Abstract
Many longitudinal pipes in ships are subject to considerable loads, caused by hull girder bending in the ships and/or thermal loads in some special pipes through which fluids with highly abnormal temperatures are conveyed. As these loads may cause failure in the pipes or their supporting structures, loops have been widely adopted to prevent such failure, based on the idea that they can lower the stress level in a pipe byabsorbing some portion of these loads. But as the loops also have some negative effects, such as causing extra manufacturing cost, deteriorating the function of the pipe, and occupying extra space, the number and dimensions of these loops need to be minimized. This research developed design formulas for pipe loops, modeling them as a spring element, for which the axial stiffness is calculated based on the beam theory, incorporating the flexibility effect of the straight portion of the pipe. The accuracy of the proposed design formulas was verified by comparing two results obtained from the proposed formulas and MSC/NASTRAN. This paper concludes with a sample application of the proposed formulas, showing their efficiency.
