Parametric Study of Steel Pipe rack

Pipe racks are structures in the oil and gas, petrochemical, power and chemical industry that are designed to support various process and utility pipes, electrical and instrumentation cable trays. Pipe racks generally transfer fluid/material between equipment and various process units and thus forms the main artery of process units. In any oil and gas or petrochemical industry, the quantum of structural steel of pipe racks contribute around 20–50% of the overall structural steel of the project based on the process unit. Therefore, it was found necessary to study the design of steel pipe racks to optimize the consumption of the structural steel. For developing countries like India, such study will help to reduce consumption of structural steel which will lead to saving in fabrication cost, erection cost of the project. Further such study will also help in reducing national requirement of structural steel for various projects being executed simultaneously. In this paper, parametric study has been carried out for the design of pipe racks by changing width, height and support conditions of pipe rack to compare the results. In this study, analysis and design of a total 32 pipe racks are carried out by using STAAD.Pro software. In this parametric study, 16 pipe racks are analyzed and designed for pinned base condition and 16 pipe racks for fixed-based condition using Limit State Method of design by IS 800: 2007. Results are tabulated and various graphs have been plotted to draw realistic conclusions.