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The Effect of Stress Due to Repair of a Heat Exchanger on Crack

Shishegar, Mehdi | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 46525 (58)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Science and Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Farrahi, Gholamhossein; Selk Ghafari, Ali
  7. Abstract:
  8. A heat exchanger is a piece of equipment is built for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. They are widely used in air conditioning, chemical plants and petrochemical plants, so studying the different failures and problems of them is important.
    One of the common problems is fracturing of the tubes. This will allow the hot water to enters them and then hit the refractory of the tubesheet. This coating slowly washing away and that will lead to direct contact between the hot fluid and the tubesheet. Tubesheet is not designed for such a hot thermal load so cracks will initiate on it due to this new situation. They will shut the fractured tube by shut it down and welding a reinforcing bar welded to both tubesheet from both ends. This is the main problem related to the studied heat exchanger. Another issue that is specific to this heat exchanger was fracturing of the front support’s foundation.
    In this study, a 3D modeling was created using SolidWorks from the heat exchanger and then a finite element method analysis was carried out using well known FEM software, ANSYS Workbench. The stresses and the total deflection of the system were calculated and critical points were found. The front support stresses and deflections were investigated and analyzed. Finally, an existing crack on the tubesheet was analyzed and stress intensity factors were calculated before and after of the repair procedure.
    From the results, we found that the tensile force in the front foundation is very high and should investigated further. Also, the repair procedure was decreased the critical stress intensity factor and is a safe method but further study on residual stress due to welding is required
  9. Keywords:
  10. Heat Exchangers ; Crack ; Finite Element Method ; Stress Intensity Factor

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