Flow Induced Forces on Pipe Elbows

Internal flow in piping systems can be the source of significant forces of dynamic nature caused by variations of the flow characteristics along the length of the piping system and over time. The resulting Flow Induced Vibrations (FIVs) are often associated with fatigue failures. This paper attempts to establish a simple but robust approach to address FIV problems in piping systems resulting from complex flow-related phenomena, focusing on pipe elbows and single-phase flow conditions. The analysis approach presented in this study is numerical and it is based on a combination of advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models with detailed finite element (FE) models of the geometries considered. The results obtained are used to establish analytical closed-form expressions to correlate the piping system’s primary geometrical characteristics with the maximum resulting flow-induced forces.