Follow Dharmit Comparison of Flange Calculation ASME Section VIII Division 1 vs Division 2 Division 1 is more conservative than Division 2,

http://engineering.moonish.biz/engineering-info/flange-design-comparision-asme-section-viii-div-1vs-div-2/

My question is: Will the flange leak or not leak? 10 days ago Like CommentFollow Flag More Moffat Araka likes this 12 comments

Follow Dharmit Dharmit Thakore Also, please note that there seems to be a typo in ASME Section VIII Division2 in formula of "V" on page 404 where Xh is greater than 0.5 in last term. Currently on my copy of code it shows Xh^2 x Xh in denominator but it should be Xg^2 x Xh

Feel free to correct me if my interpretation is incorrect. 10 days ago Like

Follow Trevor Trevor Seipp Dharmit - I will communicate your potential typo to the appropriate committee.

Please understand that the flange design calculations in Div. 1 and Div. 2 have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with leakage, or for that matter anything to do with actual operation of the flange. They are there for the sole purpose of providing a safe design for a flange that, with the proper gasket

selection, alignment, and initial bolt-up parameters, should result in minimized leak condition. Note that I did not say no leakage - that is because all flanges leak, it is only a latter of degree.

I can take a standard flange, completely screw up the assembly, and it will leak a lot. I could probably take a "failed" flange design, choose a good gasket, apply appropriate bolt loads and have it not have a detectable leak. There is no correlation between the two.

All that you can say is that one flange is not permitted for VIII-1, but permitted for VIII-2. 9 days ago Like1

Follow Dharmit Dharmit Thakore Thanks Trevor for the input.

I understand what you are saying. I think I didn't put the question properly.

As is evident, the calculations done in the linked pdf files to the main post are for the same flange, same class but done with different Divisions of ASME.

To take your analogy, let us assume that there are two flange pairs, same size, same gasket, same operator installing it, applying same loads on bolts with a torque calibrated wrench (which might not happen in real life), they have the same pressure in the pipe, same loads and moments are applied to them, now, as a designer, ASME Section VIII Division 1 says this flange is not permitted and Division 2 says it is permitted. My question is, should I trust Div 1 and go for a higher class flange (in this instance CLASS 900) or should I put my trust in Div 2 and sign the design as a Professional engineer.

I know, the obvious answer to this might be, it depends on experience of the designer and confidence he/she has gained in his/her design, but for someone like me who has got site experience but not particularly in Flange leakage check, I want to trust that both Divisions should give me comparable results. Also for some one new out of Uni, doing this calculation, finding this difference and going to his experienced supervisor for an understanding, gets an answer that don't worry about the flange, use Div 2 and it should be fine, will be confused on why that decision was made, what was the reasoning behind it?

To put my question simply, both methods in Div 1 and Div 2 were put in place after some experiments, what happened during these experiments, did the flange leak for Div 1 experiment and didn't leak for Div 2 experiment?

For this flanges, I also ran calculation in Caesar II with NC-3658.3 method and the results were that the flange that was not acceptable in ASME Section VIII Division 1 was having stress ratio < 0.3 (only stressed 30% of allowable). This flange is not a standard ASME B16.5 flange (as the design pressure and temperature are above what ASME B16.5 permits, hence designing it by ASME Section VIII Div 1 or 2 method) and NC-3658.3 method might not be used for this, but it was done just for comparison purposes only.

I might be skinning hair here, but it is the confidence I want to gain when doing the calculation by either Div 1 or Div 2 and want to pass on the same confidence to my clients stating that if everything is done properly (viz. installation), a properly designed flange will have minimum chance of leakage.

I have read "PVP2011-57923 : DEMONSTRATING LEAK TIGHT JOINTS DURING PIPING DESIGN" and there is comparison for different codes in there and Div 1 is the most conservative of all.

Do I select Class 900 or go with Div 2? 9 days ago Like

Follow Peggy Peggy Yin The standard to be used for the flange design should be kept in consistant to that of it applied piping system / equipment. The flange is an integral part of the system/equipment so same standard apply to the system design should apply to the flange as well. Once the design standard for the piping system or pressure equipment is known, the standard should have listed the acceptable standard flange or the design method to the non-standard flange. 8 days ago Like

Follow Ali Ali Alishahi Dharmit,

I concur with Trevor. The current ASME rules for flanges are not leakage based rules. Futhermore, as Trevor rightly points out, flanges always leak (unless you use a welded gasket). An appropriate design only minimises the leakage rate.

