• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.47-54
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• 2010

In order to reduce the number of installation processes and the cost, a unified ball valve and polyethylene-steel pipe is proposed and tested. An integrated design approach is carried out such that a virtual manufacturing based on finite-element analysis is first performed in order to examine contact conditions under exaggerated temperature variations (${\Delta}T\;=\;60^{\circ}C$ and $-50^{\circ}C$ for summer and winter, respectively). From the final design configuration, it was predicted that the maximum contact pressures are 71 and 8.1 MPa for summer and winter, respectively, at relatively larger contact surface. Based on this observation, a prototype model is fabricated to go through an actual leakage test. The prototype pipe passed a hydrostatic strength test successfully, showing no leakage at even much higher (54 MPa) than the operational pressure (0.25 MPa).