Effect of Ovality in Inlet Pigtail Pipe Bends Under Combined Internal Pressure and In-Plane Bending for Ni-Fe-Cr B407 Material

Abstract

Abstract The present paper makes an attempt to depict the effect of ovality in the inlet pigtail pipe bend of a reformer under combined internal pressure and in-plane bending. Finite element analysis (FEA) and experiments have been used. An incoloy Ni-Fe-Cr B407 alloy material was considered for study and assumed to be elastic-perfectly plastic in behavior. The design of pipe bend is based on ASME B31.3 standard and during manufacturing process, it is challenging to avoid thickening on the inner radius and thinning on the outer radius of pipe bend. This geometrical shape imperfection is known as ovality and its effect needs investigation which is considered for the study. The finite element analysis (ANSYS-workbench) results showed that ovality affects the load carrying capacity of the pipe bend and it was varying with bend factor (h). By data fitting of finite element results, an empirical formula for the limit load of inlet pigtail pipe bend with ovality has been proposed, which is validated by experiments.