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International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 879–885
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpvp
Abstract
Tube-to-tubesheet joint strength is measured in terms of residual contact pressure between the tube’s outer surface and the tubesheet hole
surfaces. The joint integrity is affected by several design parameters, including the type of material and the initial radial clearance.
The present work complements an experimental program on the effect of over-tolerance on heat exchanger tube-to-tubesheet joint
strength. Finite element analyses address the effect of initial clearance on contact pressure and percent tube wall reduction. Results show that
for low strain hardening materials the initial clearance effect is negligible. However, higher levels of strain hardening have a significant effect
on residual stress and percent wall reduction. For low clearances, the calculated residual contact pressure compares well with an analytical
result and with that inferred from the experimentally measured pull out force. The variation of the percent wall reduction with initial
clearance is found to be similar to that measured.
q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Joint strength; Contact pressure; Tubesheet; Radial clearance; Over-tolerance; Finite element analysis
Fig. 10. Experimental results showing the effect of diametral clearance on the joint strength.
The combined effects can be described by the following expansion, ro is tube outer radius before expansion and Ri is
general linear relationship tubesheet hole radius before expansion.
The wall reduction calculated by Eq. (7) is named
c Ett E
z ¼ 1:0 2 2500 2 1:7 tt ð6Þ ‘apparent wall reduction’ because it does not account for the
r o Et Et radial ligament deformation; only the inner tube radius after
It should be noted here that the correction factor proposed expansion needs to be measured. However, since the tube
by Allam and co-workers [9] did not include the effect of radius cannot be read directly from the finite element code,
material strain hardening on residual contact pressure for it would be more practical to express Eq. (7) in terms of
zero clearance. radial deformation. By doing so, the tube wall reduction
The results concerning the effect of initial radial clearance formula is re-written in the following form
on the residual contact pressure obtained by FEA were Uri 2 c
compared to those inferred from the pull out force measured WR ¼ 100 ð8Þ
t
experimentally (Fig. 10). It was found that the general trend
of constant pull out force obtained for all the range of where Uri is radial deformation of the tube’s inner surface
clearances is justifiable given that the tangent modulus of the and t is the initial tube wall thickness.
material is only 876 MPa (127,000 psi). As can be seen in The radial deformation of the tube inner surface is
Fig. 7 and from Eq. (6) the clearance effect for this range of Ett calculated using the three models and the percentage tube
is minimal. The average value of the contact pressure inferred wall reduction is calculated from Eq. (8). Fig. 11 is a plot of
from the experimental pull out force using Eq. (1), with an the percentage tube wall reduction versus initial radial
average expansion length, Le of 41 mm and a coefficient of clearance, for the three levels of tube tangent modulus.
friction, f of 0.5, was 25 MPa. The value of the interfacial The tube wall reduction decreases as the tangent modulus
pressure determined from FEM (Fig. 7) for Ett ¼ 0:69 MPa increases and increases as the initial radial clearance
(100,000 psi) decreased from 30.6 to 27.8 MPa with increases. In the range of initial radial clearances ðcÞ and
increasing initial clearance. Thus, the FE estimation of the tube’s tangent modulus ðEtt Þ covered in this study, the
residual stress is about 15– 20% higher than the average maximum tube wall reduction, for the case having the
experimental value. This difference may be attributed to a highest clearance and lowest tangent modulus, was 1.55%
number of experimental and numerical factors, the most
important being the choice of the friction coefficient.