Also, that's a typo that you have picked up.

In general, flange design rules of ASME VIII Div.1 and Div.2 are almost the same. (One of the main differences is that Div.2 provides rules to considers the effect of external loads, whereas Div.1 currently doesn't.). So, in the absence of external loads, your calculated "bolt loads" and the flange stresses are expected to be almost the same regardless of the Division you use. However, the allowable stresses used to establish the acceptability of the flange design are different in these two Divisions (with Div.1 being more conservative in most cases). As a result, the design of a flange may be acceptable to ASME VIII Div.2 but unacceptable to Div.1. But this does not mean that Div.1 predicts leakage, as its method is not leakage based. It is strength based.

Just as a side note: Caesar II uses Pressure Equivalent method (also known of M Kellogg method) for considering the effect of external loads on flanges, which can be significantly more conservative than ASME VIII Div.2 method. So, comparing a flange designed to Div.1 in combination with Equivalent Pressure method with a flange designed to Div.2 is not an apple to apple comparison.

For making a decision on the design method, you need to refer to the design standard you are using. If the design standard does not address the design of flanges (i.e. it does not specify which Division of ASME VIII must be used) and leaves the decision to the designer, you should go with the method which is more in line with the philsophy and safety margins of your design standard. In such cases the designer relies on his judgement which should be based on experience and knowledge about the background of the standards and methods.

Somethings come with experience. That's why there are checkers, approvers, supervisors and mentors. 8 days ago Like2

Follow Warren Warren Brown Ali, Even welded gaskets leak at times (I have converted several welded seals to gaskets due to inability to get a run length with the welded seal). Experience doesn't teach us everything unfortunately

(particularly with bolted joints, since there is an industry wide lack of knowledge on the subject), so it is good to ask questions like this one, since you get great responses like yours and Trevors.

Dharmit, Think of it this way - the ASME VIII methods are used to design the flange (as the others have mentioned, this does not include assessment of leakage). By "design the flange" what we are actually talking about is ensuring the bolts are sized to resist the pressure load and also provide sufficient load to both seat and maintain stress on the gasket (to some nominal value). The method then sizes the flange dimensions such that the flange is sufficiently strong to handle the bolt load and applied loads (in principal, although tthat could be improved).

At no stage is the correct assembly bolt load determined (see PCC-1 Appendix O for that), nor are all the other loads that are applied to the flange adequately assessed in order to determine if the flange will or won't leak (see WRC bulletin 514 for a summary of the effects that ought to be included, WRC bulletin 510 for temperature effects and WRC bulletin 508 for the myths of leakage based design in general).

You certainly can perform an assessment of whether the joint is likely to leak or not. It looks a lot like an analysis to ASME PCC-1 Appendix O including WRC 510 for temperature effects. I've been doing such analyses for over 10 years now with an almost 100% success rate. So we have the technology, it is just taking time to make it into the codes and standards. I am presenting a tutorial at this years ASME PVP in Paris next month, where we will go through some of this information.

Also, back to what I think is the crux of your question. The equivalent pressure method tends to be overly-conservative (as I am sure you've figured out). The method in ASME VIII Div. 2 is different to the Equivalent Pressure in that it uses an Equivalent Force (yes, that is a very similar approach, as similar as it sounds) with a modification to account for the torsional stiffness of the flange ring (Koves approach, look for papers by Bill Koves). It is a less conservative (but still conservative) method and may give fairly similar results or results that are reasonably different, depending on the joint configuration. Another paper you can look for is by Rodabaugh (Evaluation of the Bolting and Flanges of ANSI B16.5 Flanged Joints ASME Part A Design Rules), which outlines the basis of the method used in ASME III. All of this, including commentary on what is and isn't important and a new improved approach for assessment of piping external loads will be presented at the ASME PVP conference in a paper I wrote titled: "Improved Analysis of External Loads on Flanged Joints". You can look for a copy after the conference (unless you can attend, which would be even better), or get in touch with me.

Hope this helps.

