Investigation of Characteristic of Flow Induced Vibration Caused by Turbulence Relating to Acoustically Induced Vibration

Abstract

In the flare piping system, it is known that piping vibrations occur caused by Acoustically Induced Vibration (AIV) and Flow Induced Vibration (FIV) corresponding to high flow rate, high pressure drop and relatively thin pipe wall thickness. For FIV, turbulence generated at combining tee with high fluid velocity results in low frequency piping vibration. For AIV, large noise produced through a component with large pressure drop results in high frequency piping vibration. Carucci and Mueller shows the several cases with piping failure due to AIV and most of these cases the piping failure occurred at the combining tee. In these piping failure cases, the velocity at the combining tee would be quite high close or equal to sound speed and this means piping vibrations could occur due to FIV in addition to AIV. This paper shows the investigation results of FIV at combining tee with 90 degrees using experimental data. The results are compared to the previous study results for 45 degrees combining tee and the difference between 90 and 45 degrees tees are discussed in the view points of pressure fluctuation and piping vibration. This paper also shows that the vibration index proposed by authors is quite effective to evaluate the vibration level caused by FIV for both of 90 and 45 degrees tees. This proposed vibration index is applied to failure and no failure cases presented in Carucci and Mueller paper with some assumptions and it is suggested that the vibration indexes for failure case is relatively higher than those of no failure cases. And this suggests that not only AIV but also FIV could affect the piping failure reported in Carucci and Mueller paper.