• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.91-99
• /
• 2009

Many longitudinally arranged pipes in ships are subject to considerable displacement loads caused by the hull girder bending of 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 as a measure to prevent such failure, with the idea that they can lower the stress level in a pipe by absorbing some portion of these loads. But since such loops have some negative effects, such as causing extra manufacturing cost and occupying extra space, the number and dimensions of the 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 effects of the curvature of loop corners and the flexibility of the straight portion of the pipe. The accuracy of the proposed design formulas was verified by comparing two results respectively obtained by the proposed formulas and MSC/NASTRAN. The paper ends with a sample application of the proposed formulas showing their efficiency.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.24 no.5
• /
• pp.88-93
• /
• 2010

Many pipes that are arranged longitudinally in ships have loops at intervals to prevent the failure of the pipes as they absorb large portions of the axial load caused by the bending of the hull girder and/or thermal loads when the pipes are carrying very hot fluids. Since the loops are curved at corners, an efficient method for conducting the structural analyses of these curved portions is required. In this paper, a pipe loop was analyzed by an analytical method and by the finite-element method in four different ways, i.e., based on straight-beam elements, curved-beam elements, 2-D shell elements, and 3-D solid elements. The results of the five analyses were compared to check the validity of the current curved-beam theory. The paper includes some suggestions on how to analyze the pipe loops efficiently.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.87-93
• /
• 2012

Many longitudinally-arranged pipes in ships are equipped with loops as a measure to reduce stresses caused by displacement loads conveyed from the hull girder bending and/or thermal loads of carried fluid of non-ambient temperature. But as the loops have some negative effects such as causing extra manufacturing cost and occupying extra space, the number and the dimensions of the loops need to be minimized. In the meanwhile, a design formula for pipe loops has been developed by modeling them as a spring element of which stresses and axial stiffness are calculated based on the beam theory. But as the beam theory turns out to be inappropriate to deal with the complex structural behavior in the curved corner portion of the loop, this paper aims at improving the previously developed design formula by adopting correction factors which can allow for the gap between the results of beam theory and a more accurate analysis. This paper adopts a finite element analysis with two-dimensional shell elements with some validation work for it. The paper ends with a sample application of the proposed formulas showing their accuracy and efficiency.