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Piping Vibration: Causes, Limits & Remedies: Public Courses In-House Courses Operator Training
Piping Vibration: Causes, Limits & Remedies: Public Courses In-House Courses Operator Training
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When our train is stationary the sound moves away from the train at 330 m/s in all directions. The wavelength is the same Entries RSS
as the same travels in all directions. When the train starts to move, we have the sound AND the train traveling in the same
direction to the front of the train but moving in OPPOSITE directions when viewed from behind the train. The speed of the Comments RSS
sound hasn’t changed but because the train and the sound are traveling in the same direction at the front of the train the
wavelength is compressed. Using C = fλ as the wavelength is compressed and the speed of sound stays the same then
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frequency must increase. The opposite effect happens as the train moves away from us, so we hear a lower frequency or
deeper tone.
Factor C is a physical value depending on the properties of the fluid. However, the wavelength is affected by the speed of
the fluid flow through the pipe – the Doppler effect.
But we have a pipe with fluid traveling along the inside of the pipe. What does this have to do with moving trains? Only
that in both cases we have to think about Doppler.
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Let’s move to wind musical instruments. When air is blown into a trumpet or trombone you only get a distinct tone if you
blow into the mouthpiece at a particular rate – that is why trumpeters “purse” their lips to get the right airspeed. When you
get the correct airspeed the wavelength becomes the same as the length of tubing, so you get a standing wave and the
instrument sounds the desired note. The length of the tubing can be adjusted on a trumpet using valves or on a trombone
using the slide. In effect, you are changing the wavelength of the air and that is changing the frequency. All of us have tried
blowing across a part empty bottle and we get a tone if the speed of the blow is “just right.”
The nearest our pipe is to the analogy of a trumpet is a section of pipe between two bends. The half wavelength is actually
longer than the distance between the bends (add about 15%). The part open bottle analogy equates to a dead leg at a tee
and in that case, we have a quarter wavelength.
So now let’s combine the standing wave and the Doppler effect in our pipe. Instead of a train moving we now have liquid
or gas moving along the pipe. In effect, we are causing the wavelength to change by changing the flow velocity relative to
the speed of sound. This can get us into trouble in one of two ways:
1. If you have a forcing vibration at the same frequency you get resonance of the fluid inside the pipe. This happened
to me once on a pump running at 2970 rpm discharging into a line that had a length between the discharge flange
and the next tee that equated to the standing wave that had a frequency of 50 Hz. Vibration at about 20 mm/s rms
and a bearing life of 3 months. We changed the configuration of the discharge piping and vibration came down to
less than 2 mm/s and no more bearing failures.
2. If the frequency of the standing wave is close to the natural frequency of the mechanical section of pipe you have
resonance. This happened on the discharge of a large blower in China. The distance between the discharge flange
of the blower and the NRV gave a standing wave with a frequency that was very close to the natural frequency of the
piping. We moved the NRV and the vibration problem disappeared.
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Remember that standing waves can occur not only at fundamental frequency but also at “overtones”. Don’t ignore the
overtones.
We still use C = fλ to calculate the fundamental frequency so with a speed of sound of 330 m/s and an end-corrected
wavelength of 10 m we would have a fundamental tone of 33 Hz. But as soon as fluid flows through the pipe we have to
modify that wavelength. So, if we flow at 33 m/s that means a 10% change in apparent speed of sound so we would get a
new frequency of (330+33)/10 = 36.3 Hz.
Our pipe is carrying 22 MW natural gas at 80 ֯C with a speed of sound of 365 m/s. Our section of piping has a length of
8.5 m between bends which equates to an open/open pipe of 8.5 m length. which gives a wavelength of 17 m. Add 15%
to that length for “end effect” correction and we get a fundamental tone or frequency of 365/ (10*1.15) = 18.54 Hz.
But we now flow gas through the pipe at 20 m/s which, when considering the Doppler effect, changes that frequency to
19.72 Hz. But what makes it really worrying is that the first overtone is 39.45 Hz, the second overtone is 49.31 Hz but the
3rd overtone is 78.9 Hz which is rather close to our mechanical natural frequency of 78 Hz.
On very large diameter piping there is a possibility of shell wall resonance but that is quite rare and tends to happen on
trunking rather than pipework (large diameter and thin wall) so we won’t get into it here.
If we leave a vibrating pipe in place long enough and the vibration is severe enough the pipe will develop a crack and we
get a leak. We are talking about fatigue failure. To make things easy for us there are several versions of fatigue limits we
can apply to piping and the one I will mention is API STD 618. Now before you start jumping up and down complaining
that is a standard for reciprocating compressors let me say that yes, you are right. But this section of the standard works
for all steel piping because it is VERY conservative.