8 days ago Like6

Follow Dharmit Dharmit Thakore Ali and Warren,

Thanks for your input. This clear a lot of fog around a hazy issue. I think I have a lot to read now (there goes my long weekend :))

Ali,

Piping is designed to ASME B31.3 which refers to Div 1, which is silent on External loads and equivalent pressure method is too conservative, so in this particular instance I used Div 2 as it addressed Forces and Moments directly in the formula.

Warren,

I wont be able to attend the conference as travelling from Australia to Paris, though being my dream, wont be permitted by finances :). I am looking forward to several papers that will be presented this year and your paper has now been added to my list. Generally, how long before papers of a recent conference appear on ASME DC?

Again, thanks all for your inputs that is helping me become a better engineer. I was told by my mentor that if you dont know something and dont ask question(s), you are doing more harm than good, so I guess, I will keep on asking for answers. For most of the part, answers like read this paper or refer to this book suffices as ultimately I have to do all the running to improve my knowledge.

Cheers Dharmit 7 days ago Like

Follow Martin

Martin re Villoria Some notes to these topics from pump design world: We are applying since decades bolting and wall thickness rules (--> strength) to our pumps, also those from ASME BPCV VIII-1/2/3, but also European standards (EN13445) and national boiler pressure standards. All with the knowledge that a pump is practically excluded from those as a machine; but something is required to size.

However, we made a lot of comparisons in the past and if you would like to go to the limits use AD2000, a German vessel code. EN13445 is very similar to ASME BPVC VIII-2. In my opinion a lot of the Div2 which was practically re-written is copied from the EN. And yes, it is less conservative than Div1.

But you should note the following: also as already stated above, you should align your flange design to your system design. It needs further to be considered that the material selection is restricted when using Div2 rules (see section 4) and one more generic, but important issue is that the quality and inspection requirements are higher when applying Div2.

And, also agreed, it says nothing to do with tightness. But it can be done otherwise:

We predict this issue very well working with minimum gasket factors we want to see at the seal contact faces wihtin FEA simulations (this can be done for not self energizing gaskets). If it is a selfenergizing (o-ring) gasket, we verify the extrusion gap (opening of metall faces when pressure is applied)versus its allowable extrusion gap of the related o-ring shore grade (can be taken from supplier). The pretension is an essential issue here, hence if your tightening tooling gives a certain spreading, it is recommended to calculate tightness for min. pre-tension and bolt and flange stresses for maximum pre-tension. An important issue in Div.2 is that the pre-tension is indirectly limited to 2S (66% of bolt yield, as S = 1/3 Sy) when applying design-by-analysis (part 5). This together with the issue that the allowable stress to pre-size the bolting is taken from part 4 where the bolt allowable stress is same as in Div1, leads to a big questionmark on the bolt design in Div2. However, good when you not do an official pressure vessel....

A little bit long, but I can say from experience and after designing equipment with MAWP >1000 bar that leakage is definetly predictable, just not with ASME rules as they are not done for this topic.

Cheers Martin

6 days ago Like

Follow Hubert Hubert Velten Warren, the paper you're referring to, is it presented during session PVP201397814? Then Ill write that one down in my conference agenda with a big exclamation mark :D. 19 hours ago Like

Follow Trevor Trevor Seipp Hubert - that is the paper. It will be in Session 3.1L, Wednesday morning @ 8:30am10:15am, in Room St. Michel. That should prove to be an excellent session!

For others' reference, the Preliminary Program can be found at https://www.asmeconferences.org/PVP2013/pdfs/PreliminaryProgram.pdf 18 hours ago Like

Follow Hubert Hubert Velten Not meaning to hi-jack this thread, but whats the difference between a panel session and a technical session? And are they, together with tutorials/workshops, available for attendance when youve registered for Full Registration? 18 hours ago Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate

Follow Trevor Trevor Seipp A technical session will only have the presentation of technical papers - usually 4-5 papers per session. A panel session will have 3-4 panelist who will have short presentations, but the remainder of the time in the session is dedicated to a discussion amongst the panelists and the attendees about the issue of the session.

With your Full Registration, you are welcome to attend everything! I would also suggest, if so are interested, to attend one of the technical committee meetings. The technical part of the conference is run 100% by volunteers, so we need as many volunteers as possible. For example, I will be chairing

the Design and Analysis technical committee meeting on Monday over lunch in the La Sorbonne C+D room, starting at 12:15pm. [/shameless plug]