In order to prevent accidents on main buried gas pipelines before mining operations it is necessary implement corrective actions ensuring the required level of gas pipeline carrying capacity. So operating company was decided to assess a bellow compensator (BC). The construction of BC was designed, and one prototype was produced. Bellows itself consists of six 0.5 mm thickness layers made of the stainless steel AISI 304 grade.

The current work is devoted to the complex study of the BC load carrying capacity which include as experimental investigations under cyclic and quasistatic loadings as well as the corresponding numerical simulation and lifetime assessment.

The full drawings of BC and brief technical characterization is presented. As it was manufactured only one BC the experimental research program was drawn up in such a way as to obtain as much information as possible and provided the following: 1) hydrotest with axial displacements limitation; 2) 26 tension-compression cycles with displacement amplitude ±75 mm with simultaneous action of gas pipeline nominal pressure (55 bar internal pressure); 3) investigations on compensating capacity evaluation at gradual increase of displacement amplitude at simultaneous action of nominal pressure; 4) determination of fracture pressure without limitation of axial displacement. All of the tests were carried out on the Pneumohydraulic Cryogenic Stand by G.S. Pisarenko Institute for Problems of Strength of the NAS of Ukraine under normal environmental conditions.The test equipment, test program as well as the all test results (after the second stage (26 cycles) - no cracks observed; first macrocracks was appeared at the third stage; fracture pressure - 180 bar) are fully described.

The deformation amplitudes in each layer are determined by means of the compensator finite element (FE) modeling which was carried out using ANSYS software package. The axisymmetric bellow FE model consisting of square eightnode element "quad8" is constructed. The model external layers are divided into 10 elements in thickness, and internal ones into 4. The quality of FE mesh according to "orthogonal quality" index is 0.91. It is shown that the bellow external layer (as is proved by experiment) is the most loaded. According to the amplitude of von Mises deformations and fatigue curve of the bellow material it is defined that the bellow cyclic durability for tension-compression ±75 mm is up to 32 cycles.

The results of experimental and numerical-analytical investigations prove the possibility of bellow compensator DN100 use for compensation of axial displacements on the gas pipeline sections in mining areas for maximum 15 mine workings.

Based on obtained data the BC for gas pipeline-offshoot DN100 in mining areas further will be implemented. Installation places and required number of compensators will be selected according to the results of predictable calculations of the pipeline stressed state.


Estimation of the Load Carrying Capacity of the Bellows Compensator for Gas Pipelines in the Areas of Mining Production

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

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