► A constant allowable vibration amplitude of 0.5 mm peak-to-peak (20 mils peak-to-peak) for frequencies below
10 Hz (the frequency of 10 Hz is also according to ISO 10816).
► A constant allowable vibration velocity of approximately 32 mm/s peak-to-peak (1.25 in./s peak-to-peak) for
frequencies between 10 and 200 Hz.
• We need to be aware that 32 mm/s pk-pk is the same as 16 mm/s peak and 11.3 mm/s rms. To convert
displacement to velocity:
• Vibration measurements are almost always displayed in terms of peak-peak for displacement (total movement) but
velocity readings are only ever shown as zero to peak or even rms so don’t be confused by the API 618 limits. To
see the relationship between pk-pk, peak and rms look at the image below.
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The rms. or root mean square velocity is a quantitative measure of the effective velocity and reflects the power or energy
being used to vibrate the machine mass. Peak value is the maximum amplitude seen during the measurement referenced
to zero velocity and peak to peak is a measure of the total movement so is usually only used for displacement.
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This image illustrates the movement of a pendulum. The figure above shows that at position B and C, the velocity is zero,
and at position A the velocity is maximum, first to the right, then to the left. The negative peak velocity differs only in
direction, not magnitude. The rate of change of displacement is the velocity, therefore if D is expressed in terms of mm,
instead of the usual micron, then the product 2pfD will be the velocity in mm/s which are the units used for velocity in
vibration work.
This relationship between velocity and displacement is an important factor when considering severity of piping vibration –
if you want to be accurate. I really don’t care about vibration amplitudes or movement in pipes, what I care about is the
stresses that have been imparted to the pipe. If we consider a resonant pipe, then the actual forces are quite low but the
physical movement (or displacement) could be quite high.
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If we consider the stress-strain diagram for carbon steel, A106GrB has a tensile stress specified at 415 MPa and yield
stress of 240 MPa (see below).
We need to make sure the stress value due to the bending effect of the piping vibration is well below the yield value and
we can use our high school physics knowledge to do this.
Where:
E = Youngs modulus
So, let’s say our 5 m pipe has a maximum vibration amplitude of 0.5 mm pk-pk. The bending stress is
That sounds quite reasonable but what happens if the vibration is 5 mm pk-pk? The stress is now 103 MPa. Compare that
to our yield stress of 240 MPa and you would think our pipe should be fine, but API 618 warns us that if there is a cyclic
stress level in the piping that stress level must not exceed the endurance limits of the piping materials. So, what is the
endurance level? It is the value of the stress below which a material can presumably endure an infinite number of stress
cycles, that is, the stress at which the S-N diagram becomes and appears to remain horizontal. The existence of a fatigue
limit is typical for carbon and low alloy steels.
Looking at the image below we have a plot of applied stress against the number of cycles the metal endured before
rupturing of a carbon steel of a known UTS. It is possible to predict (very approximately) the life to failure of the equipment
if we have this plot. Our A-106 pipe steel follows the dashed line fairly closely so we can see that if we have a stress of
103 MPa the steel would be expected to fail due to cyclic loading at about 200,000 cycles.
If our pipe is vibrating at 67 Hz that means 67 cycles per second, so we have a life before failure of 200,000 / 67 = 2958
seconds – less than an hour.
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To operate our pipe safely for an extended period then the vibration MUST induce a stress that is less than the endurance
limit. And that is why the API recommendation is so conservative. But if you really need to operate the equipment you
can carry out a fatigue analysis as we have done or you could use API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 which can guide you through a
step by step procedure to determine if you can use the pipe for an extended time.
►Find out if the vibration is resonant – that means find the natural frequency
►If the vibration is resonant find out what is the forcing frequency – that could be a nearby piece of equipment,
external effects such as wind or fluid flow induced vibration
►Determine if the vibration levels are acceptable – you could use API 618 for that or carry out a full fatigue analysis.
To remedy the problem, you simply have to separate the natural frequency from the forcing frequency.
To change the natural frequency, you must change either the stiffness or the mass. It is usually much easier to change
the effective mass by changing the length between supports either by moving one of the existing supports or by adding a
new one.
Otherwise, you have to attack the forcing frequency. If it’s a rotating machine you can change the speed, isolate the
machine from the pipework or fix the vibration issue such as unbalance or misalignment. If the problem is flow induced or
VIV you will have to do the analysis to positively identify the culprit and make changes in flow rate, piping arrangement or
even production procedures.
I hope you find this series of posts useful. To learn more about similar cases and how to minimize operational troubles, we
suggest attending our ME41 (Piping Systems – Mechanical Design and Specification) and PF49 (Troubleshooting
Oil and Gas Processing Facilities) courses.
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