis is required)
typically is detailed in critical line list document.
Moreover, the level of piping stress analysis requirements
will be:
a. Level 1
Visual inspection only
b. Level 2
Approximate analysis using tables, charts, for
allocation of supports and restrains.
c. Level 3
Comprehensive computer analysis
The following formula is useful as a preliminary
checking:

where : D = outside diameter of pipe, in

y = resultant of total displacement strains to be
absorbed by the piping system, in
L = developed length of line axis between

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anchors, ft
U = anchor distance (length of straight line
joining anchors), ft
C = 0.03 for US units
Some companies apply different methods to assess a
formal analysis requirement, for example by simple
diameter and temperature graph, or simple diameter and
temperature formula. Despite the simplicity, any shortcut
way such the above method to assess the formal stress

analysis requirement should be treated carefully as

noted by ASME B31.3.

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