Investigation of Design Method for Piping Systems to Prevent Acoustic Fatigue in Process Plants

Piping systems for steam or gases with a pressure reducing device can cause acoustically induced vibration, resulting in material fatigue failure in process plant. Numerical investigation using sound-structure interaction analysis has been done to find the possible solution to reduce the dynamic stress level in the piping structure. The result shows that reinforcing of the pipe structure such as use of circumferential stiffener rings change the structural characteristic and the maximum stress in the pipe wall. Structural natural frequency is applied to evaluate both effectiveness of reinforcement of pipe structure and the effectiveness of the increase of pipe wall thickness.Copyright © 2002 by ASME